Chapter 31
thirty-one
The hours crawled by, the air growing stale with the mingled scents of antiseptic, sweat, fear, and approaching death.
Rue sat with her back against a lab bench, her injured ankle stretched out before her, throbbing in time with her pulse.
She watched as the others settled into uneasy clusters around the room—Mia and Irina still attending to Tyler, whose rattling breaths punctuated the silence; Moretti huddled in a corner with Helena’s photos clutched to his chest; Camille and Noah speaking in hushed tones by the door; Koos snoring softly from one of the cots.
How that man could sleep now was beyond her.
But it was Elliot who drew her attention.
He’d positioned himself near the wall farthest from the door, away from the others. Away from her. The distance felt deliberate, as if he were building walls not just against Praetorian, but against everyone.
She had never seen him like this—not when they’d dangled over that crevasse, not when they’d discovered the bodies at Takahe, not even when she’d broken down in his arms. He’d always been solid, dependable Elliot Wilde, the man with a plan for every contingency, a solution for every problem.
But now she saw all the cracks in his armor.
His face was drawn, those clever blue eyes vacant, staring at nothing. His right hand trembled slightly where it rested on his knee. The cuts along his knuckles had reopened, small beads of blood seeping through the bandages Irina had applied. He hadn’t even noticed.
She recognized that far-off look. She’d seen it once when she was a teenager in her father’s eyes after a hostage rescue went wrong in Myanmar—the thousand-yard stare of someone facing not just mortality, but failure on a scale that shook their very identity.
Mom had helped Dad through that dark time, held him when he woke up screaming, soothed him back from the edge of hopelessness when he’d thought himself lost.
Elliot needed that, too.
He was drowning, and she was the only one who could throw him a life preserver.
Rue pushed herself up, wincing as her ankle protested, and limped across the room. She lowered herself beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched. He didn’t acknowledge her presence, just kept staring at that invisible point on the far wall.
“Hey,” she said softly.
No response.
“Elliot?”
His eyes flicked toward her briefly, then away. “You should rest your ankle,” he said, flat and hollow.
He was the one hurting, but he was still trying to take care of her. “My ankle’s fine.” It wasn’t, but that hardly mattered now. “You look like hell.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I’m fine.”
“Bullshit.”
He didn’t argue, which worried her more than anything. Elliot always had a comeback, always met her challenge with one of his own. This silent surrender wasn’t him at all.
She nudged his shoulder with hers. “Talk to me, El.”
His throat worked as he swallowed, but still, he didn’t look at her. “What’s there to say?”
The flatness in his voice scared her more than Praetorian’s guns or the black filaments creeping through Tyler’s veins.
“We’re going to get out of this,” she said with more confidence than she felt.
A bitter smile twisted his lips. “Are we? Because from where I’m sitting, we’re trapped in a lab while my own cousin helps Praetorian turn us all into science experiments. I’ve got nothing, Rue. No plan. No backup. Nothing.”
His hand trembled more violently now. She covered it with her own, feeling the heat of his skin, the roughness of his bandages.
“That’s not true,” she said. “You’ve got me.”
He finally turned to look at her, and the raw devastation in his eyes stole her breath. “And what good is that going to do either of us? I can’t protect you. I can’t protect any of them. I’ve failed at the one thing I’m supposed to be good at.”
“That’s bullshit,” she said, keeping her voice low. “You haven’t failed at anything.”
“My cousin is working for Praetorian.” The words came out ragged, like they’d been torn from somewhere deep inside him. “My own blood, Rue. What does that say about me? About my family?”
“It says Cade made a terrible choice. It doesn’t say anything about you.”
“Doesn’t it?” His laugh was hollow. “We’re all cut from the same cloth. Duty and family above everything. Except he chose... this.” He gestured vaguely at the door, at the guards beyond, at the whole fucked-up situation.
Rue had never been good with words—not the comforting kind, anyway. She could talk trash with the best of them, could spin wild stories around a campfire, could flirt her way past most obstacles. But this kind of raw pain? She had no map for that terrain.
“Listen to me,” she said, gripping his hand tighter. “You are not Cade. You are not responsible for his choices.”
“I should have seen it coming. Should have noticed something was off when he left Wilde Security.”
“How could you possibly?—”
“It’s my job to see things coming.” The words came out like they’d been torn from somewhere deep and raw. “It’s what I do, Rue. I’m the planner. The one who maps out every possibility, every contingency. I’m supposed to keep three steps ahead of everyone else.”
She watched his profile in the dim light—the tight set of his jaw, the hollow beneath his cheekbone, the way his throat worked as he swallowed. He looked exhausted beyond measure, and... haunted.
“Nobody could have predicted this,” she said.
“I should have.” His voice dropped to barely a whisper. “It’s all falling apart, and I can’t... I can’t fix it.”
The raw pain of his words twisted in her chest like a blade. She’d never heard him sound so lost, so utterly without direction.
“This isn’t on you, Elliot.”
He laughed, a harsh, broken sound that contained no humor.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Trouble. It’s all on me, and I couldn’t get a signal out to my family.
I couldn’t protect you.” He scrubbed a hand over his face.
“Do you know what happens if we don’t stop this?
If Praetorian gets that pathogen off the continent?
It could kill millions, Rue. And I’m sitting here, completely useless. ”
“You’re not useless.”
If he heard her, he gave no indication.
“I should have planned better.” His breathing had grown shallow, his words coming faster as the carefully constructed walls he’d built around himself began to crumble.
She recognized the signs of someone teetering on the edge of a breakdown. She’d seen it in climbers who’d pushed themselves too far, in expedition members facing their mortality in the harshest environments on Earth.
“Should have insisted on better comms equipment, should have recognized the signs at Thwaites earlier. Should have anticipated Praetorian would have someone embedded with us. Should have...” His voice broke.
“It’s all collapsing, Rue. Everything I’ve tried to hold together. My family. This mission. Us.”
His hands were visibly shaking now, his breathing ragged.
A part of her wanted to run. She was good at running, good at moving on when things got messy or complicated. Good at keeping emotional distance. But the memory of his arms around her in that shower at Takahe, holding her together when she was the one falling apart, held her in place.
“Elliot,” she said softly. “Look at me.”
He didn’t move, his gaze fixed on his trembling hands. She reached for his hand, but he pulled away, curling in on himself like a wounded animal.
No. He wasn’t doing that. He wasn’t retreating from her.
She threw a leg over his thighs, straddling his lap, and clasped his stubble-roughened face in both hands, forcing him to meet her gaze. The despair in his eyes stole her breath.
“Elliot,” she said more firmly. “Look at me.”
He blinked and lifted his red-rimmed eyes to hers.
“You can’t fix everything. You can’t save everyone. Not your family, not the world, not me.”
“That’s not—” He tried to pull away, but she held on tight.
“It is. It’s exactly what you’ve been trying to do your whole life, isn’t it? Always trying to be the one holding it all together, the one making sure nothing falls through the cracks.”
His silence was answer enough.
“But here’s the thing about cracks, Elliot. Sometimes things have to break before they can be put back together in a way that actually works.”
He huffed out a sound that could almost be called a laugh. “Is this supposed to be helping?”
“I’m not done.” She leaned forward and brushed her lips lightly over his. “Do you know what I’ve spent my whole life doing? Running. Running toward danger, toward the next thrill, the next mountain, the next impossible challenge. Never staying still long enough to face what scares me most.”
“Which is?”
“The same thing that terrifies you. Failure. Loss of control. Being stuck in place while everything crumbles around you.” She swallowed hard.
“We’re not so different, you and me. You try to fix everything, I try to outrun everything.
Both of us thinking if we just work hard enough, plan enough, move fast enough, we can cheat fate. ”
He was watching her now, really watching her, the hollow look in his eyes receding as he raised his hands to her hips.
“But sometimes,” she continued, “the bravest thing we can do is stop. Stop fixing, stop running. Just... be in the mess. Feel the fear. Accept that you can’t control everything.”
A shudder ran through him, and for a moment, she thought he might pull away again. Instead, his arms came around her, pulling her against his chest with desperate force.
“I don’t know how to not be the one who fixes things,” he admitted, his voice muffled against her sweater. “It’s who I am. Who I’ve always been.”
“No, it’s what you do. Not who you are.” She reached up with one hand to touch his face, turning it toward her.
“You are Elliot Wilde. You’re brilliant and annoying and stupidly brave and infuriatingly methodical.
You’re the man who held me while I cried, who didn’t try to fix my grief but just..
. helped me carry it. So now let me help you. ”
He lifted his head and eyes searched hers, looking for something—reassurance, maybe, or permission to break.
“You don’t have to have all the answers or a plan for everything,” she told him. “But I do need you here, facing this with me. Please don’t withdraw into yourself and leave me alone.”
The wall he’d built finally crumbled. His shoulders sagged, his head dropping forward until his forehead rested against her shoulder. He made no sound, but she felt the tremors running through him, felt the wetness on his cheeks.
She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close, one hand cradling the back of his neck. She’d never been the one doing the holding before, but with Elliot, it felt right. Natural.
“I’ve got you,” she whispered, echoing the words he’d said to her at Takahe. “I’ve got you.”
They stayed like that, huddled together against the cold lab wall, as the minutes stretched into what might have been an hour. No one approached them; even the others in the lab seemed to sense that this was a private moment, a fragile thing that needed space to unfold.
Gradually, his breathing steadied. The tremors subsided. His body relaxed against hers, the tension draining away by degrees.
“Better?” she asked softly.
He nodded against her shoulder, then straightened slowly, wiping a hand across his face. “Sorry about that,” he said, a hint of embarrassment coloring his voice.
“Don’t you dare apologize.” She kept one hand on his arm, not ready to break the connection between them. “You’ve earned the right to fall apart a little.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “Only a little?”
“Well, we are still trapped in an Antarctic research station with a deadly pathogen and a paramilitary group, so maybe save the complete breakdown for when we’re home.”
“Home,” he echoed, the word carrying a weight of longing and doubt.
“Yes, home. Because we are getting out of here, Elliot.” She held his gaze, willing him to believe it. “I don’t know how yet, but we will. And not because you have some brilliant plan or because I can outrun death. But because we’re in this together, and I’d bet on the two of us in any fight.”
The look he gave her then—part wonder, part hope, part lingering doubt—made her heart twist in her chest. She’d spent so long running from connections, from the very kind of vulnerability she’d just witnessed in him.
But sitting here, stradling his lap, watching the tears dry on his dirty face, she found herself wondering if perhaps she’d been running in the wrong direction all along.
He cupped her face in his hands, thumbs brushing away moisture she hadn’t realized was there. “When did you get so wise?”
“I’ve always been wise. You just never listened because I usually deliver my wisdom while hanging upside down from a cliff or something equally ridiculous.”
That earned her a genuine smile—the first she’d seen from him since they’d walked into this nightmare.
“There he is,” she murmured, tracing the curve of his bottom lip with her thumb. “My Elliot.”
Something shifted in his expression at the word “my,” a flicker of heat that made her pulse quicken. But before either of them could explore that dangerous territory, a wet, rattling cough echoed from Tyler’s quarantine area.
Reality crashed back over them like a bucket of ice water.
Rue’s heart sank as Tyler’s labored breathing filled the silence. The moment of connection with Elliot—fragile and precious—crumbled under the weight of their reality. She reluctantly shifted off his lap, her ankle protesting as she settled beside him against the wall.
Tyler’s condition had worsened. Even through the plastic sheeting, she could see the black veins had spread further up his neck.
“How long does he have?” she asked quietly.
Irina looked up from Tyler’s bedside, her usually composed features drawn with exhaustion and something that looked like defeat. “Hours, maybe less. The pathogen is attacking his cardiovascular system. I can make him comfortable, but...”
She didn’t need to finish.
It was going to be a long night for everyone but Tyler.