Chapter 67 What Happens After
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER
Superfan - Bhones
Honey
Nightshade and Bones are gone when I get up the next day, get ready and head to Kayla’s room, and the room feels bigger for it, even if everyone else has already beaten me there.
The air feels like something heavy’s been shifted off the chest of the place. Kayla doesn’t announce it. She doesn’t need to. Their absence speaks for itself in the way the air sits, in the way no one’s voice immediately sharpens when someone else moves.
Kayla’s perched on the edge of the bed by the window, knees drawn up, coffee cooling untouched on the table beside her. She looks…lighter. Not relaxed. Just unbraced. Like she’s given herself permission to breathe for a few hours and is daring the world to object.
“They’re not allowed back today,” she says, flat, when she catches me looking. Not asking for agreement. Informing. A small smile tugs at the corner of her lips.
I nod once. Hatchet does the same from the chair near the door. He hasn’t written anything yet. No pad in his hands. No need.
Kayla rolls her shoulders, then drops her feet to the floor. “I just want some time with you lot.” A pause, fractional. “Without…all that.”
She doesn’t say their names again. She doesn’t have to.
No one argues. No one fills the silence. Snow isn’t here to scoff or pace or mutter about bad odds. The room holds, waiting to see if anyone will challenge her.
No one does.
The quiet isn’t awkward. That’s the thing that catches. We’re too used to friction. Too used to every decision being a negotiation with teeth.
I check the time on my phone, then the mess of bags stacked against the wall. We’re running low on anything edible that doesn’t come in foil or taste like regret.
“I’ll go get food,” I say. “Must be somewhere nearby where I can get a half-decent breakfast to go.”
It comes out the way it always does – not a question, not a favour. A fact.
Kayla looks up at me. For a second, something passes across her face that looks dangerously like she’s about to ask if that’s okay. Like there’s a rule somewhere that says she needs clearance to let one of us step outside without supervision.
She doesn’t voice it.
Instead, she nods. “Yeah. That’d be good. Worked up an appetite last night.” She doesn’t say it like a joke, and I know she means it. We all heard it. Bones and Nightshade kept her busy into the early hours of the morning, until they all passed out from exhaustion I think.
Hatchet’s already on his feet. He doesn’t look at me when he moves, just reaches for his jacket, checks the pockets by muscle memory. The pad stays on the bedside table. If he has something to say, it can wait.
I grab my new wallet where Tex’s credit card sits from my last outing and the room key. The motion feels absurdly normal. Like I’m heading out to pick up takeaway for a group of mates who’ll argue over sauces and steal chips when they think no one’s looking.
Kayla hesitates by the door as we’re leaving. Not blocking it. Just…there. A body marking the threshold.
“I’ll be here,” she says, unnecessarily.
I meet her eyes. “We’re not going far. And we won’t be long.”
Hatchet gives a short nod, sharp and reassuring, the kind that says he’s already mapped the street outside and isn’t worried.
Kayla steps aside. The door clicks shut behind us with a soft finality that doesn’t carry any threat. No locks slamming. No orders shouted after us.
Before we take more than a handful of steps, the door opens behind us and a voice calls, “I’m coming with you.”
She doesn’t ask.
The room next door opens immediately, like it’s been waiting for the cue.
“Like hell you are.”
Nightshade stands there in yesterday’s clothes, eyes sharp, posture already braced for a fight that hasn’t started yet. Bones is just behind him, unreadable.
Kayla doesn’t flinch. “I’m not a prisoner.”
“No,” Nightshade agrees. “But you’re also not wandering around outside without cover.”
Ghost appears from the bathroom doorway, dressed but with a towel slung over one shoulder from drying his hair, expression mild in the way that usually means he’s already decided something. “She’ll be fine.”
Nightshade’s gaze flicks to him. Then to me. Then to Hatchet.
Hatchet meets it without blinking.
“I said no,” Nightshade snaps.
Kayla folds her arms. “You don’t get to say that today.”
For a second it looks like he’s going to dig in out of sheer habit. Then Ghost tilts his head, considering.
“Let her go,” he says. Calm. Reasonable. “We’re not in a cage.”
Nightshade exhales through his nose, sharp and controlled. “Fine.” A pause. His eyes cut back to Kayla. “But only if Honey, Hatchet, and Ghost go with you.”
Not a suggestion. A condition.
Kayla looks at me. Then Hatchet. Then Ghost.
Hatchet gives a single nod. Ghost shrugs, faintly amused, already tossing the towel aside and pulling on his shoes.
“Deal,” Kayla says, already turning back to the door.
Nightshade watches us like he’s counting heartbeats until something goes wrong.
The corridor smells of cleaner and someone else’s breakfast. A hotel doing its best impression of normal.
Hatchet falls into step beside me. Ghost takes the other side, hands in his pockets, humming quietly under his breath.
The lift takes too long, or maybe I’ve just forgotten what waiting feels like when no one’s measuring the delay against something worse. It just seems so…pointless. Mundane. Normal.
Kayla leans back against the wall, arms loose, eyes on the numbers as they tick down. Ghost hums under his breath, tuneless and persistent, like he’s testing how much space the sound takes up. Hatchet faces the doors, shoulders set, attention already elsewhere.
No pad. No pen. Out here, silence is just how he operates.
When the doors open, the city pours in – traffic, voices, a siren distant enough to ignore. I step out first without thinking about it. Hatchet matches me automatically. Ghost drifts to Kayla’s other side, hands in his pockets, casual in a way that only works because he’s never careless.
We walk.
For half a block, no one says anything. Then Ghost breaks it, peering into a shop window as we pass.
“Tell me we’re not getting that,” he says.
I glance where he’s looking. A display of limp sandwiches and something claiming to be soup. “If we do, we deserve what happens next.”
Kayla snorts. The sound startles her a little, like she didn’t expect it to escape.
“Grease,” she says. “I want grease. If I’m risking my life, it’s not for lettuce and soggy sandwiches.”
“Spoken like a woman with priorities,” Ghost says solemnly.
Hatchet flicks two fingers in a quick gesture behind his back – agreement, or possibly a vote. It’s hard to tell with him. I file it under support.
I pick somewhere loud and bright. Fast turnover. No atmosphere. The kind of place where no one remembers your face five minutes after you leave.
Ghost studies the menu, frowns. “Those prices are obscene.”
“They know where they are,” I say. “Order or starve.”
Kayla steps up beside me, decisive. No dithering. I pay while she’s still listing things, the card machine chirping its indifferent approval.
While we wait, Ghost leans in toward Hatchet, lowering his voice theatrically. “You know, one day you’re going to actually write something useful on that pad of yours and we’re all going to regret it.”
Hatchet doesn’t look at him. He lifts two fingers again, sharper this time. Ghost grins, satisfied.
The food arrives in paper bags already darkening with oil. I hand them out, redistribute weight. It feels absurdly domestic.
We step back outside. The air’s colder than I expect, sharp enough to wake something up under my ribs. Kayla walks between us, close enough that our shoulders almost brush. No one comments on it. We just adjust.
Halfway back to the hotel, she slows.
“Where’s Snow?” Kayla asks.
She says it lightly, like she’s asking after someone who’s gone to grab a coffee. The timing’s wrong, though. We’ve only just started back, food still warm in the bags, and she hasn’t asked anything personal all morning.
Ghost answers first. “Haven’t seen him.”
Hatchet gives a short shake of his head. Once. Definitive.
Kayla exhales through her nose. “He’s not happy about the tracker. Or the island.”
“That’s not news,” I say.
“No,” Ghost agrees. “He’s been circling it since the idea came up.”
Kayla’s quiet for a few steps. Then, “What do you think he’ll do?”
It’s not fear in her voice. It’s calculation.
“Something else,” I say. “He always does.”
She nods, accepting that. “And we’re still going back.”
It’s a statement, not a question.
“Yes,” I say. “Because there isn’t another way that ends Seytan, the asylum, and the Director in the same stroke.”
Hatchet’s gaze flicks to me, then forward again. Agreement, again, in silence.
Kayla hums thoughtfully. “Maybe we’re mad.”
“Probably,” Ghost says. “But isn’t that what we’ve all built a life around?”
She considers that, then says quietly, “I think I need to go back. I don’t want to leave it unfinished.”
I don’t comment on that. I understand it too well.
We walk the rest of the way without speaking, the question of Snow lingering between us – not as a problem to solve, but as something already set in motion.
We’re back in the hotel room when the weight of it finally settles.
Food gets put down. Bags open. Paper rustles. Someone claims a corner of the bed without asking. It’s all so automatic it barely registers, like we’ve done this a hundred times before instead of stealing moments between disasters.
Hatchet closes the door behind us, checks the corridor through the peephole, then locks it. The sound is soft. Final, but not threatening. He crosses to the chair and this time he does pick up the pad, resting it on his knee, pen ready. He doesn’t write yet though.
Kayla sits on the edge of the bed, food untouched in her hands. Ghost leans against the desk, already eating, eyes on her over the top of the carton like he’s waiting for something inevitable.