The first one died before he could shout. Zain's knife opening his throat in a wet red line that steamed in the cold air. The second managed to get his gun up. Zain grabbed the wrist, twisted until bone popped, and put the blade through his temple. Resistance, then nothing.
Both bodies hit concrete within three seconds of each other.
Jack whistled low behind him. "Remind me not to piss you off."
Zain wiped the blade on a dead man's shirt and kept moving
The second floor was worse.
He'd served two tours. Fallujah, then Mosul. He remembered the houses, the rooms that told stories no one wanted to hear. He'd come home and done six years on Detroit PD, working the neighborhoods that the department used as dumping grounds for cops who asked the wrong questions or had the wrong lastname. Five more years doing what Lakefront did, in the spaces the law refused to reach.
He thought he'd built up a tolerance.
The smell hit first. Not just sweat and waste. Fear. It had a smell, sharp and animal, and it lived in this room like something permanent, soaked into the concrete.
The space stretched the length of the warehouse. Chain-link fencing divided it into crude cells. Mattresses on concrete. Buckets in corners. The kind of setup that saidthese are not people, these are inventory.
Fifteen. Maybe twenty. Huddled shapes that didn't look up when the door opened. They'd learned not to. Hope was a luxury that got beaten out of you, and these people had been beaten thoroughly.
"Jesus Christ," Jack breathed.
Zain's jaw tightened until his teeth ached. He keyed his earpiece. "Ghost. At least twenty victims, second floor. We need more vehicles."
"Copy." A pause, the clatter of keys. "Nate's en route with the backup van. ETA eight minutes."
"Tell him to hurry."
He moved through the room. Kept his voice low, his movements slow. Hands visible. Non-threatening.We're here to help. We're getting you out.Thin words. Useless ones. But he said them anyway, because silence was worse, and some of the shapes stirred at the sound of a voice that wasn't shouting orders.
Jack worked the locks. Cheap padlocks, easy to cut. The cell doors swung open one by one. Nobody ran. They didn't know how anymore.
One woman clutched a man's hand and wouldn't let go. An older man sat blinking in the cold light like he'd forgotten whatan open door meant. A teenager, couldn't have been more than seventeen, was shaking so badly the chain-link rattled.
Zain crouched in front of the kid. Spoke in Spanish first, then Arabic, then English. The kid just stared. Zain put a hand on his shoulder and the kid flinched so hard he nearly fell over.
Sabr,his mother's voice said.Be patient with the broken things.
The last cell sat shoved into a corner. Smaller than the others. An afterthought, or a punishment.
Inside, a single figure sat with his back against the chain-link. Knees drawn up. Head down. Thinner than the others, not just underfed but hollowed out, like something vital had been scooped from the center of him. Dirty blond hair hung in greasy tangles over a face Zain couldn't see.
Jack cut the lock. The door swung open.
The figure didn't move.
"Hey." Zain kept his voice low. Soft, by his standards, which wasn't very. "We're getting you out."
Nothing.
He stepped into the cell. Crouched down. Close enough to touch, but he didn't, not yet.
"My name is Zain. I'm not going to hurt you."
The head came up.
Green eyes. Sharp and feverish and furious, burning out of a face that was all angles and shadows. A split lip, scabbed over. Bruising along the jaw, yellow-green at the edges, a week old, at least. And underneath the dirt and the damage, something Zain hadn't expected.
Defiance.
