Leo saluted, a mockery of military discipline. "Yes, sir. Officer Vance reporting for duty." But Chen didn't smile at him. "This isn't a joke sir. If the men outside realize who you are, they will not hesitate to kill you. Or worse." The smile faded from Leo's face. "I know. I was just…." "It's fine sir." Chen turned away and adjusted the strap on his borrowed vest. "Just stay close. And let us handle anything that goes wrong." They were ready to move when Johnny held up a hand. His head tilted slightly, his eyes narrowing behind the gas mask. "Do you hear that?" Kim immediately listened.  The S-factor sharpened her hearing, filtered out the ambient noise of the station. The distant crackle of damaged electronics, the soft hiss of the ventilation system, the steady thump of her own heartbeat. 

Saul woke to the sound of a zipper being pulled.The afternoon light was filtering through the penthouse windows, soft and golden, catching the dust motes that drifted lazily through the air, the ceiling above him impossibly high and crossed with wooden beams that gleamed with the soft patina of age and money. For a disoriented moment, he didn't know where he was. Then the sheets shifted against his bare skin, and memory came flooding back. The hotel. The penthouse suite. The silk dress pooling on the floor. Veronica's hands. Veronica's mouth. Veronica's voice saying, "This is how I plan to collect."Saul felt a smile twitch on his face, and he couldn't help but luxuriate a little in the feeling of sheets tangled around his legs, the expensive cotton smelling faintly of perfume and the musty smell of bodily fluids.Even after their shower early in the morning (and one more subsequent round where he took against the wall tiles) they had been too lazy to change the sheets and had jus

For a moment, there was only silence. Then she spoke, and her voice was so weak, so broken, that he barely recognized it. "Saul." She said his name like it was the only word she could remember.Then she started crying."He's gone," she said, and the words came out in fragments, jagged and raw, torn from somewhere deep inside her. "I woke up, a-and…and I couldn't find him. I don't know where he is. I don't know what happened. I was just…I was asleep, and when I woke up, he wasn't there. They said there was nothing they could do. They said they couldn't find him. Saul, they couldn't find him."Saul stopped pacing. He stood perfectly still in the middle of the hotel room, the phone pressed to his ear, his other hand clenched into a fist at his side. He could hear her struggling to breathe, the way her sentences collapsed into each other, the way the tears kept breaking through no matter how hard she tried to hold them back."It's all my fault, Saul," she continued shakily. "He told me

Detective Cross fell into step beside him, breaking him from his observations."Try not to stare. These people have been through enough without being gawked at." She chided in a flat voice "I'm not staring," Saul protested immediately even though he was actually staring He couldn't help it. Every face he passed belonged to someone who had been caught in the same trap that had taken Leo. Every bandaged wound was a reminder of what Kim had survived."Follow me," Cross said instead. "She's in the VIP section. On the top floor, since it's more secure."Saul followed her through the chaos, past the makeshift beds and the harried nurses and the officers who were well enough to sit up but not well enough to go home. The elevator doors slid open and they stepped inside. Cross pressed the button for the top floor and the car began its ascent.The feeling was ironically familiar. The elevator ride and him heading to the top floor. The sense that he was being escorted to someone important.