The crisis manager, the man who planned on amputating my fingers, is no longer standing. The blast hurled him sideways. He scrambles across the floor, shrieking, a jagged spear of laminate glass embedded deep in his shoulder.
He’s alive.
But I stop looking at him.
Because the doorway changed.
A man stands there now, framed by darkness and falling sparks, rainwater streaming off torn tactical gear, blood and mud smeared into his clothes like war paint. His face strips clean of humanity. Nothing left but purpose.
Boyd.
He doesn’t look like a rescuer.
He looks like an extinction-level event.
The rifle comes up.
Thwip-thwip.
Two subsonic rounds hit clean and surgical.
A soldier by the door collapses mid-stride, biology shutting down before the nervous system can catch up. One instant a threat, the next a crumpled weight of meat and gear.
Mercer lunges for his weapon. His hand skids across wet glass.
Boyd steps fully into the room.
His boots crunch over debris. He doesn’t shout. Doesn’t warn. He simply angles the rifle downward.
Thwip.
The floor tiles next to Mercer’s hand explode, spraying ceramic dust. A warning. Or maybe a miss.
Mercer understands.
He abandons the gun and rolls out of the way, scrambling through the shattered side panel, disappearing into the smoke and the chaos of the processing floor below.
Boyd doesn’t chase him.
He turns to me.
For a heartbeat, I don’t recognize him. The man I slept with, the man laughing in the kitchen, vanished. This is the US Marshal. A weapon the government aims at things they want erased. His gaze is a dark void, pupils blown wide, adrenalineand survival chemistry rewriting his nervous system. His lungs work like a forge bellows, radiating heat in waves.
“Iris.” The name rips from his throat like it costs him blood.
He crosses the room in two strides. No wasted motion.
He grabs me.
Not gentle. He clamps his hands onto my upper arms, digging his fingers into the muscle hard enough to bruise. He hauls me against him. Not a hug. He’s checking for structural integrity. He pats me down, ribs, spine, skull, rough and desperate.
“Are you hit? Are you hur?” He shakes me slightly.
“No. I’m fine.”
“I saw the glass. I saw the fire.” He grips my face between his hands. His palms feel freezing cold, rough as sandpaper. He forces my head up, searching my gaze for shock, for dilation.
“I’m okay, Boyd. I’m okay.”
