Chapter 24
The blood dried slowly.
My shoulder throbbed in time with my heartbeat. I pressed my back harder against the stone because the cold helped, or because I needed something solid behind me, or because Diego was three meters away and the wall was the only thing in this tunnel that would hold still.
Diego crouched beside Valentina, talking in low Spanish. He gestured as he spoke, laying out sectors and casualty counts. He had blood on his knuckles and dust in his hair. He kept his eyes on Valentina, on the map she held, on the corridor behind her.
Rhadamanthys came down the corridor like a man walking into church.
He'd been in a different sector during the fight.
Luka's section, wherever Rafael and the resistance fighters had held their ground.
His coat had fresh tears in it and someone else's blood on the sleeve, but he moved steadily, purpose in every step.
The Stetson sat low on his head, shadowing his eyes.
He stopped at the junction.
A long dark smear ran across the stone where Achilles had dragged Hades, the chain links gouging shallow grooves into the floor beside it.
The marks led around the corner and disappeared into the dark.
Rhadamanthys followed them with his eyes, slowly, all the way to where they curved out of sight.
He already knew what waited at the other end of that trail. Nothing.
I'd been where he stood. Different corridor, different decade, same moment. The exact second when a man understands that the person he came for is already gone and the distance between them has become the kind you can't close by running.
Rhadamanthys took the Stetson off. He held it against his chest with both hands, breathed once, and then the hat went back on. "Where is he taking him?" Rhadamanthys asked me.
"Zeus."
He nodded once, settled his hand on the revolver at his hip, then he turned and walked toward the command center.
Diego came back with a medical kit he'd stolen from someone and the expression of a man who'd been holding a grenade with the pin out for too long.
"Shirt off."
"You could buy me dinner first."
He knelt beside me without laughing, opened the kit on the stone floor and laid out the supplies with steady hands. I pulled my shirt over my head, and my shoulder lit up so hard that my vision narrowed. The field dressing had been doing more work than I'd given it credit for.
Diego peeled the old bandage away. He clenched his jaw when he got a clear look at the wound, but he threaded the needle without hesitation. He cleaned it with antiseptic, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper.
"Achilles' sword?" he asked.
"No, I cut myself shaving."
"Jasper." He spoke low, the kind of quiet that carried more weight than shouting. "Shut up and let me fix you."
I shut up. His fingers were warm on my skin, and I focused on the pull of the suture needle through the wound's edge, breathing through each one the way I used to count exits in unfamiliar rooms. The old habits always find new uses.
"Mateo's daughter turns six next week," Diego said. He kept his eyes on the suture.
He tied off the stitch and cut the thread, then started the next one.
"Alonzo broke their formation at the north approach.
Under three minutes. Valentina held the east tunnels with half the fighters she needed.
" He pulled the needle through, and his voice stayed level, almost conversational, like he were reading from a grocery list instead of a casualty report.
"Beni kept the children quiet in the lower chambers for two hours.
Two hours, Jasper. Some of those kids are three years old. "
He kept stitching. He kept naming them.
I put my hand on his wrist. He stopped. His pulse hammered under my thumb, too fast for a man whose hands looked that steady.
"Six dead," he said. "Twelve wounded. And Mateo."
I kept my hand on his wrist. “You made the right call, Diego.”
Diego finished the suture in silence. He taped the bandage down, smoothed the edges with his thumb, and then he kept his hand on my shoulder.
"You could’ve died," he said. "Achilles had me on the ground and you came out of nowhere."
"That's not what happened."
"That's exactly what happened. He had me dead, Jasper. The sword was already coming down."
I remembered the corridor. Achilles above Diego, the blade at the top of its arc. I hadn’t made a decision. There was no decision to make. Diego couldn’t die. That wasn’t a plan or a promise. It was the rule, and the katana enforced it before I had time to think.
"I had the angle," I said.
"You had a death wish." He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against mine. His skin was hot and gritty with dust. "Don't do that again."
"Can't promise that."
Diego pulled back first.
"Your turn," I said.
"I'm fine."
"You're bleeding through your shirt on the left side." I reached for the medical kit. "Your turn."
He looked like he wanted to argue. Then he pulled his shirt up, and I got a clear look at the gash along his ribs where he'd hit the stone wall dodging Achilles's sword.
The cut ran shallow but long, crusted with tunnel grit.
I ran my thumb along the edge , gauging depth, then cleaned it with antiseptic.
Diego hissed through his teeth and held still.
"Eight," he said while I worked.
Our daughter was somewhere in a compound with Zeus, and everything we'd just survived was the prologue to going in after her.
"Nothing's changed," I said. "Achilles came for us. She's still where Nevada said she'd be."
"With him."
"With him." I pressed a bandage against his ribs. "Which means we go get her."
Diego covered my hand with his, holding the bandage in place. "Luka called a war council. Twenty minutes."
"Then we should stop bleeding on each other and go."
He almost smiled. "Come on," he said, and pulled me to my feet.
The war council looked nothing like the one where they'd planned Nevada's extraction.
That room had been measured, full of people who sat and took their time.
This room was full of people who'd just been hit, some of them still bleeding through their bandages, all of them standing because sitting down meant admitting the adrenaline was gone.
The air tasted like sweat and iron and too many bodies in too small a space.
Rhadamanthys stood in the corner with his hat on, hands at his sides. Everyone in the room already knew about Hades. Luka stood at the head of the table, arm in a sling, Rafael beside him. Lorenzo leaned against the far wall with his arms crossed.
Diego took a position near Luka. I stayed by the wall where I could see everyone and no one stood behind me.
Luka opened his mouth, and the door swung open before he got a word out.
Nevada walked in like he owned the building and was considering selling it.
He wore white. The rest of us had crawled through a collapsed mine, and Nevada looked like he'd just come from a bath, which he probably had.
A folded fan rested against his thigh in a grip that had nothing to do with fashion.
He carried a leather folio under his other arm and scanned the room the way I did when I entered one: corners first, exits second, weapons third.
He just made it look like he was choosing a seat.
He bypassed the head of the table. Bypassed Luka and sat down next to Rhadamanthys. "They’ve taken Hades to one of three possible locations," he said. "Pokhara is abandoned. My people confirmed it two days ago. That leaves Thessaloniki and Kiev."
"Kiev," I said.
Luka frowned. "Based on what?"
"Based on the fact that Achilles is irrational. He’s grieving.” I pushed away from the wall and paced toward the center of the room. “All his life he’s only ever wanted one thing: his father’s approval. So that’s where he’ll go with his prize, to present it to Zeus, and we know Zeus is in Kiev.”
"That's not intelligence," Rafael said. "That's a guess."
"It's a profile." I kept my voice flat. "I know Achilles. I know Zeus. And I know what a broken, desperate man in their shoes would do."
Nevada tapped the fan against his knee once. "I don’t doubt that… Jasper, was it?"
I grunted an affirmative.
Nevada snapped out his fan and began fanning himself. “Let’s say you’re right. What happens then?”
The room went quiet.
"Achilles presents Hades to Zeus," Nevada continued.
"As his captive, which he stormed the resistance to take.
Hades is the director of African operations, mind you.
A respected and long-serving director." He let that sit for a second.
"You know, there's a story about Caesar arriving in Egypt.
He'd been chasing Pompey across the Mediterranean.
Years of war between them. Real hatred, real blood.
And when Caesar finally arrived, the Egyptians presented him with Pompey's head on a plate, thinking they'd done him a favor. "
Nevada closed the fan and pointed it at the center of the table.
"Caesar wept. Then he had the men who killed Pompey executed." He looked around the room. "Zeus doesn't want Hades. Zeus respects Hades. They've been enemies for decades, and that kind of enemy is the only thing Zeus treats as an equal. Achilles just dragged that man out of a tunnel in chains."
The logic landed in my chest before my brain caught up. Achilles thought he was bringing his father a victory. He was bringing him an insult.
"Zeus wanted me," I said. "That's what this was about. Achilles came here for me, and he left with the wrong prize."
"Worse than the wrong prize." Nevada fanned himself once, slow. "He left with someone Zeus will want intact. The only way Zeus’s new directors have any legitimacy at all is if some of the old guard stays in play. He needs Hades to be Hades. Why do you think he’s avoided taking him out after all this time?
When Achilles arrives in Kiev with Hades in chains, he won't get the reception he's expecting. "
Diego leaned forward. "You're saying they'll be fighting each other when we get there."
"Perhaps," Nevada said. "We don’t know the situation. What we do know is that Achilles and Zeus are unlikely to be a united front. That is information you can use to your advantage."
Diego smiled at Nevada. "Then we'll try not to waste it."
Nevada's fan stopped mid-stroke.
Rhadamanthys spoke for the first time. "I'm going."
"So are we," Diego said.
Luka leaned on the table with his good arm. "Three people against Zeus's compound."
"Three people who know what they're walking into," I said. "A larger force gets spotted. We go quiet, we go fast, we use Nevada's eyes on the ground."
"If Achilles comes back or Zeus sends a second wave, we need everyone we have," Rafael said.
"Which is why the rest of you stay." Diego straightened beside Luka.
His voice shifted the way it always did when he stopped talking to me and started talking to his people.
It got lower, steadier, and it left no room for uncertainty.
"Alonzo holds the north approach. Valentina takes the east tunnels.
Beni manages logistics and civilians. Carmen keeps the children. "
He went through each name the way he'd gone through the casualty list on my shoulder. Same weight. Same cost. He was giving his people away. Every name cost him something. It showed in the set of his shoulders, in the way his hand pressed flat on the table after the last one and stayed there.
"Lorenzo," Diego said. Lorenzo straightened against the wall. "You stay. Help Rafael coordinate communications with Nevada's network."
Lorenzo's jaw worked. He looked at Diego, then at Rafael, and his hand unclenched from the phone long enough to grip Rafael's shoulder. Rafael leaned into it, just barely, and Lorenzo nodded once.
Luka straightened. "Vihaan, get them everything you have on Kiev. Guard rotations, compound layout, entry points." Vihaan was already typing.
"First light," Diego said. He looked at me, and I nodded. "We leave at first light. Vihaan sends us everything he has before dawn."
Nobody argued. Luka started talking logistics with Rafael. Lorenzo pulled a chair next to Vihaan's laptop and leaned in.
Diego turned toward the door. I followed him out. Behind us, the war council kept talking, but I was already running compound layouts in my head, turning Nevada's folio into entry points and sight lines and the distance between a locked door and my daughter.