Now, I have to go kill the man who wielded it.
21
IRIS
The elevator descends into the earth.
It’s a smooth, silent drop on the backup brakes, but my stomach plummets with it, the sudden lack of gravity making me dizzy. The air in the confined metal box is dead and suffocating. It smells of hot, raw metal, sweat, and cordite—the stink of violence.
I’m pressed against the back wall, hugging myself to stop the shaking. It isn’t working. The tremors radiate outward, vibrating through my teeth until my jaw aches.
My hands are empty. I feel naked without the weight of the pistol Varro took from me.
I look up at Cassian.
He’s leaning against the control panel, his eyes closed, his head tipped back against the brushed steel. The brutal, unstoppable force I watched tear through a hit squad is gone, replaced by a man holding his broken body together through sheer stubbornness.
His left arm hangs uselessly at his side. The blood is still flowing, a slow, dark leak that pools on the metal floor. I can’t hear the impact over the high-pitched whine screaming in myears, but I watch the red stain widen, pulsing outward with every beat of his heart.
He’s dying.
The thought pierces through the fog of my shock like a needle. He took a bullet for me. He walked through a war zone to secure the evidence he needed. And now he’s bleeding out in an elevator while I stand here, useless, paralyzed by the echo of the gunshots.
The elevator slows. I feel the vibration of the brakes engaging through the floorboards.
The floor indicator light flashes green.
My hearing is severely damaged. The world feels like it’s underwater, muffled and distant, reduced to heavy vibrations and visual cues.
The doors slide open.
We aren’t in a basement. We’re in a command center.
The bunker is stark, industrial, and cold. It’s a cavern of concrete and steel, lit by the harsh blue glow of server racks lining the far wall. Rows of monitors show the estate above—mostly static or black screens, but a few show the smoking ruins of the Great Hall.
It feels like the inside of a machine. Sterile. Lifeless.
Cassian pushes off the wall. He stumbles once, his boots skidding on the polished concrete before he catches himself on the doorframe. A grunt of pain distorts his lips, though the sound is lost to me.
He looks at me, his mouth forming a single, strained word.Come.
His voice doesn’t reach me through the ringing in my head, but the physical command in his eyes cuts through the fog.
Without looking at me, he moves toward a stainless-steel table in the corner—a medical station—his steps heavy and uneven. He leaves a trail of red droplets on the pristine floor.
I follow him. I don’t know what else to do. My legs feel like they don’t belong to me. They’re numb, wooden things moving on autopilot.
The elevator doors shut behind us, locking out the rest of the house.
And that’s when it hits me.
The adrenaline, the terror, the noise—it all evaporates, leaving a vacuum my mind can’t fill. The reality of the last hour crashes down on me.
I close my eyes, and the images are burned into my eyelids. The black bore of the suppressor aimed dead at my chest. The spray of blood hitting the stone wall when Cassian stepped in front of me.
A hard knot forms in my throat. I try to inhale, but my lungs are paralyzed. My chest feels like it’s being crushed by a hydraulic press.
I stop walking. I clutch at my chest, digging my fingers into the sweater. The sweater soaked in Cassian’s blood. It’s sticky. Warm.
