King’s half on his feet, half on instinct, one hand braced on the wall, the other dragging Delilah’s limp body across the floor. There’s blood everywhere—hers, his, the guards’, maybe mine too by the time I reach them—and the sight of it hits me harder than any bullet ever could. For a second, I forget to move. The whole world tunnels down to the shape of her in his arms—small, too still, her head lolling against his chest, hair hanging in dark, filthy tangles over her face.
“King!” My voice ricochets off the concrete hard enough to sound like a gunshot.
He flinches, turning toward me, one eye nearly swollen shut, teeth clenched around a curse. “She’s out cold,” he growls, trying to haul her upright. “I can’t—”
“I’ve got her!” I’m already there, closing the distance, boots slipping in someone’s blood. My knee nearly hits the floor, but I catch myself and rip her from his arms before he can argue. I pull her against me, and her weight collapses into my chest like something sacred and unbearable. Too light. Too limp. Too goddamn breakable. “Get the hell out of here!”
He hesitates—one heartbeat too long—and I bark it again, sharper this time, the kind of order that leaves no room for anything but obedience. “Go! I have her!”
That finally breaks him loose. He stumbles toward the exit, dragging a sidearm from a dead guard’s belt, firing down the corridor to cover us. The report of the weapon cracks through the alarms. I clutch Delilah closer and push forward, every muscle locked on one thought: don’t let go. Don’t drop her. Don’t lose her now that I’ve got her back in my arms.
I can feel the heat from her skin even through the grime, the weak pulse fluttering under my fingers where I press to her throat. She’s breathing, faint but steady, and it does something catastrophic to me. Something I thought I’d buried back with Karma, back with every ghost that’s ever worn my uniform and left pieces of themselves behind in my hands. I thought I was past this—past feeling like my heart could bleed itself dry over someone. But seeing her like this, broken and shaking and still alive, I know with bone-deep certainty that I’ll never be able to let her go. Not after this. Maybe not ever.
We hit the stairwell. Two guards appear at the landing—one drops before he can aim, a neat hole opening in the center of his throat, and the other staggers as King empties his clip andshoves a knife through the space between his ribs. The sound is wet and short and ugly. King spits blood, grins without humor, half his face wrecked and shining with sweat. “Merry Christmas, Cap.”
We don’t slow down. The whole compound is a maze of smoke and sirens, and we run through it blind, trusting instinct more than sight. Every turn feels improvised. Every shadow looks like a man with a rifle. I kick open a side door that leads into the garage bay. Rows of armored SUVs sit like sleeping beasts, paint slick with dust and grease, headlights dead, windshields reflecting the red emergency lights in ugly streaks. Keys hang from the ignition of one—the kind of arrogance that comes from thinking no one could ever reach this place.
We climb in. I shove Delilah into the back seat as carefully as panic allows, King sliding beside her with a grunt, one hand pressed over the hole in his shoulder to keep from painting the upholstery. The engine roars to life under my hands, headlights cutting through the haze, and for the first time in seven days, something like air fills my lungs. It hurts. It still feels like guilt. But it’s there.
We crash through the gate—steel bends, sparks fly, metal screaming against metal—and the night opens wide in front of us. Forest. Dirt road. Moonlight silvering the ruts in the ground. Freedom, or the closest thing we get to it. I glance in the rearview mirror just long enough to see the compound shrink to a smear of fire and smoke.
Then I see him.
Mikhail.
He’s standing on the roof of the outer building, coat whipping in the wind, untouched by the chaos around him. Too still. Too composed. Like none of this is a loss, only a delay. His eyes catch the headlights for a fraction of a second and I feel the promisethere—cold, precise, inevitable. It reaches across the distance like a knife.
He got away.
I slam the steering wheel, fury curling through my chest like wire dragged through flame. Not tonight. Not with her in the back seat, her face pale against the flicker of dashboard light, her hand twitching towards the fabric of my jacket where she’s still half-unconscious. I can’t chase him now. Not yet. The need to kill him gnaws at me anyway, raw and feral, but it has to wait. She comes first. She will always come first, no matter how much I hate what that says about me.
I grip the wheel tighter, forcing the vehicle down the dirt track, every bump jarring through my arms and up my spine. Behind me, King mutters something about a medic. Delilah stirs once, a soft sound that’s more breath than voice. I reach back without thinking, my fingers brushing hers in the darkness.
“Hold on,” I whisper, mostly to myself. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
The road curves away from the burning base, and the smoke fades into the dark. For the first time in days, there’s no static in my ears, no screaming on the tapes, no silence pressing like a knife between my ribs—just the hum of the engine and the quiet rhythm of her breathing. Weak. Uneven. But there.
She’s alive.
Mikhail will be too, for now. But I swear on every dead man I’ve ever left behind—this isn’t over.
The hum of the tires against broken asphalt is the only sound that keeps me tethered. King’s gone silent in the back seat, one arm locked around Delilah to keep her from sliding every time we hit another cratered patch of road. The smell of smoke and her blood mixes with the diesel from the stolen SUV, filling the cabin with something metallic and too human. I tell myself she’s breathing because I can see the faint tremor of her chest whenthe dashboard light flickers, but it feels fragile—like if I blink too long, she’ll vanish.
My mind keeps splitting in half. Half of me here, gripping the wheel hard enough to make my knuckles ache. The other half somewhere I can’t stand to go. Somewhere memory has claws
.
The base is quiet. The drills are over, the air still heavy with gunpowder and salt from the sea. She’s sitting on the hood of my truck, knees pulled up, her headphones leaking something slow and soft into the night. I don’t remember what song; I only remember the look—her hair falling forward, catching the red glow of the taillight, her eyes half-lit when she tilts her head and says, “You ever get tired of pretending we don’t feel anything?”
I don’t answer. I just reach out, brush the stray strand from her face, and let my hand fall before it becomes something it shouldn’t. My fingers catch for a second on the softness of her cheek, and that one second feels like standing too close to a cliff. She smiles anyway—small, knowing, heartbreak and comfort all at once. Like she sees every ugly thing I’m trying not to be.
“Maybe someday,” she says, voice a whisper under the music, “we stop pretending.”
The memory fractures. The light around her fades to gray. Her head tilts again, but this time her lips are pale, eyes closed, the warmth gone. She’s not breathing. Her body is heavy in my arms, cold through the soaked fabric of her shirt. I’m calling her name, shouting, shaking her, and the sound just echoes—no answer. No pulse. Just me being too late again.
I jerk the wheel, and the present slams back into me. We’re skidding into the perimeter of Greenport, the gates already open, spotlights cutting through the dark like surgical blades. The radios crackle as Larkin’s voice hits every channel, barkingorders—clear med bay two, get a trauma kit, shut down north access. The convoy of trucks behind us breaks formation as I hit the brakes and throw the SUV into a slide that ends in a spray of gravel and heat.
Before the engine stops shaking, I’m out the door. My arms move before my brain catches up, pulling Delilah from the back seat, her head falling against my shoulder. She’s too light. Too still. King tries to follow but collapses halfway out of the door, and medics swarm him while I push through them, shouting that I’ve got her, that they’re not to touch her.
