A teenage lookout with hollow eyes and a knife handle peeking from his waistband acknowledged Reaper with wary respect as we approached a cluster of buildings stacked like precarious building blocks. Reaper guided me down another back alley and knocked on a metal door. The man who emerged stood armed and squinting, his gaze shifting between us before settling on Reaper. They exchanged words in Portuguese, too low for me to understand. The man gestured sharply to his left before closing the door with a decisive click.
Reaper led me a few doors down. Inside, the apartment was tiny but secure—a single room with a partitioned bathroom. Religious icons watched from peeling walls, saints with faded faces and tired eyes that had witnessed too much suffering to offer salvation. A family photo lay face-down on a shelf, as if someone couldn’t bear to look at it but couldn’t discard it, either.
While Reaper checked entry points, securing windows, and reinserting what looked like hair-trigger alarms, I reached for my backpack. My hands trembled as I pulled out my laptop. I was lucky to have brought my backpack with me, even through all the commotion we had gone through, though a part of me was terrified that the rain would have gotten to it. Or perhaps one of many times I had found myself in an uncomfortable position.
“The USB...”
“Will still be there after you warm up,” Reaper interrupted, his voice gentler than I’d heard before. “You’re shivering, Maeve.”
Our eyes locked in a silent battle of wills. The use of my name—spoken without tactical calculation—caught me off guard. Then I noticed him wince slightly, right hand moving to his left shoulder where the injection device had struck him hours earlier. Suddenly, the USB was no longer a priority.
“Let me see it first,” I said firmly.
“It’s fine.” His jaw tightened in that now-familiar expression of stubbornness.
“That wasn’t a request.” I held his gaze until, surprisingly, he relented.
When he removed his jacket and shirt, my breath caught in my throat. The harsh light exposed a battlefield etched across his skin—scars layered upon scars, some surgical, others jagged and desperate. Burn marks. Puncture wounds. A tapestry of survival written in damaged flesh. His body was a contradiction: brutally marked yet beautifully formed, all lean muscle and controlled strength. I hadn’t expected that sudden surge of heat low in my belly, that inappropriate flicker of attraction that felt like betrayal of my purpose here. This man had been sent to kill me. This man might be connected to my brother’s disappearance, too. There was no way of knowing yet. This man was damaged in ways I couldn’t begin to understand—and yet I couldn’t look away.
The clinical part of my mind—the journalist who’d documented and researched—tried to catalog what I sawobjectively: evidence of systematic torture disguised as a medical procedure. But objectivity crumbled against the reality of him standing before me, vulnerable and lethal all at once.
Not so long ago, I’d been certain this man would kill me. Then reluctantly, I’d begun to trust him with my safety, if not with my secrets. And now this… this unwelcome pull toward him defied every rational thought. My brother would say I was losing perspective, confusing proximity with connection. And perhaps he was right. But the way Reaper’s eyes followed my movement told me I wasn’t alone in this impossible tension between us.
But when he turned, all those distracting thoughts vanished. The injection site on his shoulder demanded my full attention. The skin had taken on an unnatural bluish tinge, with thin red lines spreading outward like a sinister web, branching beneath his skin like toxic roots seeking purchase. Whatever they’d injected him with was designed to infiltrate, to spread, to claim.
“Does it hurt?” I asked, fingers hovering just above his skin.
“No.” His eyes locked with mine. “That’s what concerns me.”
My fingers brushed the area, and he inhaled sharply.
“I thought you said it didn’t hurt,” I challenged.
“It doesn’t.” Something flickered in his eyes—confusion, vulnerability quickly masked by practiced control. “Your touch…”
I pulled back slightly, recalibrating the professional distance I needed to maintain. He didn’t need to finish his words; I could feel it too.
I dug through my bag, finding antiseptic wipes and gauze. The skin around the injection site felt unnaturally cool compared to the rest of him. I cleaned it carefully, watching his face for reactions he tried to hide.
“Whatever they injected you with, it’s spreading,” I murmured, tracing the red lines that extended from the blue center. “Can you feel anything unusual? Numbness? Tingling?”
“Temperature changes. The area feels cold. Like it belongs to someone else.”
After cleaning the site and applying what little first aid I could, I reluctantly accepted that there was nothing more to do. “We should monitor it. If those lines spread…”
The unfinished thought hung between us. Whatever was in that injection remained an unknown threat, ticking inside him.
“You need to shower,” he said abruptly, stepping away. “Your body temperature dropped in the rain. Hot water will help.”
I glanced down at my mud-splattered clothes, suddenly aware of how I must look—and smell. “Is that your professional assessment?”
“It’s survival thinking.” His tone was clinical, but something in his eyes suggested concern that went beyond tactical considerations. “Bathroom’s through there. I’ll find you something dry to wear.”
I wanted to debate him some more, but perhaps spending a little time away from each other wouldn’t be such an awful idea. It was getting increasingly more difficult to think with him by my side, and I needed a moment to just… regain my composure. I gave him a slight nod, then headed into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me.
The tiny bathroom was barely large enough to turn around in. A rusty showerhead protruded from the wall above a cracked tile floor with a simple drain. No curtain, just a clouded glass door that offered minimal privacy. I hesitated, the vulnerability of the situation suddenly overwhelming. Not just the physical exposure, but the trust required to stand naked and defenseless with a killer mere steps away.
My rational mind screamed warnings as I peeled off my sodden clothes. This man had been sent to murder me. His programming could reassert itself at any moment. Yet here I was, willingly stripping down with nothing but a flimsy glass door between us.
