I signaled once. Marcus moved like smoke. A soft thunk split the air, and the rifleman folded without a sound.
The other spun, too slow. I stepped out from behind the column and put two rounds in his chest. The man collapsed, sounding like a dropped bag of tools.
They'd welded the door of the cell shut. Primitive but effective. Through a narrow vent near the top, I detected movement.
"Dorian?"
A pause. Then: "Matthew?"
His voice sounded like sandpaper, but he was alive.
He grunted out, "You shouldn't have come."
"I couldn't do otherwise." I turned to Marcus. "Cut it."
A plasma torch screeched to life. Sparks flew. The door finally fell inward with a groan.
Dorian slumped in a metal chair, one arm zip-tied to the frame, and the other free. Blood streaked his hairline, and one eye was swollen shut. Through it all, he looked up at me. And he smiled.
"Service sucks," he said.
I was already at his side, cutting the zip ties. "Can you walk?"
"Eventually."
He tried to stand and collapsed. I caught him around the waist and pulled his arm over my shoulder. He grunted but didn't stop me. His body was lighter than it should've been—less resistance than I remembered.
But he was here. He was still with us.
"I've got you," I said, my mouth against his ear.
And I wouldn't let go.
We got out, but that's not the same as coming back.
In the back seat of the SUV, Dorian sagged against me, half-conscious, his head lolling against my shoulder. Elias checked his pulse twice in five minutes. I kept my hand on Dorian's knee, not to comfort him, but to prove he hadn't disappeared.
At a red light, Marcus glanced back. "He's gonna be okay."
I didn't respond.
I wasn't sure which version of Dorian I'd rescued—the man I loved, or whatever was left after they carved through him.
Either way, I already knew one thing with absolute clarity:If I'd been ten minutes later, and he was dead, I would've burned Seattle to the ground.
Michael led us all to a safehouse. It was a box of poured concrete with fluorescent lights, one cot, two chairs, and a door that locked from the inside. Michael called it a fallback point—no address and no official record that it existed.
He handed out new phones—clean devices without connections to our previous devices. "Operational security," he said. "Everything we used before gets turned off and stays off."
Dorian sat on the edge of the bed, ribs bandaged, left wrist wrapped where the zip ties had left gashes. Elias did the best he could in bad light. There was a split above Dorian's eyebrow that would scar if we didn't treat it better, but I couldn't bring myself to care about symmetry.
He hadn't said much since we got him out. I stood a few feet away, pretending to go through the supply bin again. What I was really doing was listening to him breathe. Making sure it stayed steady. And that it didn't stop.
"Shower's through there," I said, pointing with my chin. "Hot water works. I checked it."
He didn't move.
"Extra towels on the—"
