The fluorescent light above me cracks. Glass rains down. The hallway goes dim.
I breathe. Pull it back. Lock it down.
"How many?"
"Eight. Five occupied." His voice is quiet. Controlled. Barely. "Tides healers. I need them now."
"Healers to the basement. Five infants. Now," I say through the comms. My hands are shaking.
I clear the last room on the second floor. The fluorescent lights buzz. The smell hasn't changed.
I walk to the machine at the end of the hall. It's still running. Still cycling. Tubes full of blood feeding into a centrifuge that separates and sorts and packages what it takes. The last bag is half full. Someone's blood, drawn from someone's arm, measured and labeled and ready for sale.
I wrap the power cable around my fist and pull it out of the wall.
The machine shudders. The centrifuge winds down. The tubes go slack. The blood in the last bag settles, dark and still.
"All teams. All sites cleared." I breathe once. "Every locked door. Open."
Simone's voice comes through the channel.
"Copy."
One word.
Enough.
Simone is sittingon the loading dock with the girl from the children's wing. The girl is wrapped in a blanket. She's leaning against Simone's arm and Simone is holding still, not moving,not breathing harder than she has to, just being the surface this child chose to rest against.
The Tides healers move through the building. I watch one of them kneel beside the man who raised his fists at me. He's sitting on the floor in the hallway now with his back against the wall, the IV still taped to his arm. The healer reaches toward him and he flinches. She pulls her hand back. Waits. Reaches again. This time he lets her.
The teenager who asked if it was real is standing in the yard, no shoes on the gravel, looking at the sky.
One forty-three. Two hundred and nine. Forty-seven from the basement. Five infants. I lost count of the second floor somewhere past twenty. More than four hundred people. Three facilities. One night.
You promised Simone every locked door. You kept it.
Maximus walks out. His shadows are tucked close, pulled in tight. He crosses the gravel toward me.
I reach for his hand.
His fingers close around mine. His skin is cool against my palm. The crescent marks pulse between us, steady, two hearts in sync. We stand at the edge of the property and the night is quiet and the doors behind us are open.
I lean into him. Just my shoulder against his arm. He shifts his weight to take it. I can hear the Tides healers inside the building. I can hear the teenager breathing in the yard. I can hear every person we freed tonight alive behind us because we opened the doors.
"Four hundred people," Maximus says. "We can't leave them here."
"We can't take them to the compound either. There's no room, and if Konstantin retaliates, the compound is the first place he hits."
"They can't go home. He'll find them."
"Get Lanthar," I say.
"Seraphina, get Lanthar here," Maximus says through comms. Within minutes, the Veil opens at the edge of the property. Lanthar steps through alone.
He surveys the building. The humans in the hallways. The Tides healers moving between cots. The teenager standing barefoot in the yard. His expression doesn't change, but his eyes stay on the girl in the yard longer than the rest.
"They need somewhere Konstantin can't reach them," Maximus says.
