Chapter 9 #4
"But I'll tell you what." Bane's voice shifts.
Colder. Transactional. "My brother Zero is going to have questions about what happened in this facility.
About the marks on Max's back. About the bruise on his face.
About the footage your cameras captured.
" He tilts his head. "I can either answer those questions in detail—names, descriptions, every incident documented—or I can tell him the facility cooperated fully with our release and there's nothing worth coming back for.
One of those options ends quietly. The other one ends with Zero Graves standing where I'm standing.
And Zero doesn't leave people breathing. "
Ellis studies him. The warm, appraising look—the one that says I'm calculating your value—has shifted into something else. Something closer to the look a man gives an animal he thought was domesticated and has just realized isn't.
"What do you want, Mr. Graves?"
"There's a girl in this facility." Bane doesn't blink. "She comes with us."
Ellis's composure cracks. Just a fraction—a tightening around his mouth, a flicker in his eyes. "The other acquisitions are not part of—"
"She comes. Or the quiet option disappears." Bane glances down at the guard with the broken jaw. "And so does your head start on cleaning this up before Talbot finds out what his employees were doing on company time."
"Her name is Wren." I step out from behind Bane. "Next door. And she needs medical attention. An ambulance."
Ellis looks between us. The math is happening behind his eyes—I can see it. The cost of one omega versus the cost of the Graves empire's cooperation. The cost of Talbot's displeasure versus the cost of the man standing in front of him with blood on his hands and a promise in his voice.
Ellis is quiet for a long moment. Then he reaches into his jacket. Pulls out his phone.
Two calls. Short. Clipped. The first in a tone I can't read. The second sharper.
He pockets the phone.
"The girl will be released to medical services. A car is being brought around for you and Mr. Graves." He adjusts his cuffs. The composure has been reassembled—seamless, polished, the crack already plastered over. "I trust this concludes our business."
"That depends entirely on how the next twenty minutes go," Bane says. "Doesn't it."
Not a question. Ellis holds his gaze for a beat.
Everything slows.
Ellis steps aside.
The doorway is open. The corridor beyond is concrete and more dim light—the same corridor I've been hearing footsteps in for days.
But now it leads out.
Bane takes my arm. Not pulling—supporting. His hand trembles against my elbow. The adrenaline is fading and the sedative ghosts are creeping back in, and I can feel the slight sway in his step as we walk through the door. I press against his side. Equal weight.
The corridor is long and each step makes my stomach curl. Doors on both sides—steel, each one with an electronic lock. Each one a cell. Behind each one, someone breathing. Someone waiting. Someone who doesn't have a Bane.
"Here." I stop right in front of Wren’s door.
The door is already open. Two paramedics are inside—one crouched beside the bed, the other unfolding a stretcher. A guard stands in the corridor, older, following orders he doesn't like but follows anyway.
Wren is on the mattress.
My legs almost give out.
She's small. So much smaller than her voice through the wall suggested—curled on her side, dark hair matted against her face, her scrubs torn at the collar.
Blood. On her mouth. On her chin. A dark smear across her cheekbone that's already swelling purple.
Her lip is split—deep, still oozing—and there are marks on her arms. Finger-shaped bruises.
The kind that come from being held down.
This is what I heard through the wall. The slap. The screaming. The silence after.
"Wren." I'm on my knees beside the mattress before I register moving. The paramedic glances at me—assessing, professional—and shifts to give me space. "Wren, it's Max."
Her eyes flutter. Half-open. Glassy. She's there and not there—drifting at the edge of consciousness, her gaze sliding past me, finding me, losing me again.
"Max?" Barely a whisper. Her hand moves—slow, searching—and I catch it. Hold it. Her fingers are ice cold. Her grip is nothing. A ghost's grip.
"I'm here. I'm getting you out of here. Right now. Do you hear me?"
Her eyes focus. Just for a second. Just long enough to see me. To know it's real.
"You... came."
"I told you I would."
Her eyes close. Her hand goes limp in mine. The paramedic leans in—checking her pulse, tilting her head, shining a penlight. His partner locks the stretcher into position beside the bed.
"We need to move her," the paramedic says.
They lift her. Careful, practiced—one under her shoulders, one under her knees. She makes a sound when they move her—a small, broken thing, barely a whimper—and her face turns into the paramedic's shoulder the way a child's would. Instinctive. Seeking safety in the nearest body.
Bane watches from the doorway. His face is unreadable. But his split knuckles flex at his sides and I can feel the violence radiating off him—not the explosive fury from the cell, something quieter. Colder. The kind that files things away for later.
They strap her to the stretcher. I walk beside it. My hand finds hers again—limp, cold, but I hold it anyway. Hold it down the corridor. Past the steel doors. Past the locks.
Through a door. The smell changes from bleach to cold air. To exhaust. To outside.
The loading dock.
Just after dusk. Deep purple light filtering through the gap under the rolling door. The first sky I've seen in—how long? Four days? Five? The air hits my face and I breathe it in so deep my ribs ache.
The ambulance is already backed up to the dock, rear doors open, lights strobing red and white through the pre-dawn gray. A black sedan idles on the concrete apron beside it. Tinted windows. Engine running.
Bane squints at the driver's side. His body, which has been running on fumes and fury for the last twenty minutes, goes still. Then something shifts in his posture—a fraction of the tension releasing, his shoulders dropping by a degree.
"Reyes," he says. Barely audible. To me: "He's ours. Atlas sent him."
The paramedics roll the stretcher toward the ambulance. I keep pace. My hand still in hers.
"Wren." I lean down. Close. My mouth near her ear. "You're going to the hospital. They're going to take care of you. And I'm going to find you. A few days. I promise."
Her eyes open. Slits. The glassy half-focus of someone fighting to stay present.
"Don't..." Her voice cracks. "Don't forget."
"I won't. I won't ever forget."
Bane is beside me. He reaches into his back pocket—his wallet, never taken or returned with him. Pulls out cash. A card. Tucks them into the stretcher beside her hand.
"My number's on the back," he tells her. His voice is gentle—the real Bane, the one who sat on a concrete floor and made jokes about blindfold hygiene to make me laugh. "When you wake up. Call it. There's enough on the card for whatever you need."
Wren's fingers close around the card. Weakly. But she holds it.
They lift the stretcher into the ambulance. I watch her face as the doors swing shut—pale, bruised, her eyes finding mine through the narrowing gap. Holding on until the metal meets metal and the latch clicks and she's gone.
The ambulance pulls forward. Lights strobing. Turning onto the access road.
I stand on the loading dock and watch it go and feel something inside my chest rearrange itself. Something permanent.
Reyes appears beside Bane. A utility knife—small, quick.
One cut and the zip ties fall away, dropping to the concrete with a plastic clatter.
Bane's wrists are raw—angry red bands where the plastic has been grinding for days.
He flexes his hands. Opens and closes his fingers. Rolls his wrists once, twice, wincing.
Free.
"Mr. Graves. We're ready when you are."
Bane looks at me. I look at the ambulance—smaller now, taillights shrinking down the access road.
“Ready?” He asks.
God, a part of me thought this was never going to happen. I nod.
We get in the car.
The leather seat creaks under Bane and he sinks into it like a man whose strings have been cut. His eyes are going glassy again—the sedative reclaiming the territory his biology burned through. His freed hands rest in his lap. The raw wrists look worse in the soft light of the sedan's interior.
Red. Chafed. Real.
Reyes pulls out behind the ambulance. The warehouse complex shrinks in the rear window—gray concrete and loading docks and the rolling door already closing behind us. Getting smaller. Smaller.
Gone.
I take Bane's hand. Lace my fingers through his. His skin is warm. His knuckles are swollen and split, but his fingers close around mine and hold. Really hold. No plastic between us. No restraints. Just his hand and mine.
"Stay awake," I say. "Just a little longer."
"Trying." His head tips sideways. Finds my shoulder. "'S hard."
"I know."
The city goes to sleep around us. Traffic lights. Other cars. A man walking a dog on a sidewalk, breath fogging in the cold morning air. Normal things. Things that kept existing while I was in that building.
Bane's breathing deepens. Slows. His weight gets heavier against my shoulder.
"Don't sleep yet," I whisper.
"Not sleeping. Just... resting my eyes."
"That's literally sleeping."
A sound against my shoulder. Almost a laugh. Almost.
I hold his hand tighter. Watch the road ahead. The ambulance turns left. We follow.