“Doctor. Now.”
She blinks, the command cutting through the fog. She fumbles for the handle, her fingers stiff. She moves with the compliance of a sleepwalker, fumbling the door open and sliding to the ground.
I don’t wait for her. I move to the back seat and grab the go-bag. It’s heavily loaded with encrypted comms, cash, spare mags, and three days of MREs. The essentials of a life spent running.
I pull a canister of industrial-grade wipes from the side pocket. They aren’t the kind you buy at a grocery store. These smell of ammonia and something acrid that burns the back of the throat. They dissolve organic material on contact, oils, skin cells, and blood.
I start scrubbing.
I wipe the steering wheel. The gear shift. The turn signal. The door handles. I work with methodical efficiency, erasing my existence from the vehicle. Every touch is a liability. Every fingerprint acts as a breadcrumb leading Mercer straight to the Glass House.
Outside, Iris stands in the gravel, hugging herself. The wind lashes her hair across her face, but she doesn’t lift a hand to fix it. She just waits.
That lands harder than it should.
She looks small against the massive concrete pillars, a civilian dropped into a war zone, but she’s composed. Steady gaze. Decisive. She’s watching me. Listening. Ready.
I finish the wipe-down and toss the dirty wipes into the dumpster. Quick scan. Ground’s clear. No footprints in the oil stains. No spent brass.
I step up beside her.
“Walk. Don’t run. Don’t look at the traffic. Just walk.”
She moves immediately.
No hesitation. No questions. She falls into step like she’s done this before, like her body understands the command even if her life never required it. The compliance is clean. Precise.
That lights something dangerous in my chest.
Not desire.
Recognition.
The way she responds. The way she trusts instruction without surrendering herself. It hits some buried wiring I don’t have time to examine or permission to touch.
I shut it down. Hard.
I won’t let it be her. Never like this.
I lead her fifty yards down the drainage ditch, keeping us tucked into the blind spot of the highway cameras above. The mud drags at my boots. The air hangs thick with exhaust and the metallic bite of rain.
She keeps pace. Doesn’t stumble. Doesn’t complain.
Good.
I focus on angles. Sightlines. The rhythm of her steps so I can adjust mine. I keep my hand close but don’t touch her. Touch would be a mistake.
This is control.
This is protection.
Anything else gets locked behind steel and buried where it belongs.
Because if I let myself feel what her obedience just triggered, we won’t make it out alive.
The sedan is waiting. It’s a standing contingency. I keep three of them staged around the city, rotated and serviced monthly on a schedule only I know. Paranoia is just logistics. Every vehicle I stage carries the same insurance, too: a sealed Pelican case seamed into the frame rail behind the rear axle. Backup pistol, an epi auto-injector, a short-wave unit, a foil blanket. The dayyou need it is the day you’ve already lost everything else. That’s the day I plan for.
A charcoal gray Audi A6. The ghost to the Ford’s sledgehammer. Nondescript, mid-range luxury, blending perfectly into the background of corporate commuters. The swap is deliberate staging. This one belongs to a shell corporation, which belongs to a holding company, which belongs to a dead man. It doesn’t exist.
