Water streamed endlessly down my face, into my eyes, plastering my short hair flat against my skull, soaking through my jacket and shirt until everything clung cold and uncomfortably heavy against my skin like a second layer.
I didn't care about the discomfort. Didn't register it beyond basic awareness.
My worst fear was running on brutal, vivid repeat in my head like a tactical nightmare scenario I couldn't shut down no matter how hard I tried to focus.
Someone from Consortium Prime got impatient waiting for whatever carefully planned message they wanted to send me. Decided to dramatically accelerate their timeline. Grabbed the easiest, most vulnerable, most defenseless target they couldpossibly find in my vicinity—a five-year-old girl who couldn't defend herself or understand what was actually happening.
And now they were coldly using her as direct leverage to hurt me. To punish me for killing one of their own in that abandoned building.
To make me suffer before they finished the job.
I would die before I let that happen to Sabine.
Before I allowed my violent actions and past sins to destroy an innocent child who'd done nothing except exist.
And when I was inevitably dead—if it came to that final outcome—I fully expected Connor and the rest of the Nine to methodically burn the Consortium's entire fucking world down to smoking ash and salt the scorched earth afterward.
No mercy. No hesitation. Total war.
Beside me struggling through the downpour, Ella was barely holding herself together.
Her breathing was too fast, too shallow, too panicked. Hands visibly shaking even clenched into fists. Eyes wild with barely controlled panic she was trying desperately and completely failing to suppress.
She was absolutely right earlier about calling the police immediately.
She had every legitimate right to make that call.
This was technically a kidnapping. A child abduction. Official protocol and emergency procedures existed for exactly this kind of serious situation.
But I'd lied directly to her face without hesitation or guilt.
Told her with complete conviction it was purely for Sabine's sake. To protect the traumatized little girl from being further scared by sirens and flashing lights and armed uniforms and official chaos descending on her world.
Really, truthfully, it was so I could do what actually needed doing in quiet.
Away from witnesses and recording cameras. Away from police procedures and proper legal rules of engagement and inconvenient things like evidence chains and rights.
So I could wrap both hands firmly around the throat of whoever had dared take that innocent child and squeeze steadily, methodically until their fucking head separated completely from their shoulders.
Until they understood exactly what they'd done wrong.
We reached the building entrance, water cascading heavily off the stone archway above.
I pulled the heavy door open against the wind resistance, more water sluicing off the metal frame, and we stepped inside quickly.
The interior hallway was dim and relatively quiet except for the muffled roar of rain battering relentlessly against windows somewhere above us.
I pulled my pistol smoothly from the concealed holster at my back.
Checked it automatically. Ready.
Ella's eyes went to the weapon in my hand, widening with sudden recognition of what it meant.
What I was fully prepared to do.
She moved instinctively toward the stairs like she was going to just run blindly up them.
I caught her arm firmly but not roughly. "Wait."
