Still, my gaze kept drifting to the windows.
“They’re fine,” Ariel said gently, nudging a mug of cocoa toward me. “Wrecker’s with them. Ghost. Brutus. Ranger. You’ve got theA-teamout there right now.”
“I know,” I murmured, but my voice didn’t sound like mine. “I just… I can’t stop thinking about the photo. That it was me. Inside this place. That they were that close.”
Doc, sitting cross-legged on the floor, looked up from her knitting. “Which is why you’renotalone. No one gets near you without going through all of us.”
“You’d stab someone with your yarn needle?” Ariel teased.
Doc didn’t even blink. “I’d gut them.”
A shaky laugh escaped me, and that tiny flicker of warmth almost made me feel normal. Almost.
The TV played some 90s rom-com none of us were really watching. A couple of the old ladies, Vi and Tamara, I think, were curled up on the other couch, half-asleep with one eye open. Cap was still cleaning that damn rifle, movements methodical, sharp, deadly. Like even sitting still, he was dangerous.
“I’m gonna pee,” Ariel announced, stretching. “Don’t let Amanda go all ‘final girl’ while I’m gone.”
I smiled, faint and crooked. “No promises.”
She vanished down the hallway, humming, and the quiet stretched again. I sipped the cocoa. It was sweet. Too sweet.
Then the power cut.
Everything went black.
No flicker. No warning. Just?—
Snap.
Darkness slammed down like a fist. The TV died. The overhead lights cut. The heater’s soft hum vanished.
Ariel screamed.
I jumped so hard my mug hit the floor, shattering against the tile. I scrambled off the couch and dropped to the floor behind it before I could stop myself, heart hammering so loud I swore everyone could hear it.
The dark was suffocating.
“Amanda,” Cap barked, voice a low growl. “Stay put. Nobody moves.”
Tamara gasped. Vi clutched her chest.
Doc was already moving, crouched low. “Cap?—”
“I said stay put,” he snapped, already up and armed, standing like a wall in front of us.
The emergency generator hadn’t kicked in yet. The house wassilent.
That was worse.
So much worse.
I couldn’t breathe. My hands trembled violently, nails digging into the couch leather. My brain flooded with noise.
Fuck. It was happening again. I clenched my shaking fists and tried to push the fear away.
“Cap,” Brutus’s voice came from the hallway, sharp and urgent.
He stepped into the room, shotgun gripped tight, his massive frame backlit by the pale moonlight through the front window.
