Chapter 13 Jinx
Chapter Thirteen: Jinx
Seven won't let go of my hand.
Her fingers are small and cold, wrapped around mine with a grip that borders on painful. She walks beside me as we move deeper into the children's wing, her bare feet silent on the tile floor, her eyes tracking every shadow like she's waiting for something to leap out and drag her back to her cell.
I know that look. I wore it for years.
"Marlee, next door," Asher calls quietly.
The lock clicks. The door swings open. Inside, a boy maybe ten years old is huddled on his mattress, knees drawn to his chest, rocking back and forth.
He doesn't look up when we enter. Doesn't react at all.
Just keeps rocking, his lips moving in a soundless pattern that might be words or might be nothing.
"Hey." Marlee crouches in the doorway, keeps her voice soft. "Hey, buddy. We're here to help."
The boy's rocking intensifies. His hands come up to cover his ears, pressing hard, like he's trying to block out sounds only he can hear.
"Conditioned response," Jace says quietly from behind me. "They've trained him to shut down when approached. Defense mechanism."
"Can you reach him?"
"Maybe. Give me a minute."
Jace moves past Marlee, slow and deliberate, and sits down on the floor a few feet from the boy. Doesn't speak. Doesn't reach out. Just sits there, breathing steadily, becoming part of the room rather than an intrusion into it.
The boy's rocking slows. His hands lower, just slightly.
"We don't have time for this," Marlee mutters.
"We make time." My voice comes out harder than I intended. "We're not leaving anyone behind."
Seven's grip tightens on my hand. She's watching Jace and the boy with an expression I can't read. Recognition, maybe. Understanding.
"He's like me," she whispers. "They broke him the same way."
"How did they break you?"
She doesn't answer. Just turns those haunted eyes up to my face, and the truth is there, plain as day. The things she can't say because the words don't exist. The horrors that live in the spaces between language.
I know. God help me, I know exactly what they did.
"Jagger." I key my comm. "We need more time. These kids aren't going to come easy."
"Negative. You have forty minutes until the camera loop resets. After that, every guard in the building converges on your position."
"Then we work faster."
Door after door. Child after child. Some come willingly, clinging to us like we're the first kind touch they've felt in months.
A girl maybe six years old wraps herself around Marlee's leg and won't let go, her tiny body shaking with sobs she doesn't know how to release.
A boy takes Jace's hand without a word, his eyes empty but his grip desperate.
Others fight, lashing out with fists and teeth, their conditioning turning them into weapons even against the people trying to save them.
One girl, maybe twelve, puts Marlee on the ground before Jace can restrain her.
She moves like water, like smoke, trained violence and no hesitation. A perfect weapon in a child's body.
"Careful," Jace warns as Marlee gets back up, blood dripping from a split lip. "They've been trained to kill. This wing is the Protocol wing, these kids are more aggressive. Instinct takes over when they're threatened."
"Yeah, I noticed." Marlee wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, but her eyes on the restrained girl are soft. Understanding. "It's okay, sweetheart. We're not going to hurt you. We're going to get you out of here."
The girl stops struggling. Looks at Marlee with eyes that have seen too much. "Out doesn't exist," she says. Her voice is flat, reciting a lesson. "There is only the Silent. There is only the work. There is only compliance."
My stomach turns. I know those words. I said those words, once upon a time, before Jagger and Jace broke me free. Before I learned that the world was bigger than the walls they built around me.
"We are going.” I look at the little girl and point to the door and she nods, walking out and joining the rest of the kids.
We keep moving. "How many more?" Marlee asks.
"Eighteen cleared. Twenty-nine to go."
Twenty-nine children. Twenty-nine broken souls waiting in their cells. And somewhere in this building, the woman who broke them.
Helena Cross.
The architect of my nightmares, close enough to touch, close enough to kill. My hands itch for it. My blood sings with the need.
But not yet. Children first. Vengeance second.
We push deeper into the wing. The cells here are different. Larger. More equipment. Monitoring stations outside each door, screens displaying vital signs and brain activity. These aren't holding cells. These are the experimental laboratories.
"Jesus Christ." Asher stops in front of one of the monitors. The readout shows a child's brain, sections lit up in angry red and yellow. "They're mapping neural pathways. Tracking the conditioning in real time."
"It's how they refine the protocols." The words taste like ash in my mouth. "They watch what changes, what breaks, what holds. Every child is an experiment. Data points for the next iteration."
"How do you know that?"
"Because they did it to me."
The memory surfaces before I can stop it. Nine years old, once again strapped to a table, electrodes attached to my skull. A woman's voice narrating my responses as they pumped chemicals into my veins and shocked specific regions of my brain.
"Subject H3 shows increased aggression response. Recommend escalating the fear protocol."
"Jinx." Asher's hand lands on my shoulder, warm and solid. "Stay with me."
"I'm here." I force the memory down, lock it away. "I'm here. Keep moving."
The next cell is occupied. A boy, maybe fourteen, restrained in a chair. His eyes are open but empty, staring at nothing, his chest rising and falling in the slow rhythm of sedation. Walking towards him, I work on the restraints. The boy turns his head slowly and looks past me.
"He’s somewhere else." I lift the boy from the chair, cradle him against my chest. He weighs nothing. Skin and bones and trauma. "I don’t think he’s coming back."
"But he might. You did."
"Did I?"
The question hangs between us. I don't have an answer. Some days I'm not sure if I ever really left that table. If the person I am now is the real me or just another mask the conditioning taught me to wear.
"Movement." Marlee's voice cuts through the comms. "East corridor. Multiple contacts."
"How many?"
"Six. Maybe more. Professional formation. These aren't rent-a-cops."
Elite guards. Cross's personal security, which means she's close.
"Get the children to the extraction point," I tell Asher. "I'll handle this."
"Like hell you will."
"We don't have time to argue. Someone has to get these kids out, and someone has to deal with the guards. You're better with the children. I'm better with violence."
"That’s not true and you know—"
"Asher." I meet his eyes. The boy is still limp in my arms, a reminder of everything at stake. "I'll be right behind you. I promise."
He wants to argue. I can see it in the set of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders. But he knows I'm right. And we're out of time.
"Five minutes," he says. "Then I'm coming back for you."
"Make it ten. I want to enjoy myself."
I hand him the boy and turn toward the east corridor. Behind me, Asher starts organizing the evacuation, his voice calm and steady as he directs the children and the rest of the team toward the exit.
Ahead of me, footsteps echo off the tile. Getting closer.
I check my rifle. Full magazine. Thirty rounds. More than enough for six guards. More than enough for the woman waiting at the end of this nightmare.
The first guard rounds the corner, and I put two in his chest before he can raise his weapon. The suppressed shots are quiet, sharp coughs in the sterile air, but the impact is loud. He drops, blood spreading across the white tile, and the corridor explodes into chaos.
Muzzle flashes strobe the darkness. Bullets whine past my head, punch holes in the walls, send chips of tile spraying across my face. The guards are good, trained, moving in formation and laying down coordinated fire.
I move without thinking, years of training taking over, my body flowing through the violence like water through cracks. Slide behind a gurney, pop up, two shots, one guard down. Roll left, come up shooting, another guard staggers back with red blooming across his tactical vest.
Two more guards down. Then a third. The fourth catches me with a round to the vest, the impact like a hammer blow to my ribs, driving the air from my lungs.
The ceramic plate holds, but the bruise is going to be spectacular.
I stay on my feet through sheer stubbornness and put him down with a headshot that paints the wall behind him in red and gray.
Two left. They've found cover behind a nurses' station, laying down suppressive fire that pins me behind a support column. Bullets chew into the concrete inches from my face, spraying dust and debris.
"Jinx, status." Jagger's voice in my ear.
"Engaged. Four down, two remaining. I've got it."
"Cross is on the move. Surveillance shows her heading for the administrative wing. If she reaches the secure exit, we lose her."
The secure exit. Her escape route. A private elevator that leads to a helipad on the roof. If she gets through that door, she disappears into the wind and we never find her again. She'll surface in six months with a new facility, new children, new horrors.
"Copy." I pull a flashbang from my vest, yank the pin. "I'm on it."
I toss the grenade around the column and squeeze my eyes shut, mouth open to equalize the pressure. The bang is deafening, and it rattles my teeth and reverberates through my chest. The guards cry out, blinded and disoriented, and I'm moving before the echo fades.
Two shots. Two bodies. Clean, center mass, no hesitation.