Whoever had orchestrated this wasn't interested in what I knew.
They were interested in what I meant to someone else.
Matthew.
The realization was like cold water splashing my face. It wasn't about me at all. I was a lure.
A memory swept into my mind without permission, triggered by the bite of plastic against my wrists. I'd crumpled to the sidewalk after the knife attack left me to bleed out only a block from the hospital.
I heard feet running toward me. When I opened my eyes, I thought I was hallucinating or possibly even dead. It was Farid.
"Control the story," he'd said as he half-carried me to his waiting car. "You're dead to them now."
I faded in and out of consciousness as he drove.
"You'll need stitches," he'd said. "I'll take you to someone who knows field medicine. He won't ask the wrong questions."
Farid practically dragged me up three flights of stairs to a door. Before he left, he kissed my cheek. "You're my brother—always."
Emotion chased the memory from my mind, threatening to crack the professional distance I'd built around everything thatmattered. I forced it down, back into the locked compartment where feelings went to die.
Longing never helped.
Sentiment got people killed.
A heavy door clanged somewhere in the warehouse's depths, the sound echoing off high walls. Footsteps followed—measured, confident, unhurried. The person approaching had all the time in the world and knew exactly how this would end.
Time to focus.
The zip ties and fluorescent hum brought me back to the present, but something lingered—the knowledge that Farid saved my life, and it might have cost him his.
He saved me to give Matthew something back, not to tear him open again.
The footsteps grew closer, echoing off the bare floors and walls.
There was a faint metallic jingle layered into the rhythm.
Not keys. Not gear. A tag on a lanyard, maybe.
Something bureaucratic pretending to be benign.
My stomach turned. I'd heard that sound before—at a briefing I wasn't supposed to attend.
My head dropped forward, chin meeting chest as if consciousness itself had become an unbearable weight. My shoulders collapsed inward. Erratic breathing wracked my body.
Perform helplessness. Breed their arrogance.
Testing the restraints required only tiny movements. The chair legs had been anchored deep into the concrete, probably with hardware meant for industrial equipment. The ankle restraints threaded through the metal framework left zero latitude for movement.
My right heel pressed against a chair leg, confirming what mattered most. A microblade waited in its boot compartment, polymer-thin and razor-sharp. Searchers expected obviousweapons and typical hiding places. Paranoia had taught me that survival gear belonged in spaces so mundane they became invisible.
My approach crystallized with mechanical clarity. Proximity first—draw them within reach. Absorb whatever they delivered without revealing my capacity for resistance.
Extract intelligence through conversation. Humans revealed key information when they thought they were secure.
Strike from apparent defeat.
The boots were near now. My internal mantra surfaced, words that had sustained me through impossible situations:Survival demands only one quality—the refusal to surrender when surrender seems rational.
