The door detonates inward. Metal screams as hinges shear away. The heavy slab crashes against the opposite wall with a deafeningboomthat punches straight through my skull. Blinding white light floods the cell—too bright,too pure, toowrongfor this place. My eyes burn. Vision fractures into jagged, painful shards.
I can’t see. Can’t think.
The warmth surges, trying to drag me back under, but adrenaline claws up my spine like broken glass.
Shapes move in the doorway. Fast. Tactical. Armed. One drops into a crouch.
“Reth? Jesus fucking Christ?—”
Hands on my face. Rough. Real?
“Fuck, man, are you okay? Look at me.”
His face swims through the blinding haze. For one fractured second, it’s Ian—sharp jaw, those fucking dimples. Then it flickers. His throat opens wide. Blood pours down his chest in a hot rush.
No.
I scramble backward into the corner, heart hammering hard. “No—no no no. Not you too.”
“Reth.” The voice cuts through the fog. “It’s me. Ian. Look at me. We’re getting you the fuck out of here. Now.”
The compass on my hand burns like a brand. North. North is her. Has to be her.
The room tilts harder. Alarms begin wailing somewhere deeper in the facility—shrill, rising, getting closer. Footsteps thunder in the hallway. More voices. More boots.
Ian grabs my arm, grip iron-hard. “We don’t have time. Move or I carry your ass.”
Gunfire erupts—sharp, vicious cracks echoing off concrete. Plaster explodes near my head, shards cutting my cheek. Ian returns fire with two precise shots. A body drops somewhere in the haze with a wet thud, and he hauls me up.
My legs are useless, heavy and disconnected, the drugs making every movement feel like wading through tar. He throws my arm over his shoulder and drags me out.
The corridor stretches and bends like a nightmare. Lights strobe overhead. Memories bleed violently into the present—Paris streets at night, the mountain house in snow, the blood-soaked basement, Sophia whispering my name from the wrong direction, soft and loving, then twists into screaming as I cut her open.
I can’t tell what’s happening now from what already happened. Can’t tell what’s real.
More guards round the corner ahead. Ian slams the first one into the wall, a karambit flashing in his hand—where the fuck is mine?—and blood sprays hot across my arm. I smell it. Taste it. For one terrifying second I think it’s hers. Sophia’s blood on my hands again.
Jesus, stop.
We hit the stairwell. Up. Why up? Everything feels wrong. My mind keeps slipping—back to the cell, back to the blood on the floor, back to Valeria’s smile.
At the next landing, another guard appears. Ian doesn’t slow. He takes him down hard, brutal, efficient. We keep moving, but the footsteps behind us are getting louder. Closer. Too close.
The exit door looms ahead. Real air. Real sky. Maybe her on the other side.
God, please let her be on the other side.
I don’t look back.
The shards follow anyway—cutting, whispering, showing me every possible way this could still end with me destroying the only good thing left in my life.
“Keep moving, Reth,” Ian growls. “Almost there. Just a few more steps.”
So I keep moving. If we can just reach the door… just a few more steps…
Almost there.
I step over the threshold, and blinding light explodes around us.
