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Chapter Thirteen: The Other Half
"Frank. Frank, talk to me."Wes came up out of the dust coughing, one arm still locked around Frank's shoulders from the fall, both of them tangled together on a slope of broken concrete that hadn't existed thirty seconds ago. Somewhere close, Priya was groaning, alive at least, which was more than Wes had let himself hope for in the half second of freefall before the landing."I'm here." Frank's voice came out thin, cracked with dust. "I'm here. Ribs don't love me right now. Otherwise still breathing."Wes ran his hands over him fast, checking for the wrong kind of give under his palms, and found nothing worse than bruising, which felt like more mercy than the day had earned so far. He turned to Priya next, found her sitting up already, laptop bag somehow still slung across her, blood trickling from a shallow cut above one eyebrow."I'm fine," she said before he could ask, waving him off. "Head's ringing. Otherwise fine.""Let me look anyway.""Wes. I said I'm fine." Something sharpe
Chapter Twelve: Don't Breathe
"Nobody moves. Nobody breathes loud. Nobody."Okafor's whisper carried just far enough to reach every ear in the group and no further, a trick Wes filed away even in the middle of his own racing pulse, the exact volume of a man who'd learned the hard way how far a whisper could travel when it mattered.The Warden's scattered eyes swept the garage in slow, deliberate arcs, dozens of small dark points catching what little light there was and giving nothing back. It hadn't moved toward them yet. It was listening, Wes realized, or something close enough to listening that the difference didn't matter, patient in a way nothing that size should have been able to afford to be.Milo had gone rigid against Rosa's side, both hands pressed over his own mouth like he didn't trust himself not to make a sound, and Rosa had an arm wrapped tight around him, her own breathing shallow and controlled, counting silently, Wes could tell, the same trick he used himself on bad calls when his hands wanted to
Chapter Eleven: Wardens
"We can't stay here. Whatever noticed us, it's coming."Okafor was already pulling Milo up by the shoulder, scanning the narrow street in both directions, rebar still slick from the last kill. "Wes, how is Frank. Can he move.""He needs a minute he doesn't have." Wes crouched beside Frank, pressing two fingers to his wrist, counting, the old fear back in full force now, the one that had nothing to do with monsters and everything to do with a heart that had already worked harder today than it should have had to in a week. "Pulse is fast. Not dangerous yet. But it will be if we push him.""We don't have the luxury of not dangerous yet." Okafor's voice wasn't unkind, just certain, a man who'd made this exact calculation a hundred times in a life Wes only knew the edges of. "I would rather carry him than leave him for whatever's coming.""Then we carry him." Wes got an arm under Frank's shoulders, felt the old man try to protest and fail to find the breath for it. "Rosa, other side."They
Chapter Ten: Four
"Behind the cars. Now."Okafor didn't wait to see if anyone argued. He had Milo by the shoulder and moving before the boy could even process the words, tucking him into the gap between two fused wrecks where the metal still held some shape, some cover. "Frank, down, stay low. Rosa, with him.""I can fight," Rosa said, fire extinguisher already up."You can fight after you keep them both alive for the next ten seconds. That is the more useful job right now." Okafor's voice left no room for pride. Rosa dropped down beside Frank and Milo without another word, jaw tight.Wes's panel painted the threat in dull red lines at the edge of his vision, four shapes moving fast down the narrow street, the same wrong-jointed silhouette as the thing in the hospital waiting room, dragging themselves forward on limbs that bent in places limbs shouldn't bend."Four of them, one choke point." Priya's voice was tight but steady, already scanning the wreck-narrowed street like it was a spreadsheet she cou
Chapter Nine: Fences
"It means they know where we are. That's what it means."Okafor said it flat, no comfort in it, already moving the group toward the mouth of a side street instead of standing still to argue about the word choice. "Whether Assessed means marked, or watched, or simply noticed, the details don't change what we do next. We keep moving. We don't make it easy.""Easy for what," Rosa said. "You keep saying 'whatever it is' like naming the thing makes it worse. I'd rather know what we're running from.""So would I." Okafor's jaw was tight. "I don't have that answer yet. I have only ever seen what comes after a group gets noticed like this, not what the noticing itself is for."Wes kept one hand on Frank's arm, the old man's breathing still ragged from the pace, and filed the exchange away with everything else he didn't have room to feel right now. The street ahead of them narrowed between two buildings that leaned in close, walls fleshy again here instead of the dry stone of the plaza, breath
Chapter Eight: Assessed
"We're not interested."Wes said it before anyone else in the group could open the door to a conversation none of them wanted to keep having. Beside him, Okafor's grip on the rebar hadn't loosened once.Cain tilted his head, unbothered, the way a salesman looks at a closed door he's confident will open again eventually. "You haven't heard the terms yet.""I heard enough. You knew a dead man's name nobody said out loud, and your answer for how was a shrug." Wes kept his voice level, though his pulse was doing something else entirely. "I've spent my whole career learning to trust people who tell me the truth even when it's ugly. You gave me the opposite of that. So no. We're not interested."Something tightened at the corner of Cain's mouth, gone almost as fast as it appeared. "That's a shame. Genuinely." He glanced past Wes, toward Frank, toward the visible unsteadiness in the old man's stance. "I understand the impulse to want to figure this place out on your own terms. Pride's a natu
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