Seth breathed. The Delray warehouse receded. The Hamtramck warehouse solidified around him.
He was not in the cage. He was opening the cage. He had a gun on his hip and a man at his back and the locks in his hands were yielding to bolt cutters instead of sealing him in. The difference was everything. The difference was three and a half weeks, five broken men, and a safehouse in Corktown where someone cooked him eggs every morning and didn't ask for anything back.
Then Zain's hand was on the back of his neck again. Brief. Grounding.
"Here," Zain murmured. "You're here."
Seth breathed. Nodded. Moved forward.
The interior guards were awake but not alert, one scrolling a phone, the other dozing in a folding chair. Zain took the one with the phone. Seth handled the dozing guard with a chokehold Zain had taught him, applying pressure until the man went limp, then zip-tying his wrists and ankles. Not dead. Not necessary.
The workers were in the back room. Chain-link and padlocks, exactly like Delray. Twenty-three people this time, huddled on thin mattresses, flinching at the sound of the door opening.
A woman looked up. Young, maybe twenty, maybe younger. Dark circles under her eyes like bruises. Her wrists were raw from cuffs.
"Seguro," Seth said. The Spanish came from somewhere he didn't examine, a foster home, maybe, or the neighborhoods where he'd grown up between the cracks. "Estamos aquí para ayudar."
She stared at him. Then her face crumpled, and she pressed her hand to her mouth, and the sound she made was the sound of someone who had stopped believing help was real and was being proven wrong.
Seth cut the locks. One by one. His hands steady, his vision clear, the weight of what he was doing settling on him not like a burden but like an anchor, what held him to the earth, that gave his damaged, rebuilt life a purpose worth the rebuilding.
"Nate," he said into comms. "Twenty-three survivors. Ready for transport."
"Van's en route. Two minutes."
"Copy."
He helped them out. One by one. Some could walk. Some had to be carried. Zain took the ones who couldn't move, lifting them with a gentleness that made Seth's chest ache, because this was the man underneath the compression, the man who carried people out of darkness and set them down somewhere safe.
The young woman was the last to leave. She stopped at the door and looked back at Seth.
"Gracias," she whispered.
"De nada," Seth said. And meant it in a way that went beyond language, because it was nothing, truly nothing, compared to what these people had endured. And it was everything, because less than a month ago he'd been the one in the cage, and now he was the one opening the locks, and that transformation was the only proof he needed that ruin could be rebuilt into what mattered
Three hours later, it was done.
All three sites cleared. Sixty-one survivors recovered across the simultaneous operations. Four of Mercer's guards dead, nine in custody, the rest scattered. Ghost's anonymous data packages were uploading to FBI servers while the evidence was still warm.
The crew reconvened at the safehouse as dawn bled gray over Detroit's skyline. They were exhausted, blood and concrete dust on their clothes, tired that lived in the bones after an operation. But there was something else, too. What hummed under the fatigue like a low current.
Pride. Or something close to it.
"Casualty report," Marcus said from the head of the kitchen table.
"Jack took a graze. Through-and-through on the left arm." Nate was already patching it, his hands quick and sure. Elijah sat with his typical stillness, watching Nate work with an expression that Seth filed away for future reference. I've got bruised ribs. Nothing broken."
"I've had worse from sparring," Jack said, rotating his shoulder. "Ghost, anything on the fed?"
Ghost was in his corner, laptop open, three monitors flickering with data streams. He looked like he hadn't slept in forty-eight hours, which was probably accurate.
"The data from the gala device is still decrypting. But I've got partial communications." His voice was flat, controlled, the voice of a man holding rage at bay with discipline. "The fed, whoever they are, sent Mercer a warning. Two days ago. Told him someone was hitting his sites."
"He didn't act on it," Marcus noted.
"No. The response from Mercer was dismissive. He thought it was paranoia." Ghost's mouth twisted. "Arrogance. He didn't believe anyone would be stupid enough to come for him."
"His loss," Jack said.
