3
CAP
Ariel’s scream tore me awake.
“Let me go! No, Cap!”
Metal sang when I jerked and hit wire instead of her. The cage rattled; on the other side of the seam her fingers slammed into mine, ice-cold, locked tight.
“Hey,” I kept it low. “I’ve got you. You’re dreaming.”
A breath hitched, then another. “I,” She swallowed. “I’m okay. Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I leaned my shoulder into the seam so she could feel the weight of me. “You’re safe for the moment.”
Above us, footsteps crossed. A door moaned. Then the quiet that hurts your ears fell back over everything.
Her voice settled, but the echo of it, let me go, ran the same track as earlier, when they’d tried to haul me upstairs. Same pitch. Same break. It hit the part of me that keeps time and opened a door I’d been keeping shut.
The last thing before this room had been her on the phone, thin through static, Cap, and then tires, a scream, nothing. I’d chased her ping into the industrial zone and told myself I wasn’t walking into bait. Lie. The grab hit fast, black van, burned-rubber turn, someone saying “take the guy alive.” Then concrete,bleach, and her voice again, my name, breaking. I should’ve waited for backup. I didn’t. That’s on me.
“I’m here,” I told her now, because it mattered twice. Once for the nightmare, once for the way the memory sat on my chest. I threaded our hands tighter through the seam. “With you.”
I let the quiet settle and listened. Damp concrete. Old bleach losing to iron. A cheap duct pushing thin air that never got serviced. Buildings talk if you know what to hear.
Her grip eased a notch. I slid my fingers between the diamonds until she could hook mine in her palm. We couldn’t really reach, but skin is skin. You take what you can.
“You, okay?” I asked.
“Not really.” Small, steady.
Dust clung to my mouth. I spat rust and took stock. The bars were welded ugly; the frame showed drag scars where someone had dropped it and called that good. Along the front seam, a shallow groove like the whole unit had been shoved and set wrong. Sloppy leaves edges. Edges become openings.
Voices upstairs, low and lazy. One bored, one trying to sound calm and missing it. A phone buzzed on wood and died. Half a whistle fell apart.
A light snapped on over the stairs, shadow cutting the crack under the door. It opened, and a thin man came down with a flashlight and a toolbox on his hip. Not one of the regulars. Jeans and a work shirt. Maintenance on his face, regret in his eyes.
He took the steps like a routine, four, pause, three. The beam swept the ceiling first like he knew where everything lived. He stopped two cages past Ariel and swore under his breath.
“Outlet’s loose again,” he told the wall. The box hit concrete. Knees creaked. The light threw his hands long on the floor. He worked fast, not careful, like if he hurried enough the cages would stop being cages.
Ariel’s thumb pressed mine once. I answered the same. Different man. Different job. Men who hurt for fun don’t bring tools.
He tightened a plate, wiggled a plug, tugged a floor bracket. The bracket squeaked. When he shifted, a screw pinged off the lip of his kit and rolled for the groove under my cage.
I didn’t look. I let my hand hang in the wire while the screw ticked forward like a beetle. It caught grit, nudged when he moved again, and settled by my boot.
“Come on,” he told the outlet, and went back to it.
Standard steel screw. Shallow head. Worthless to most. Worth something to a man who needed a pick, a shim, a wedge. I shifted like I was trying to get comfortable and tapped it with my toe into the shadow under the frame.
The lid squealed shut. “Done for now,” he said. He raised his voice toward the landing. “Line is sketchy. If the compressor trips again, call it. I’m not eating that.”
A grunt answered up top. The light went with his back. The door bit and latched.
“Cap,” Ariel whispered.
“I’ve got something,” I said. “Small.”
