Chapter 7
Selina
I woke with a jolt, my brain rattling through a quick checklist: unfamiliar ceiling, strange bed, foreign smells. The events of yesterday snapped back: the attack, the escape, the safehouse.
Specter’s name surfaced before I was fully conscious.
My hand slid across the empty space beside me. The sheets were cool, long abandoned. I sat up and scanned the small apartment, but the stillness confirmed what I already knew. I was alone.
The doctor in me took over, analytical even before fully alert.
I examined the sheets where he’d slept, dragging my fingers over the fabric.
No blood. No seepage from his wounds. That was something, at least; the stitches had held, and if he was out and about, the infection hadn’t set in overnight. Good.
Swinging my legs off the bed, I paused to listen. The building hummed with low morning sounds: water pipes groaning, a distant radio, someone’s muffled footsteps above. But nothing immediate. Nothing threatening.
I moved to the window, and parted a thin gap between the faded curtains. Outside, Munich wore winter: gray sky, concrete facades, pedestrians hunched against the cold. No obvious surveillance. No tactical teams. Just everyday people hurrying to everyday jobs, unaware of us.
One blunt truth settled: we were fugitives.
Yesterday, I’d been Dr. Selina Crawford, respected psychological expert.
Today, I was a woman with no credentials, no identification, no protection beyond what Specter could provide.
The thought should have terrified me. Instead, I felt unnervingly calm, as though some part of me had been preparing for this fall from grace my entire career. Ridiculous.
I let the curtain drop and turned back to the rumpled bed.
The evidence of our shared night lay in plain view: the dip in the mattress where his body had been, the pillow still bearing the impression of his head.
I picked it up, intending to straighten it, when his scent hit me, clean sweat, antiseptic from the wounds, and something else. Something distinctly him.
My fingers tightened on the cushion. This wasn’t professional concern I was feeling.
“Stop it.” I dropped the pillow too fast.
I headed for the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face. The woman in the mirror looked back with unforgiving clarity. There was no room for attraction or distraction, not with Oblivion hunting us, not with Specter’s mind still fractured, not with our survival hanging by a thread.
Yet my thoughts kept circling back to last night, the careful distance we’d maintained on the bed that had somehow disappeared by morning.
I’d woken briefly before dawn to find myself curled toward his warmth, not quite touching but close enough to feel the heat of him.
He’d been awake, staring at the ceiling, but he hadn’t moved away.
That moment of quiet acknowledgment felt more intimate than his deliberate provocations had ever been.
I dried my face on a threadbare towel and returned to the main room. Where was he now? Had he simply stepped out for supplies, or had something happened? The clock on the wall read 8:17. We’d gone to bed after midnight. Five hours, he’d said. He was keeping his word about the sleep rotation.
I walked a slow loop around the flat, taking stock of our situation. My medical bag remained where I’d left it. The gun was gone, with Specter, presumably. The kitchenette revealed nothing but a half-empty bottle of water and stale bread. Not much to work with.
On the small table by the window, I noticed something new. A folded piece of paper, held down by a cheap pen.
The note was written in tight, controlled script: Securing perimeter. Back by 0900. Stay inside. S.
Relief loosened beneath my ribs, chased fast by irritation at the reaction. I shouldn’t care where he was beyond our mutual survival. I shouldn’t have noticed the depression his body left in the mattress or the scent on his pillow. I was his doctor, not his…
Not his what? That was the question hanging in the stale apartment air.
I refolded the note and sat at the table, watching the minute hand crawl toward nine, telling myself that hitch in my chest was about survival, not anticipation.
Pointless.
My focus needed to be on practical matters, not whatever this pull toward Specter meant. I pushed away from the table and rechecked the apartment with a new purpose. If we were going to survive, I needed information.
The floorboard. The burner phone.
I knelt at the spot where Specter had extracted it last night, prying up the loose board with my fingernails.
The phone sat nestled in its hiding place, anonymous and untraceable, or so Specter had claimed.
My fingers hovered over it. Using it was a risk, but we couldn’t stay blind.
I needed to know what had happened at SENTINEL, needed to know if Mattie…
I shut down the thought before it fully formed. I couldn’t afford to consider that she might not have survived.
I grabbed the phone and powered it on, watching the bootup screen, breath held.
Five bars of service. No GPS icon. I opened the browser, navigating through proxy servers like Specter had shown me during our brief tutorial last night.
His warning replayed: “Ten minutes maximum. Any longer and you’re asking to be traced. ”
The secure browser inched along. I entered my private email credentials, not the SENTINEL account, but my personal one, the address only a handful of people knew. The loading wheel spun too long, each rotation stretching my nerves thinner.
Finally, the inbox appeared. Mostly spam. Advertisements. And then…
A message from Mattie. Sent five hours ago.
My fingers trembled as I tapped it open. She was alive. The relief hit so hard, I caught myself against the wall.
S,
We’re alive, D and me. Minor injuries only.
Using secure channel. D says you’re probably off-grid with package.
Smart move. SENTINEL’s mainframe was compromised during attack, partial breach, unknown what data was accessed.
D working to secure systems now. Be extremely cautious.
Will contact when safe or have more info.
Trust NO ONE outside the immediate team.
Stay alive. That’s an order. You owe me a meal.
-M
The message’s clipped, staccato style was so unlike Mattie’s usual warm communication that it drove home the severity of our situation. At least Damon and Mattie were alive and well. I read it three times, relief giving way to cold analysis.
Partial breach. Unknown what data was accessed.
My mind ran through the implications. SENTINEL’s systems contained everything: personnel files, safehouse locations, operational protocols.
Our medical records, psychological profiles.
If Oblivion had gained access to even a fraction of that data…
At least Specter’s safehouse wasn’t on those records.
I grabbed the phone again, my fingers hovering over the keys. Should I send a reply?
In the end, I deleted the email, cleared the browser history, and powered down the phone. Ten minutes. I’d used six. Time to return it to its hiding place.
As I knelt by the loose floorboard, the metallic click of the door lock engaged. My body moved before my mind processed, diving for the hidden compartment in the floor where Specter had stashed his handgun. My fingers closed around cold metal just as the door swung open.
Specter stood framed in the doorway, a paper bag in one hand, two coffee cups balanced in the other. His eyes locked on the handgun in my hand, then traveled up to my face with a flat, unreadable look.
“Going to shoot me before breakfast? That’s cold, Doc.” Specter kicked the door shut behind him, not a hint of concern crossing his face despite the weapon in my hand. “Especially since I brought you coffee.”
I lowered the gun, heat creeping up my neck. “You could have knocked.”
“At my own safehouse?” He lifted a brow as he set the paper bag and cups on the small table. “Besides, anyone trying to break in wouldn’t politely announce themselves.”
My fingers still gripped the weapon, the weight unfamiliar and awkward. “I read an email from Mattie. She and Damon are alive, but SENTINEL’s systems were breached.”
“Of course, they were.” He unpacked the bag as if nothing were wrong. “You should put that down before you accidentally shoot something important. Like me.”
I set the pistol on the rickety table, irritation prickling. “This isn’t a joke, Specter. If Oblivion accessed SENTINEL’s database—”
“They’ll know everything about you, me, and this little therapy experiment.” He pushed a cup toward me. “They’ll have your file, your history, your vulnerabilities. Everything you told them about me. Everything I’ve told you.”
The brew smelled rich and warm against the apartment’s chill. “Then why aren’t you more concerned?”
“Who says I’m not?” His mouth curved a fraction. “But concern and panic are different things. One keeps you alive, the other gets you killed.”
I wrapped my hands around the drink, letting the heat seep into my palms. “So what’s our next move?”
Specter didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he pulled out a chair and sat down, arranging the food.
The pastries, croissants and something with cinnamon, were placed in the center of the table, flanked by small containers of jam and butter.
From the bottom of the bag came sealed packets of what looked like dried fruit and nuts.
“Eat first.” He tore open one of the croissants. “Strategy second.”
I remained standing, cup in hand. “Are you serious right now?”
“Completely.” He took a bite, chewing without hurry. “The human brain functions better with glucose. Basic science, Doc.”
The normalcy of it struck me as off. This calm breakfast ritual while killers hunted us. We should be moving, planning, doing something other than… whatever this was.
“We don’t have time for a leisurely breakfast,” I declared, but my gut betrayed me with an audible growl.