10. Enley
Enley
I don’t sleep the way he thinks I do.
I close my eyes because that’s what you do when someone tells you to rest and you know they’re right. That you need it. But behind my eyelids my mind runs on two tracks at once, and neither of them leads to rest.
One track is the video. Poe’s swollen eye and split lip.
The blood dried along his temple. The way Serafina rested her hand on his shoulder like he belonged to her.
The stubborn look in his one good eye that I’ve known since we were kids.
He’s still protecting me. Even now. Even beaten and chained.
He won’t give Serafina what she wants because unlocking that network would expose everything, including the evidence of my secret operations against Goldenbell.
I did this. My late-night work in my apartment set all of this in motion. The guilt sits heavy in my chest like a stone I can’t set down.
The second track is Render.
Something shifted tonight while I was working on the security bypass. I felt it like a change in the air before a storm. I looked up from the screen and he was watching me with an expression I’ve never seen on his face before.
Open.
No careful distance. No professional mask. Just raw honesty. Like the walls he’s kept between us for years had finally cracked under pressure.
He said nothing when I asked. But his eyes said everything.
I lie on the cot in his hoodie and listen to him pretend to work at the table. I know, with the certainty that comes from five days of watching him closely, that the careful boundary he’s maintained since he carried me out of that container is about to come down.
The real question is what happens when it does.
Morning comes on day six. Twelve hours until Knight arrives at the meeting point.
We work with the kind of focus that comes when you can hear the clock ticking in every quiet moment.
The rescue plan takes shape on the shared screen.
Three entry points at the same time. Knight on the outside.
Render heading down the stairs to the lower level.
Me handling the hidden communications from a safe spot a couple hundred yards away.
The safe spot was Render’s idea. Far enough to stay out of direct danger but close enough to help in real time. It’s a compromise. It satisfies neither of us completely.
“I should be inside,” I say.
“You should be where your skills matter most. The bypass you built works through their security system. If something goes wrong, you need to be able to fix it quickly. You can’t do that while clearing rooms.”
“You’re being protective.”
“Maybe,” he says.
I want to argue. But he’s right. I hate that he’s right. My strengths are in the digital side. Putting me inside with a gun I barely know how to use would be ego, not strategy. Poe’s life is worth more than my pride.
“Fine,” I say. “Safe spot. But full communication. I hear everything. I see everything. No cutting me out because you think I can’t handle it.”
“Full communication. Agreed.”
We spend the next four hours refining every detail. The window for action is small. Six minutes when the guards are out of position. Everything depends on those six minutes.
The hidden channel from Orchid confirms the second holding area. Poe is there. Alone. The security lock on the corridor is the type I built the bypass for. If it works, Render can reach Poe without setting off every alarm in the building. If it doesn’t, we’ll be walking into a firefight.
“It’ll work,” I say when I see his jaw tighten.
“You sure?”
“I built it. I tested it against the details Orchid sent. It’s solid.”
He holds my gaze. I hold his. The moment stretches. Not the charged glances we’ve been sharing at the table. Something deeper. Two people looking at each other and seeing that the person across from them can carry their share of the weight when it matters most.
“I trust you,” he says.
Three simple words. Spoken in that steady voice of his. But they land like something important. Because Render doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.
“I trust you too,” I reply.
He nods and looks back at the screen. The moment passes, but it leaves something new in the air between us. A piece of whatever we’re building together, day by day, in this small space.
The break comes at seven in the evening. We’ve been working for eleven straight hours. My eyes burn. My back aches. The protein bar from hours ago is long gone.
Render pushes back from the table and stands. He stretches, arms overhead, and his shirt rides up to show a strip of tan skin above his waistband. I look before I can stop myself. The muscle there is lean and strong from real use, not just the gym. Heat pools low in my stomach.
I look away quickly.
“We need real food,” he says. “There are meal packs on the shelf. Not great. But they’ll do.”
He tosses one to me. I catch it. We eat standing up because neither of us wants to sit in those metal chairs any longer.
“Can I ask you something?” I say between bites.
“Yeah.”
“The video. Serafina said she would start with the person who matters most to the one she sent it to. She was talking about me. Threatening me to get to you. She sent it to your channel, not Poe’s.
She knows you’re the one who came for me.
Why would she think hurting me would matter to you specifically? ”
The storage unit goes very still.
Render stops eating. He swallows and looks at me. “I thought I hid it well.”
What is he talking about? “Huh?”
“Because she’s right,” he says.
The words settle between us. Simple. Honest. Delivered in that flat tone he uses for facts. But they change everything.
“Render,” I say. I don’t know what comes next. His name is all I can manage.
He sets the meal pack down and crosses the small space between us. Three steps. The same number it took him to reach me in the container.
His hand comes up to the side of my neck. His fingers press gently against my pulse. He must feel how fast it’s racing because mine is hammering against his touch.
“Tell me to stop,” he says. His voice is rough now. Raw. Nothing like the controlled tone he’s used for days. This voice carries years of held-back want.
I don’t tell him to stop.
He kisses me.
It’s not soft or careful. It’s the breaking of something long contained.
His mouth meets mine with heat and hunger and the taste of shared meals and too many sleepless nights.
My hands move on their own. One fists in the front of his shirt.
The other slides to the back of his neck, fingers threading through his hair.
He pulls me closer. His palm presses against my lower back through the oversized hoodie, heat bleeding through the fabric. I’m against him completely. Chest to chest. I can feel his heart pounding in time with mine.
His fingers slide into my hair and tilt my head. The kiss deepens and everything else fades. The video. The plan. The clock. There’s only his mouth on mine, his hand in my hair, and the terrifying thrill of crossing a line we can’t uncross.
The laptop pings.
The sound cuts through the moment. A message on the hidden channel from Orchid. We both freeze.
Render pulls back just enough for our foreheads to rest together. His breath is warm against my lips. His eyes are dark and intense, filled with everything he’s been holding back.
“The channel,” I whisper.
“I know.”
We don’t move for three long seconds. The laptop pings again. The world’s still turning. The team’s still in danger. The kiss didn’t stop the clock.
He steps back. His hand slips from my hair and the loss of contact feels like falling. I turn to the laptop with shaking hands that have nothing to do with fear.
The message loads. Orchid has new information. The timeline has moved up. We now have forty-eight hours instead of seventy-two.
I tell Render. He stands a couple steps away, one hand braced on the shelf, rebuilding his walls brick by brick even as I watch.
“Contact Knight,” he says. His voice is almost steady again. “Tell him the timeline changed. He needs to meet us sooner.”
I nod and send the message.
The work continues. The plan adjusts. The clock ticks louder.
We don’t talk about the kiss. Not yet. There’s no time. But I can still feel it. His mouth on mine. His hand in my hair. The way he looked at me like I was the only thing in the room.
The wall is going back up. I can see him doing it. But I know what’s behind it now. And he knows that I know.
Forty-eight hours.
The clock sounds different. Faster. And underneath it, steady and impossible to ignore, beats something new between us. Something we’ll have to face when this is over.
Soon.