Her eyes open. Slits. The glassy half-focus of someone fighting to stay present.
"Don't..." Her voice cracks. "Don't forget."
"I won't. I won't ever forget."
Bane is beside me. He reaches into his back pocket—his wallet, never taken or returned with him. Pulls out cash. A card. Tucks them into the stretcher beside her hand.
"My number's on the back," he tells her. His voice is gentle—the real Bane, the one who sat on a concrete floor and made jokes about blindfold hygiene to make me laugh. "When you wake up. Call it. There's enough on the card for whatever you need."
Wren's fingers close around the card. Weakly. But she holds it.
They lift the stretcher into the ambulance. I watch her face as the doors swing shut—pale, bruised, her eyes finding mine through the narrowing gap. Holding on until the metal meets metal and the latch clicks and she's gone.
The ambulance pulls forward. Lights strobing. Turning onto the access road.
I stand on the loading dock and watch it go and feel something inside my chest rearrange itself. Something permanent.
Reyes appears beside Bane. A utility knife—small, quick. One cut and the zip ties fall away, dropping to the concrete with a plastic clatter. Bane's wrists are raw—angry red bands where the plastic has been grinding for days. He flexes his hands. Opens and closes his fingers. Rolls his wrists once, twice, wincing.
Free.
"Mr. Graves. We're ready when you are."
Bane looks at me. I look at the ambulance—smaller now, taillights shrinking down the access road.
“Ready?” He asks.
God,a part of me thought this was never going to happen. I nod.
We get in the car.
The leather seat creaks under Bane and he sinks into it like a man whose strings have been cut. His eyes are going glassy again—the sedative reclaiming the territory his biology burned through. His freed hands rest in his lap. The raw wrists look worse in the soft light of the sedan's interior.
Red. Chafed. Real.
Reyes pulls out behind the ambulance. The warehouse complex shrinks in the rear window—gray concrete and loading docks and the rolling door already closing behind us. Getting smaller. Smaller.
Gone.
I take Bane's hand. Lace my fingers through his. His skin is warm. His knuckles are swollen and split, but his fingers close around mine and hold. Really hold. No plastic between us. No restraints. Just his hand and mine.
"Stay awake," I say. "Just a little longer."
"Trying." His head tips sideways. Finds my shoulder. "'S hard."
"I know."
The city goes to sleep around us. Traffic lights. Other cars. A man walking a dog on a sidewalk, breath fogging in the cold morning air. Normal things. Things that kept existing while I was in that building.
Bane's breathing deepens. Slows. His weight gets heavier against my shoulder.
"Don't sleep yet," I whisper.
"Not sleeping. Just... resting my eyes."
"That's literally sleeping."
A sound against my shoulder. Almost a laugh. Almost.
