"And you're the name."
"I'm the name."
She drives. Her jaw is working. Her thumb has started pressing the slow circle into the wheel—the tell, the nervous one. She's not processing the idea. She's processing the cost.
"That station is twenty-five minutes," she says finally. "There are closer stations."
"The closest one has four officers on Kline's payroll. Atlas told me. The Seventh is clean. Or–cleaner."
Wren is quiet for a block. The streetlights pass in slow orange pulses across her face.
"You've been planning this," she says.
"For a while."
"How long is a while?"
"I don’t really know actually.” I roll my neck. “I guess since the night Atlas told me the federal case died. I just—I couldn't find another alternative. Everyone I love was suffering and I couldn’t just let it be their problem."
She drives. The city is waking up around us—delivery trucks, the first joggers, a man in a bathrobe picking up his newspaper from a damp driveway. The world going about its morning like nothing is about to change.
"Max?"
"Yeah."
"You know what happens when you walk in there."
"Yes."
"Everything comes out. The facility. What they did to you. Your designation. The bonds. The brothers." She swallows. "Margot finds out. Everyone finds out."
"Margot already knows about the brothers. She saw us tonight. She saw me kissing Zero."
Wren processes this in three seconds flat. Her face doesn't change.
"Okay. Then everyone else finds out. The police. The press, eventually. Kline's lawyers. Richard."
"Yeah but then it won’t just be you and me who got out of there alive. I’ll be saving more."
She nods like she finally understands.
We're quiet for a few blocks. The sky has gone from grey to pale gold at the edges. Dawn. Everything looks a little too bright, like a photograph with the exposure too high.
"When I was alone in there," I say. Small. Not to Wren, exactly. To the windshield. To the light. To whoever is listening. "In the facility. Before Bane came—it was only a day and a half but it felt like weeks. And the whole time the only thing that kept me—" I stop. My throat has closed. I breathe through it. "The only thing that kept me here and sane was talking to you. Through the wall. Hearing your voice. Knowing someone else was in it with me."
Wren doesn't look at me. Her jaw is tight. Her hands are tight on the wheel.
"So I'm asking you to be in it with me again. Not because I can't walk through those doors alone. I can. But I don't want to."
She signals left. Takes the turn. The Seventh Precinct is six blocks away.
"Max." Her voice is rough. "You absolute idiot. When have I ever not been in it with you?"
I almost laugh. It comes out wet. I press my hand to my mouth and taste blood from my lip and I am in a car with the only person in the world who has been where I've been, who has seen what I've seen. Maybe we should have done this months ago, but we’re here now.
"Thank you," I say.
"I told you not to thank me."
