“I told you everything.”
Joker laughs. Soft. Awful. “No,” he says. “You told us the beginning.”
The man starts shaking again.
I look at Hammer. Then Cain. Then Joker.
“Have your fun,” I say.
The man’s eyes jerk to me, panic going wide and white.
I step closer one last time. “But save his last breath for me.”
No one questions it. Not even Logan.
The man begins begging again.
This time, I walk out before the sound can become satisfying.
The hallway outside the cage is colder than upstairs, but it feels easier to breathe in for half a second. Only half. Then Olivia’s face from the folder pushes back into my head. Laughing. Unaware. Watched.
My hands curl. I force them open.Strategy. That’s what this is. Find the scout. Find Denton. Find the handler. Find the buyer. Find anyone who saw her picture and thought they could turn her into a job. Every link. One by one. That’s all. That’s the plan. Not anger. Not need. Not the way my chest tightens when I think of her waking upstairs, scared and trying to leave because she doesn’t understand yet that the world outside has teeth already sunk into her name.
I head for the stairs. Behind me, the first scream starts. I don’t slow. I don’t look back. They can have him for now. I have something more important to check on.
Her.
I sit on the edge of the infirmary bed, one hand wrapped around a cup of water Brooke pressed into my palm, even though I haven’t taken more than a few sips. The room feels smaller now that I’m not fighting to stay awake. The walls feel closer. The air feels heavier.
Everything feels too… real.
Brooke leans against the counter, watching me without staring. She’s good at that. It’s the same steady presence she had when I woke up, when I tried to leave, when everything in me was unraveling and she didn’t try to grab it or force it back together. She just stayed. That’s harder to ignore than anything else.
I stare down at the water in my hand. The surface ripples slightly from how tight my grip is. “They had a file on me.” The words come out quieter than I expect. Not shaky.
Just…heavy.
Brooke doesn’t pretend not to know what I’m talking about. “Yes.”
I swallow. “What kind of file?”
She takes a second before answering, like she’s choosing how much to give me without throwing everything at me at once. “Your name,” she says. “Where you work. Your schedule. Photos.”
My fingers tighten around the cup. “My family?”
Her hesitation is small. But I see it. “Yes.”
That’s worse than anything else. Worse than the hands. Worse than the needle. Worse than the way the world dropped out from under me in a second. Because that means it wasn’t chance. It wasn’t bad luck. It wasn’t wrong place, wrong time. It was me.
Chosen.
I set the cup down before I drop it. “They knew where I’d be.”
“Yes.”
“They were waiting.”
“Yes.”
