Chapter 23
Chapter twenty-three
Jen
We do not go back to the log house.
Thaw makes the call before we have even loaded the prisoners — Reyes in one truck, the two surrendered shooters in the other, the dead left where they fell because we are not a clean-up operation. The log house is no longer safe since the Syndicate found it. The cabin was the same.
"There's a third safehouse," Dean says, from the wheel.
"You and Daron built three of these."
"Brother, we searched and planned and organized for two years."
I am learning, on the drive south, that there are layers to the twins I have not seen — three independent properties strung across the Cascades, each one set up, each one ready to hold us if the one before it fell.
Crull drives the prisoners' truck. Fen sits beside me on the bench seat, six inches of air between us because six inches is what he has decided is ok for today. Every line in my chest is awake. The brands at my wrist and throat and sternum are warm.
The hollow where Fen will go is not a hollow anymore.
It is — almost a thread. Not quite. But live.
We pull in at the third location in the afternoon.
The wolves split without anyone deciding it out loud.
Daron takes Reyes into the cabin — more cabin than safehouse, hand-built logs with a stone foundation, and ties him to a chair at the kitchen table.
Crull walks the two shooters into the root cellar and locks the door from the outside. Harek does the perimeter sweep.
I sit at the kitchen table across from Reyes.
Thaw stands behind me.
Fen sits at my left, on the floor, his shoulder against my chair leg. He has not been more than ten feet from me since I sat down beside him in the trees an hour ago. The not-yet-thread is the loudest thing in the room.
"Reyes," Thaw says.
"Yes."
"You are going to give us a target."
The scientist looks up.
"What kind of target?"
"The closest one. The kind that will hurt them."
Reyes wets his lips. "If you tell me what you want to accomplish, I can tell you which facility."
"We want to hurt them. We want it to cost them. And we want to know that there is one less place in the world where they can do to another woman what they did to Jen. And you will eventually give us all of the locations you know about.”
He thinks for a moment.
"There is an outpost near Mount Hood," he says.
"It is called Site Theresa. They use it to move subjects between facilities, to store sample materials, to host researchers in transit.
It would have current registry data. Transport logs.
The active donor program records. If you want to cost the Syndicate something, that is where you go. "
"How many people?"
"Twelve to fifteen on station. Two armed. The rest are scientists and clerical."
"Defenses?"
"Cameras. A monitored alarm. Two-person guard rotation. Sites like Theresa are not built for a fight. If you breach fast and clean, you have twenty minutes before reinforcement is onsite."
"And after the twenty minutes?"
"Then you have ground teams converging. Air support inside an hour. If you are not gone in fifteen, you are dead. Or recovered."
Thaw looks at Dean.
Dean is looking at the map. His finger is on a point south.
"I have been watching this site for a year," Dean says. Quiet. "I have not gone in because I did not have a reason. I now have a reason."
"How fast can you brief us?"
"Hour. Maybe less."
Thaw nods once.
Then he turns to the rest of the room.
All six of us are in one place at one time. Reyes is now in the cellar too. Harek has finished the perimeter and is standing at the kitchen window. Daron is leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. The room is charged in a way that does not happen accidentally.
"We have a target," Thaw says. "We can hit it. The question is whether we should."
Daron goes first. He pushes off the counter and walks one slow lap of the kitchen and stops at the window where Harek is, looking out.
"I want their blood." His voice is flat.
"I want them to know we hit them. I want the Syndicate to know that the escape in March was not the worst thing that happened to them this year.
I want it to be the second worst thing. And I want the gap between first and second to be wide. I am for the raid."
"Dean."
Dean's eyes lift from the map.
"I am for it. But I am for it specifically.
We do not go in to kill. We go in to take.
We take every file Theresa has on the registry, on the donor program, on the active candidates.
We take their data and we leave them with empty drawers.
That hurts them in a way bodies will not.
Bodies are replaceable. Data is not. Killing the two armed staff is fine — getting the files is the win. "
"Harek."
Harek does not turn from the window.
"Jen is bleeding," he says. Slow, careful, each word fought for. "Three hours ago. Body — changing. Wind — carrying. If we move fast — fine. If we move slow — danger. I want Jen — stable. Whole. Inside. Before we go."
He turns from the window. His green eyes find mine.
"But if she says go," he says. "I go."
"Crull."
Crull has not moved from the doorway. His amber eyes have been on Fen the entire time.
"Fen," Crull says. "Fen is not stable enough for a building raid. He just held the line this morning. He held once. If he goes back through a Syndicate door with Syndicate scent on it, I do not know what he does. I do not want to find out today."
He looks at Fen.
Fen looks back at him.
"Stay," Crull says to Fen. "I stay with you. Pack goes. We hold."
Fen's jaw works.
He says it.
"No."
The room goes still.
"No," Fen says again. His voice is rough but it is clear. He is making his mouth do what his mouth is supposed to do. "Go."
He looks at me. The not-yet-thread is full.
Crull's amber eyes hold his brother's. The rumble in his chest changes register. The room watches the two of them have a conversation neither of them has the words for, and Crull is the one who breaks first.
"Okay," Crull says. "Okay, brother. We go."
The bond floods. The brothers' line resonates off my own chest like a bell struck twice. I press my palm flat to the patch.
"Thaw."
He puts his hand on the back of my neck.
"Yes."
"I want to know what you think before I tell you what I want."
His thumb moves at the base of my skull.
"I think the raid is a good operation and a bad week to run it," he says.
Slowly. "Your body is doing something none of us has language for.
You are experiencing symptoms we do not hve a name for.
The Syndicate is allocating resources to find you specifically.
The smart move is to spend time here, let your body settle, and then decide whether to hit Theresa next week. "
"That is the alpha answer."
Thaw nods.
"And the other answer?"
He is quiet.
"The other answer is that there are other names on the registry, and the Syndicate is going to start acquiring them in the next thirty days because they have just lost their primary asset and they need new candidates fast, and every day we wait is a day one of those women is taken."
I close my eyes.
That is the part Reyes did not say. That is the part I have been not letting myself think about since the campground.
For weeks the only thing my body has been making is tough choices. Every choice I have made since February has been a defensive one — a moving away, a getting out. None of us has ever chosen toward the Syndicate. Not once. I have never had toward as a direction available to me.
The patch is warm. The bonds are bright. The pack is waiting.
I open my eyes.
"I have been on the receiving end of this program for weeks," I say. "They took me off a gravel road in February. They strapped me to a table. They dosed me. They built cells for you and me. And they have a list of twenty-three other women who have not yet had their February."
The room is silent.
"I am not running. I am not waiting. I am not sitting here for three days while my body sorts itself out and the Syndicate sends a van to a gravel road in someone else's town."
I look at Thaw.
"They don't get to make more cages."
He does not answer immediately.
His hand at my neck stills. The bond carries his alpha math — the operational risk, the medical risk, the chance the patch destabilizes mid-raid, the chance Fen breaks, the chance Theresa has more security than Reyes is saying — and then it carries the moment he sets the math down.
"Okay," he says.
"We go tonight. Dean briefs in an hour. Reyes maps the floor plan for us in the next thirty minutes.
Crull and Daron prep the trucks. Harek sweeps the perimeter again.
Fen sits with Jen. Jen rests for three hours and eats a real meal and tells me at hour two if her body is not stable enough to ride. "
"Okay."
He looks at the rest of them.
"Pack."
They move. Crull goes back to the doorway and clears it.
Daron pushes off the counter. Dean pulls a notebook from his jacket and starts making notes on a map.
Harek crosses the kitchen and stops at my chair on his way to the door.
He puts his hand on top of mine — once, quick, his brand warm against my brand. Then he is out.
Daron does not leave with him.
He is supposed to be prepping the trucks. He is at the counter. He is looking at me. The forming thread is pulled tight enough that I can feel his pulse in my own wrist, and his ice-blue eyes are doing the thing they did on the porch step before he shifted.
Thaw reads the thread before I do.
"I have Fen," he says, low. "Go."
I get up.
The barn behind the cabin smells like motor oil and old cedar.