Chapter 13
Travis
My shoulder with the stitches didn’t like the pull-up bar. It made this known on the first rep with a bright, specific objection that ran from the suture line down through my lat and into the ribs that still hadn’t completely forgiven me for two weeks ago.
I adjusted my grip. Wider. Shifted the load toward the right side and pulled again.
Better. Not good. But the difference between those two things was where I’d been living for eighteen months, and the body that kept me alive on missions didn’t maintain itself. Modified or not, the work had to happen.
I’d been down here since five. The gym was the first room I’d built when I’d designed the underground level, before the control room, before the pool. Concrete floor, ceiling-mounted bar, free weights, the heavy bag. Nothing decorative. Everything functional.
Three sets of pull-ups, modified. Shoulder press with the left side at half the weight of the right. Core work on the mat that didn’t require rotation because rotation made the sutures pull in a way that suggested they had opinions about my life choices.
Sera had placed those sutures a little over twenty-four hours ago. Her hands on my skin, steady after the first stitch, her breath against my shoulder while she closed a wound I’d normally have handled alone over the bathroom sink at three in the morning.
And she’d done it with eighteen months of my secrets assembled on the screens behind her.
The thing I hadn’t been prepared for, the thing that had kept me staring at the ceiling until I gave up on sleep and came down here, was how much lighter I felt because she knew.
Eighteen months. More missions than I could keep track of.
Every one of them planned alone, executed alone, recovered from alone.
And now someone else knew, and the weight of it had shifted in a way I could physically feel, like setting down a bag I’d been carrying so long I’d forgotten it wasn’t part of my body.
The relief sat next to something colder, though. Because knowing made her closer to the operations, closer to the network, closer to the kind of danger that didn’t care how smart you were or how good your data was.
“Your cortisol levels are still thirty-two percent above baseline from last night,” Maude said. “And those sutures are barely twenty-four hours old. I feel compelled to point out that the gym is not where most people go to recover from a wound that required seven stitches.”
“Mind your own business, Maude.”
“I don’t have any other business. You are, quite literally, all I’ve got.”
I grabbed the tape from the shelf by the weight rack and started wrapping my hands. Left hand first, always left hand first, three passes across the knuckles, two around the wrist.
I was halfway through the right hand when Sera appeared in the doorway.
She was dressed in the workout clothes Maude had ordered. Leggings, a fitted top, running shoes that still looked new. Her hair was pulled back. I noticed all of it about two seconds faster than I should have.
Her arms were crossed, but not in the way that meant she was unsure. In the way that meant she’d already decided something and was giving me the courtesy of hearing about it before it happened.
“I want you to train me.”
I pulled the tape tight across my knuckles and tore it with my teeth. “No.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
“And that wasn’t an answer. It was a complete sentence. No. You’re not going in the field. There’s no reason to train you.”
She grit her teeth and took a step closer. “I got chased through alleys two weeks ago by men who wanted to kill me. I couldn’t run two blocks without my lungs shutting down. You had to buy me an inhaler at a drugstore while I sat on a pharmacy bench trying not to pass out.”
“And you were safe because I was there.”
“And what happens when you’re not?” She uncrossed her arms. “What happens if someone breaches this compound while you’re on a mission? What happens if we’re separated and I can’t run and I can’t fight and the only thing between me and a very bad outcome is hoping you show up in time?”
“This compound is secure.”
“This compound has a gate code that I guessed in three tries.”
Well, fuck. Couldn’t exactly argue with that, even if we both knew she’d only guessed it because of insider info. I still needed to change the password.
“I’m not asking you to turn me into a field operative,” she continued.
“I’m asking you to give me something other than the sidelines.
I’ve been on the sidelines my entire life.
At the Bureau, with Pratt, with my parents, with Naomi.
I’ve been the woman who sits behind the desk and does the quiet work and gets patted on the head for it. ”
“Sera…”
She stepped further into the gym. “You told me last night that I’m your partner. On comms, on screens, in the operation. I’m holding you to that. You’re not alone in this anymore. In any part. I may not go out in the field, but we still do this together.”
The gym was quiet. Just the two of us and the low hum of the ventilation system and her words sitting in the air between us, refusing to move.
I couldn’t argue with it. Not after what I’d agreed to last night in the control room. Not after she’d stitched my shoulder and turned to Maude for the truth and told me she wasn’t watching me destroy myself anymore.
“Fine.” I unwrapped my hands. “If you’re serious, this isn’t a weekend hobby. You’ll need a real fitness plan. Strength and conditioning, not just technique. We build your endurance around your lungs, not in spite of them. The same way I work around my own body’s limitations.”
I walked to the center of the mat and turned to face her. “But we start now. With basics. Self-defense fundamentals that we’re going to drill until you end up dreaming about them. Come here.”
She came. No hesitation.
“Stance first. Feet shoulder-width apart. One foot slightly back. Weight distributed evenly. You want to be hard to knock over.”
I circled her. She stood the way she did everything, precise and intentional, like she was trying to get the geometry exactly right.
“Wider on the left foot. Drop your center of gravity.”
She adjusted. Better, but she was holding the position like a formula, trying to memorize it instead of feel it. I stepped behind her and put my hands on her shoulders. Pressed down.
“Stop thinking about where your feet are. Feel the floor. If I push you, you should be able to absorb it without moving.”
I pushed. Gentle. She rocked but held.
“Good. Again.”
I pushed harder. She adjusted without thinking this time, her weight shifting to compensate.
“Good. Now, basic strikes. You’re not punching. You’re driving the heel of your hand into a target. Nose, chin, throat.” I showed her the motion, slow, then at speed. “The power comes from your legs and hips, not your arm. Think of your arm as a piston. The engine is below your waist.”
I positioned her. Hand on her hip to correct the alignment, other hand on her elbow to adjust the angle.
Clinical contact. Necessary contact. Except I could feel the warmth of her skin through the fabric under my palm, and each correction was registering in a place that had nothing to do with technique.
“Now drive it. Imagine the target is six inches behind where you’re aiming. You’re not hitting a surface. You’re hitting through it.”
She drove. Not bad. Tentative, but structurally sound.
“Again. Harder.”
She went harder. I corrected her shoulder rotation, my hand between her shoulder blades, and I was aware that I was lingering. A fraction longer than the correction required. I let go and stepped to the side.
“Knee strikes next.” I stepped in front of her and bent slightly at the waist. “Grab the back of my neck with both hands. Pull me down toward you and drive your knee up into the midsection. You’re using my momentum against me.”
She put her hands on the back of my neck. Tentative at first, her fingers light against my skin.
“Harder. You’re not giving me a massage. Grip and pull.”
She pulled. I let her guide me down, and she drove her knee up. Once. Twice. The third time she found the right trajectory and the impact was solid enough to register.
“That one would work,” I said.
She almost smiled.
We moved through elbow strikes, basic combinations.
She picked up the mechanics faster than I expected.
The precision that made her stiff in the stance made her efficient with the strikes.
She could see the architecture of each movement, understand the angles, and replicate them with minimal correction.
Her breathing was controlled. Short, measured exhales on each strike, the kind of breath management that came from a lifetime of negotiating with lungs that didn’t cooperate.
She’d learned to ration her air the way I’d learned to ration my tolerance for open spaces. Different limitation. Same discipline.
We would ease her lung capacity up over time. Sudden bursts would do more harm than good.
I had her turn around and positioned her for an elbow strike from a different angle. She tucked her chin before I told her to, a small instinctive motion that shouldn’t have meant anything.
Naomi used to do that. Tuck her chin the same way, the same angle, before she threw an elbow on the training mat at Langley. I’d watched her do it a hundred times.
I settled my hands back on Sera’s shoulders. Naomi’s little sister. The face that had fooled me for a full second in the pool before my brain had caught up and catalogued the differences. The same jaw. The same hairline.
And now I was trying to teach her to survive the same kind of violence that had killed Naomi.
My hands went still on her shoulders. Sera didn’t turn around. Didn’t ask. She waited, and after a moment I let go and stepped back.
“Okay, let’s work on some wrist grabs,” I said. “Different skill set. This is about escaping a hold, not delivering a strike.”
I took her right wrist in my hand. Standard grab, thumb on top, four fingers wrapped underneath. “Your instinct is going to be to pull away. Don’t. Pulling against a grip tightens it. You rotate toward the thumb side and strip the grip at the weakest point. Fast, committed. No half measures.”
I held. She rotated. Careful, controlled, analyzing the mechanics while she moved through them.
She didn’t break free. She tried three more times with the same result.
“You’re thinking about it too much.”
“I’m trying to do it correctly.”
“Correctly is fast. Correctly is violent. This isn’t a data model, Sera. Someone grabs you, you don’t have time to calculate the optimal angle of rotation. You react.”
I took her wrist again. Firmer this time. She twisted. Still too measured, her brain running the physics while her body waited for the answer.
“Stop thinking.” I tightened my grip. “React.”
She tried again. Her wrist turned against my thumb but the commitment wasn’t there. She was still solving it instead of surviving it.
“Someone grabs you in a parking lot, in an alley, in your apartment. They’re not waiting while you work out the geometry. Again.”
I grabbed her. Hard enough that it was real. Hard enough that the math wouldn’t save her.
She broke free.
The twist was fast and clean, and her wrist came out of my grip like it had never been there. She stumbled back a half step from the momentum, caught herself, and looked up at me.
The surprise on her face mirrored mine. She’d done it on instinct. Her brain had gotten out of the way, and her body had answered, and the answer had been exactly right.
“There it is,” I said.
She was breathing hard. Flushed from the exertion, her chest rising and falling, but the half step she’d stumbled back hadn’t created distance. Instead, it had erased it. She was right there.
She was looking up at me grinning, and I was looking down at her and the clinical framework I’d built around the last hour just wasn’t there anymore. It hadn’t crumbled or faded. It had simply stopped existing, like it had been made of something that couldn’t survive what was underneath it.
I kissed her.
I didn’t decide to. There was no moment where my brain approved the action and my body executed it. My hand came up to the side of her face, and I leaned down and my mouth found hers and everything else fell away.
Brief. Her lips slightly parted with the catch of her breath against mine. My thumb found the hinge of her jaw, her pulse hammering under my fingertips. The smallest sound in the back of her throat went through me like a current.
Then we both stopped.
I pulled back. Half an inch, then an inch, then far enough that I could see her face, her eyes still half-closed, her hand lifted toward my chest but not quite touching it. Suspended between reaching and pulling away.
She opened her eyes. I watched her working through the same thing I was. What had just happened. What it meant. What either of us was supposed to do with it.
“Your, uh.” I cleared my throat. “Your form is getting better. On the wrist breaks.”
She blinked. Then something crossed her face that was almost a laugh, except neither of us was anywhere near laughing.
“Thank you.”
“We should work on combinations next. Build on what you’ve got. Same time tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
She stood there for one more second. Looking at me with something behind her eyes that I couldn’t reach and wasn’t sure I could survive reaching. Then she turned and walked out of the gym.
I stood on the mat. Took in the low hum of the ventilation, the heavy punching bag motionless in my peripheral vision. Everything in this room exactly where it belonged, every piece of equipment accounted for, every variable in its proper place.
Except me. I had no idea where I belonged anymore.