Patroklos stayed focused on me, dark eyes steady above the scar at his mouth. Rage burned behind them, old and swallowed and running at a temperature that had nothing to do with me or the extraction or compound security.
I blocked another strike, and the force drove me back into Rhadamanthys. "Get Nevada," I said. "I'll hold him."
Rhadamanthys moved for the door. Patroklos tracked him and tried to follow, and I stepped into his path and swung for his center mass. He parried. The blades locked. We stood chest to chest for half a second, close enough that I could smell blood and sweat and something underneath: cologne that matched the bergamot in the hallway. Achilles' scent, worn into the fabric of his coat. Diego smelled like motor oil and warm skinand whatever cheap soap the last safe house stocked, and the comparison hit me so hard I almost lost the lock.
He shoved me off and broke the bind. I stumbled. He could have pressed the advantage. Instead, he turned toward Nevada's door.
I put myself between him and the door again.
His ruined mouth opened, and the sound that came out was a snarl built in a throat that couldn't shape it into language. He came at me hard, and the fight ate another thirty seconds I didn't have. He drove me down the corridor with a combination that would have killed anyone slower. The wound on my shoulder bled freely, and my grip was slipping.
Mr. Nobody came through the junction and grabbed Patroklos by the coat, hauled him sideways, and put him through the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. Patroklos hit, rolled, and came up with the curved blade still in his hand. Mr. Nobody stood between us, perfectly still, and Patroklos measured him the way I'd measure a locked door that I knew I couldn't pick.
"Move," Mr. Nobody said. The word filled the corridor.
I moved. Behind me, Patroklos and Mr. Nobody circled each other under strobing red light, and I left them to it because Rhadamanthys was already inside Nevada's room.
Steam hit my face. Then lavender soap, hot water, something citrus. Classical music played from somewhere inside, violins doing complicated things I lacked vocabulary for.
Nevada sat in a bathtub against the far wall, head tipped back against white tile, eyes closed. Water lapped at his collarbones. Steam rose off the surface in lazy curls. His hair was wet, slicked back from his face. He draped one arm over the tub's edge and trailed his fingers through the water pooling on the tile below. His other hand gripped a washcloth under the surface, knuckles tight, scrubbing the same patch of skin on his forearm over and over in small circles that had turned the skin raw and pink.
He cracked one eye open.
"You're early," he said. “I'm not done with my bath." Nevada closed his eye and sank deeper until the water reached his chin. The washcloth stayed in his grip under the water. "Water's finally the right temperature."
Rhadamanthys stood in the doorway with revolvers and a hat and the whole ridiculous getup, staring at a man in a bathtub like his brain had quit trying to process the image.
"You can wait in the hallway," Nevada said without opening his eyes. "Or you can stand there watching me bathe. Either way, I'm finishing."
"We don't have time for this," I said from behind Rhadamanthys. The alarm was still screaming. "Patroklos is out there."
Nevada's eyes opened at the name. His jaw tightened, a fast clench and release, and then his face was smooth again. He stood up in the tub, water streaming off him, and stepped out without reaching for a towel.
"Guard station around the corner," he said, already pulling clothes from a bundled pile on the floor. "Three guys. They rotate in about four minutes. You'll want to wait for the overlap."
"We know," Rhadamanthys said.
"Just making sure." Nevada pulled on pants. "Zeus is in Kiev. Compound in the northern outskirts, an old Soviet installation. I've got the coordinates written down. Also, Patroklos is planning something in Mumbai next month, but I don't have details yet."
"Yet?" Rhadamanthys said.
Nevada paused with his shirt half-buttoned and looked at Rhadamanthys. "Yeah. Yet. I planned to stay another week."
"Absolutely not."
"I had it handled."
"You have bruises on your wrists."
Nevada glanced down at the purple-yellow marks ringing both wrists. He studied them for a beat too long, the way someone looks at a wound they've been pretending doesn't exist. "Patroklos gets rough when he drinks. Occupational hazard."
Rhadamanthys went very still. "That's not an occupational hazard, Nevada."
"It is when the occupation is this." Nevada finished buttoning his shirt. He kept his voice level, but he angled his wrists away from Rhadamanthys, turning the bruises toward his own body. "Can we have this argument somewhere that isn't a Pantheon compound during an active alarm? I got you the intel. Let's go before someone notices I'm missing."
He walked past Rhadamanthys.
"Got him," I said into the comm.
