14. Enley
Enley
The final preparations settle into a steady rhythm.
Pack. Check. Recheck. Load. Count. Verify.
The quiet physical dance of people getting ready to walk into a building they might not walk out of.
I should be terrified, but instead I’m determined.
I think Render makes me braver. I’d never tell him that though.
Knight came back an hour ago from his last look around the facility.
He brought a hand-drawn diagram of the perimeter that shows more than any satellite picture ever could.
Guard positions marked with careful X’s.
Camera ranges sketched as soft dotted lines.
The six-minute blind spot confirmed with exact times from three different watches.
He drew it on the back of an empty meal pack because that was the only paper we had.
The precision of those lines, done with a plain ballpoint pen on cardboard, tells me everything about the man who will soon cross that fence line with us.
Render sits at the table loading magazines.
The ammunition from the storage shelf fills four of them.
It’s more than the handful of rounds we had after the river, but still less than either of them would prefer.
Knight brought his own supply: a rifle, a sidearm, and enough rounds for both.
He never explains where things come from.
With Knight, the things we need simply appear.
I’m on the floor running final checks on the systems I’ll control during the breach. The tablet I’ll use is simple and strong enough to keep the connection from two hundred yards away. Render tested it twice. I tested it three more times. Everything’s ready.
The storage unit feels tight with quiet tension.
Cool metal walls. The soft buzz of the generator.
The faint click of magazines seating into place.
I’ve never been in a room like this before.
Poe always kept me on the other side of the wall.
The safe side. The side where little sisters taught themselves code in empty apartments because their brothers wouldn’t let them into the rooms where the real work happened.
“Tell me how the team started. How did you all become vigilantes?” I ask.
Render and Knight stop working and stare at me. They glance at one another, and then Render sets a magazine down.
“It started with Arby Kate,” he whispers. “You remember her murder.”
“How could I forget?” I remember the live. I’d never seen it but had heard about the horrific nature of her death. How she went live on Youtube and men entered her studio and brutally murdered her while the whole world watched. Juno’s sister. She was devastated. We all were.
“Juno went looking for help. Searched the dark web for a vigilante to help her. She found Arrow.”
“Did she know it was Arrow?”
Knight shakes his head. “No. She had no clue the man she’d hired was her best friend in hiding. We all wore masks back then.”
I smile, imagining Render in a mask. “Then what happened?”
Knight steps closer. “River was being harassed at work, and Gage helped her through it all.”
“How did Dean Maddox get involved.”
“Arrow was already working for Maddox Security when everything with Arby happened. Dean heard what we’d done and what we’d found.
He could’ve shut us down. What we were doing was illegal in more ways than I can count, and Dean had the connections to make us disappear quietly.
Instead he called a meeting. Sat us down in his office and said, ‘You’re doing good work badly. I can help you do it well.’”
“He gave you resources.”
“He gave us everything. His professional teams handle the legitimate side of the company. The protective work. The contracts that keep the lights on. And behind that, in the space between the official work and the public face, he built the crew. Us. The ones who started in an old printing store with borrowed equipment and Arby’s photograph on the wall. ”
“And Lark.”
The stillness in Knight’s face changes. Not softer. Deeper. The stillness of a man standing at the edge of something that matters so much he doesn’t trust ordinary movement to hold it.
“Lark happened after,” he says, placing each word carefully.
“She was part of the circle. Gage’s sister.
I’d known her for years, and she started stalking me.
She came on a job and things went sideways.
We were on the run for a while. Things happened between us.
Gage was pissed. Gave me a speech about never hurting her. And I never would.”
His story sounds familiar. Lark was attracted to her older brother’s best friend.
I don’t look at Render. I feel him looking at me.
The weight of his attention has become a physical presence in every space we share.
A quiet warmth on my skin even when he’s across the room focused on a magazine or a screen.
“Lark’s in there,” I say. “In the facility. Along with Arrow and Gage and Poe and Ozzy and Orchid. These are our friends. More than just teammates. The people who started all of this because Arby Kate was killed on a livestream and no one with power moved fast enough to stop it.”
“Yes,” Render says simply.
“And tomorrow night you’re going to walk into a building and risk dying to get them back.”
“Yes.”
“Both of you.”
Knight nods once. “Absolutey.”
I close my laptop and set it aside. I look at both of them.
These two men preparing to enter a fortified place with limited ammunition, a six-minute window, and a kind of resolve that doesn’t come from training manuals.
It comes from Mrs. Kavanaugh’s desk drawer and a hardware store that closed and a building with a photograph on the wall.
“Then I’ll be on the radio,” I say. “Listening. Running the digital side. Making sure everything works the way it’s supposed to. And when you bring them out, I’ll be there.”
“You’ll be there,” Render confirms. Quiet. Like he’s placing the words somewhere safe so they won’t fall.
Knight stands as he folds the diagram into his jacket. He checks his weapon one more time with the automatic precision of hands that have done this thousands of times.
“I’m going to rest,” he says. “Four hours. Then final prep.”
He finds a spot against the far wall, sits with his back to the metal, and closes his eyes. Within two minutes his breathing settles into the steady rhythm of a man who apparently can sleep anywhere.
Render and I are alone at the table. The space between us is the new distance. Not the old careful two inches and not the zero gap of the kiss. Something in between. The space of two people who have crossed a line and are waiting for the right moment to acknowledge what’s on the other side.
“Thank you,” I say. “For telling me.”
“You should know the whole story.”
“I should’ve known years ago. Poe should’ve told me.”
“Poe was trying to keep you out of the blast radius.” He pauses. “He failed. But the intention was real.”
“The intention was always real. That’s the problem with my brother.
His love is real and his need to protect is real and the wall he built between me and everything that mattered to him was built out of genuine, well-meaning, completely suffocating love.
” I hear the bitterness in my own voice and I let it stay.
“Arby was Juno’s sister. If someone had hurt me the way they hurt Arby, Poe would’ve done the same thing.
Torn the world apart. Built a whole operation out of the wreckage. ”
“He did,” Render says quietly. “You were in a container. He activated the failsafe. I came.”
The parallel lands heavier than I expected.
“Get some sleep,” I tell him. “You need the hours more than I do.”
“You need them too.”
“I know. But someone has to keep watch and I’m not the one who was running a high fever this afternoon.”
He looks at me for a long moment. The fluorescent light catches the dark of his eyes and the quiet intensity that’s always lived there.
Then he nods, and crosses to the cot. He lies down.
His eyes close, but I know he’s not fully asleep yet because his breathing hasn’t settled into the controlled rhythm he uses when he’s truly out.
I sit at the table with the laptop and the soft blink of the uplink. Across the room a man sleeps against the wall who loves a woman in a cell. On the cot another man rests who I’ve always had a crush on and never told him.
I keep watch.
The hours count quietly toward zero.