“New intel came in this morning,” one of them says, propped up on an elbow while I wrap gauze around his wrist. “Different cell. Eastern corridor. Not Mikhail’s people.”
“There’s always another one,” his buddy replies from the next bed, staring up at the ceiling like he’s philosophizing instead of waiting for pain meds. “Hydra effect.”
“Yeah, well, someone’s gotta cut the heads off.”
I don’t look up, but I hear it.
The newest mission. The newest bad guy. The newest reason to defend a world that will never know our names.
No medals. No parades. Just quiet war.
It doesn’t make me bitter anymore.
It makes me proud.
Because this is what I chose. Not because someone told me to. Not because I was trying to impress my father. Not becauseI was trying to prove something to Jon. Not because I was too stubborn to be afraid.
Because I am capable. Because I can. Because even after everything that happened to me, I’m still here.
Still standing. Still useful.
Still fighting.
That matters in a way I don’t think I understood before. Before captivity. Before the panic and the spiraling and the humiliating realization that survival is not the same thing as feeling safe in your own skin. There’s something steadying about knowing I didn’t just crawl out of it—I came back and kept moving. Even if the movement looks quieter now. Even if it smells like disinfectant instead of gunpowder.
The doors to the med bay slide open.
I don’t need to look up to know it’s him.
There’s a shift in the air when Jon walks into a room. Not loud. Not obvious. Just… aware. Like gravity tilts slightly in his direction and everybody else feels it before they understand why. Conversations don’t stop, exactly, but they shift. People sit a little straighter. Energy sharpens. The room notices him the way rooms notice storms.
“Got time for me, Doc?” he asks casually.
The soldiers glance between us. Of course they do. No one on base misses much, and whatever exists between me and Jon has not exactly been subtle lately, no matter how hard we’ve both pretended otherwise.
I raise a brow. “Depends. You bleeding out or just dramatic?”
A few chuckles ripple through the room.
He lifts his hand.
There’s a shallow cut across his knuckles. Barely more than a scrape. Not deep. Not jagged. Not even especially interesting. The kind of thing he could fix himself with two antiseptic wipes and a strip of tape in under a minute.
It’s laughable.
I blink at it then at him.
“You’re kidding.”
“Tripped,” he says smoothly.
I stare at him. “You don’t trip.”
“Today I did.”
“That must’ve been historic.”
One of the soldiers on the far bed snorts into his pillow. Jon doesn’t even spare him a glance. His eyes stay on me, unreadable in that way that only means he wants something more than the words he’s using.
