Chapter Thirty-Three
Reyes’s words keep echoing long after Cam walks her back to the makeshift cell. The safe house feels wrong—too small, too bright, too normal to hold everything I’ve learned. The kids’ soft breathing drifts through the cracked bedroom door. “Sit,” Cam demands for the second time tonight.
“I’m fine,” I lie for the hundredth time in my life.
Sterling looks at me. The look that says he’s cataloging every micro-flinch along with every shallow breath.
Tape wraps his shoulder; stains on his shirt paint a marble pattern of red and black.
He looks worse than I do. He’s not the one swaying when he stands.
The chair under me catches my weight. “Humor us,” Sterling pushes.
“Fine. Poke away.” Rolling my eyes, they’re not going to stop until I give in.
“That’s Sterling’s job,” Cam mutters, already digging into the crate of supplies.
We’ve turned the least drafty room into a half-assed infirmary: thin mattress, one lamp, a box of stolen medical junk.
I’m half expecting a nurse with cartoon scrubs to walk in and hand me a lollipop.
Instead, it’s a hacker in a blood-spattered T-shirt with a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope that’s probably older than I am.
“Shirt up, jeans open to the hips. I promise I’m more professional than your last doctor. ”
“That’s a low bar.” My hands are already moving, the fabric dragging over my bruised skin.
I bite down on my tongue, holding back a whimper.
The color has spread. What was a fist-sized bruise over my hip is now a whole galaxy of blue and black blooming low across my abdomen.
“Jesus,” Cam breathes. His fingers hover over the worst of it before he forces himself to touch, gentle and methodical. “Where does it hurt the most?”
“Everywhere,” I say automatically, then sigh. “Low and to the right. It’s better if I don’t move. Or breathe.”
That starts a string of questions. “Dizziness?” Sterling chimes in.
“Sometimes.”
“Nausea?”
“Only when Evelyn talks.” I shrug off the question.
The corner of Cam’s mouth twitches; his eyes stay serious. “Before today? Last week? Last month?”
I stare at the wall over his head. “I’ve been more tired,” I admit. “Nightmares are worse. Food tastes like cardboard. It’s probably just stress.” Sterling shifts against the wall, a subtle weight change, but I feel his focus sharpen.
“Any sharp, stabbing pains that take your breath away?” Cam asks.
A hiss escapes before I can stop it when his fingers find a spot low and to the right. He eases off immediately. “Yes, like right now when you press there, asshole…”
“Guarding,” he says under his breath. “Localized tenderness. No rebound.”
“In English?” my voice edged with annoyance.
“In English, I don’t think you’re actively bleeding out,” he says. “But you took one hell of a hit. You’re on the very edge of what I’m comfortable calling okay.”
“See, so I’m fine,” I mutter.
Cam wraps the cuff around my arm and starts pumping. “You need rest. Real rest. Your body is going through a lot. It needs a bit of a break.”
“I wasn’t planning on taking punches recreationally.” I deadpan.
“Planning implies forethought.” Sterling's voice drifts dryly from the doorway. “You don’t plan to throw yourself into danger, Thorn. You just see fire and decide you’re fucking fireproof.”
I glare at him. “You’re not exactly Mr. OSHA compliance either.”
“The difference is, I don’t have sixteen years of medical experimentation on my body. You’re the only one here who’s been solely theirs since childhood.”
Cam’s stethoscope is cold against my ribs, causing me to flinch. He counts under his breath, watching my chest rise and fall. “Your heart’s sprinting a marathon,” he says.
“Let me guess: your prescription is sleep.” I’m over the two of you babying me right now. I’ll be fine.
“Sleep. Water. Actual food,” Cam says. “And I want to check you again in six hours. If the pain gets worse or you spike a fever, we reevaluate.”
“And by reevaluate, we argue about whether going to a hospital is more dangerous than staying here,” Sterling says bluntly.
The idea of fluorescent lights shining on the too-white walls with strangers in scrubs poking at me while my chart quietly uploads to the same network that’s been harvesting my data since I was eight makes my skin crawl.
“Staying,” I say quickly, the decision easy to make.
“We stay.” Sterling nods once, like that was the only acceptable answer.
Cam tapes a fresh pad over one of the deep cuts on my side. “One more thing. No more meds from anyone tied into the system. If we need something, I’ll source it myself.”
I remember the pharmacy clerk lecturing me about Plan B, the way I took it with shaking hands and told myself that was that.
A laugh bubbles up. “Guess you don’t trust my OB-GYN anymore,” I say.
Cam’s eyes flick up to mine, sharp. Sterling’s body goes taut in the doorway.
I realize what I just implied, and I want to take back the words and stuff them down my own throat.
“I mean,” I backpedal, “It was just a standard checkup.”
“Noted,” Cam says slowly. He doesn’t push, but the question hangs there, unspoken. Is there something you’re not telling us?
There is. There are a lot of somethings. Asher. The opera box. Blood on satin. The Plan B pill, dissolving on my tongue. But none of those feel like secrets that belong in this tiny, breathless room with kids sleeping ten feet away and Evelyn shackled in the basement.
“Anything else?” I ask, a little too bright, trying to placate them.
Cam studies me, tugging his hands through his hair. “For tonight?” he says. “No. Hydrate. Eat. Lie down. If the pain spikes, you wake me up. You don’t get to tough it out while I’m busy sorting files.”
“I don’t wake people up,” I mutter. “I handle my own nightmares.”
Sterling pushes off the wall, stepping closer—close enough that the heat from his body cuts the chill in the room. “You don’t handle them alone anymore.” Something in my chest stutters. I hate that it feels good. I hate that I want to believe him.
Cam gathers his tools and backs toward the door. “If she tries to sneak back downstairs,” he says to Sterling, “you tackle her. Gently.”
I flip off Cam. “I heard that.”
“Good,” he replies, and disappears into the hall.
For a moment, it’s just Sterling and me. I’m half-dressed, bruised, and suddenly aware of how small this room is. He doesn’t crowd me, just stands there with his hands loose at his sides, watching my face. “You’re going to hover, aren’t you?” I ask.
“Oh, absolutely,” he says, not the least bit apologetic. “You can sleep, I’ll watch the door.”
I pull my shirt back into place. “A ghost as a nightlight. Cute.”
“I’m not letting you fall over because you decided pain is optional.”
“Pain lets you know you’re alive.”
“And tonight, it’s telling us not to be idiots.”
I ease onto the mattress, every muscle screaming at me—the thin blanket smells like dust. Pulling it up anyway, my eyelids feel heavy.
Sterling kills the lamp, leaving only the slice of light from the hallway, the glow around his silhouette making him angel-like.
Angel of death is more like it. Sterling takes up position by the door, one shoulder to the wall, gun in hand like it’s an extension of his arm.
“Sterling?” I whisper, sleepiness starting to set in.
“Yeah, Thorn?”
“I’m not fragile. Don’t start treating me like glass,” I murmur, voice quiet and low.
“I know you’re not. You’ve been breaking and rebuilding yourself for years.
” There’s a pause. I can hear the kids shifting in the other room—a soft cough, a sigh.
“I’m just making sure,” he adds, voice low, “that this time, you don’t have to do it alone.
” I want to argue, but unconsciousness pulls me under before I can find the words.
The sound of tapping pulls me from the deep sleep.
For a second, I think it’s Evelyn on the pipes again.
Trying to talk to a system that isn’t listening anymore.
The room comes into focus—peeling wallpaper, thin mattress, the slice of grey light at the edge of the curtain.
The ache in my belly is pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
The tapping is coming from my phone on the crate by the bed, vibrating against the plastic.
I don’t remember putting it there. I remember Sterling’s silhouette in the doorway and then nothing.
The screen is dark—no new messages. The vibration was a trick of nerves and nightmares.
“Great,” I mutter. “Now my anxiety gets notifications.”
The house is quieter than it should be. The generator hums is a low, constant thrum. My body feels like it’s been filled with wet sand; every movement is an effort. I push myself upright slowly, waiting for the room to stop spinning.
The door is cracked, and I can see the edge of Sterling’s shoulder through it—a broad, solid line of black against the lighter hall.
He’s still on guard. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and hiss when the stretch tugs at the bruises.
The pain has settled into a deep ache. More like a constant reminder that I’m not indestructible.
The bathroom is small with cracked tile.
A mirror showing me my reflection: dark circles under my eyes, hair a tangle of knots.
My skin looks sallow under the sickly yellow bulbs.
I splash water on my face. The cold shock pulls me out of my head.
One thing at a time: Reyes, Evelyn, the kids, the program’s multiple locations.
I grip the edge of the sink until my knuckles blanch. “Not today,” I tell my reflection.
Stepping into the hall, Sterling straightens from the wall, his eyes do a full sweep. He’s assessing how much damage is still left after last night. “Morning,” he grumbles, his voice rough.
“Is it?” I question. Sterling tilts his head toward the grimy window at the end of the hall. A thin slice of grey daylight leaks in. “How are the kids?”