14. Reth
RETH
The vial is empty. I feel it before I understand it—the warmth spreading slow and heavy through my veins like thick, poisoned syrup. It promises sleep. It lies. It always lies. My body knows first, going heavy and loose. My mind lags behind, foggy, sluggish, fighting to stay above the tide.
I press my forehead to the cold floor. Concrete. That much feels real. Or real enough to fool me for another minute.
Sophia.
Her name surfaces and immediately fractures. Flashes slam into me—her laugh in the Paris kitchen, the taste of her on my tongue, the way she said Nazareth like it could rewrite every scar on my soul.
Then the blood. Always the blood. My hands covered in it. Her blood. Mary’s. I can’t hold the good memory without the horror rushing in right behind it, twisting everything beautiful into something monstrous. I’m so fucking tired. Bone deep. Tired of the war inside my head.
The compass tattoo on my hand. North. North is her. Was her. Has to still be her. Please still be her.
The thought fractures, splinters, bleeds. I see her face—honey hair catching Paris light, green eyes wide and trusting as she looked up at me like I could be more than the monster they made.
Then the blood again. Her blood on my hands, warm and sticky, her voice fading as she whispered my name one last time. Nazareth. Like forgiveness. Like goodbye.
I press my palm harder against the floor, like if I push deep enough, I can anchor myself to her. To the version of the world where she’s still breathing. Still waiting. Still mine.
Don’t let me lose her again.
A sound cuts through the fog.
Wrong sound.
Not Valeria’s measured heels. Not the familiar click of the food slot. Boots. Multiple. Low voices. People moving with purpose through corridors they have no right to know.
My brain tries to sort it—how many, how close, threat level—but the warmth drags at the edges, slowing every thought to sludge. Time feels stretched and wrong.
Metal scraping. Forcing. Something working hard against the lock on the other side of the door.
I push myself up, but the room tilts violently. Walls breathe and pulse like living things. The floor rolls under me like the deck of a sinking ship, and I slam my back against the concrete and stay there, breathing hard through my teeth.
Waiting is all I have left.
Waiting and the certainty that whatever comes through that door will eventually wear her face and bleed when I cut it.
Voices again. Closer now. One of them sounds like—
No. I clamp my hands over my ears, nails digging into my scalp. It’s too familiar. Familiar isn’t safe down here. Familiar is pain. Familiar is guilt. Familiar is the black hole that swallows everything good.
Thud.
The door shudders hard in its frame.
I slide down against the wall, pull my knees to my chest, making myself as small as possible. Not her. Please not her. Anyone but her.
Another impact. Harder. The whole door rattles. Dust sifts down from the ceiling in thin gray streams.
My heart is pounding wrong—too fast, then too slow, fighting the chemical tide that wants to pull me under. The drugs are thinning in places, letting raw panic bleed through like acid.
“Reth!”
“Ian?” I whisper. Or another hallucination wearing his skin?
I’m not close to the door. I’m against the far wall. But the room keeps shifting, corners bleeding into each other. I can’t trust what I’m hearing. I can’t trust anything.
“Step back from the door!”
I’m not near the fucking door.
The explosion comes without warning.
The door detonates inward. Metal screams as hinges shear away.
The heavy slab crashes against the opposite wall with a deafening boom that punches straight through my skull.
Blinding white light floods the cell—too bright, too pure, too wrong for this place.
My eyes burn. Vision fractures into jagged, painful shards.
I can’t see. Can’t think.
The warmth surges, trying to drag me back under, but adrenaline claws up my spine like broken glass.
Shapes move in the doorway. Fast. Tactical. Armed. One drops into a crouch.
“Reth? Jesus fucking Christ—”
Hands on my face. Rough. Real?
“Fuck, man, are you okay? Look at me.”
His face swims through the blinding haze. For one fractured second, it’s Ian—sharp jaw, those fucking dimples. Then it flickers. His throat opens wide. Blood pours down his chest in a hot rush.
No.
I scramble backward into the corner, heart hammering hard. “No—no no no. Not you too.”
“Reth.” The voice cuts through the fog. “It’s me. Ian. Look at me. We’re getting you the fuck out of here. Now.”
The compass on my hand burns like a brand. North. North is her. Has to be her.
The room tilts harder. Alarms begin wailing somewhere deeper in the facility—shrill, rising, getting closer. Footsteps thunder in the hallway. More voices. More boots.
Ian grabs my arm, grip iron-hard. “We don’t have time. Move or I carry your ass.”
Gunfire erupts—sharp, vicious cracks echoing off concrete. Plaster explodes near my head, shards cutting my cheek. Ian returns fire with two precise shots. A body drops somewhere in the haze with a wet thud, and he hauls me up.
My legs are useless, heavy and disconnected, the drugs making every movement feel like wading through tar. He throws my arm over his shoulder and drags me out.
The corridor stretches and bends like a nightmare.
Lights strobe overhead. Memories bleed violently into the present—Paris streets at night, the mountain house in snow, the blood-soaked basement, Sophia whispering my name from the wrong direction, soft and loving, then twists into screaming as I cut her open.
I can’t tell what’s happening now from what already happened. Can’t tell what’s real.
More guards round the corner ahead. Ian slams the first one into the wall, a karambit flashing in his hand—where the fuck is mine?—and blood sprays hot across my arm. I smell it. Taste it. For one terrifying second I think it’s hers. Sophia’s blood on my hands again.
Jesus, stop.
We hit the stairwell. Up. Why up? Everything feels wrong. My mind keeps slipping—back to the cell, back to the blood on the floor, back to Valeria’s smile.
At the next landing, another guard appears. Ian doesn’t slow. He takes him down hard, brutal, efficient. We keep moving, but the footsteps behind us are getting louder. Closer. Too close.
The exit door looms ahead. Real air. Real sky. Maybe her on the other side.
God, please let her be on the other side.
I don’t look back.
The shards follow anyway—cutting, whispering, showing me every possible way this could still end with me destroying the only good thing left in my life.
“Keep moving, Reth,” Ian growls. “Almost there. Just a few more steps.”
So I keep moving. If we can just reach the door… just a few more steps…
Almost there.
I step over the threshold, and blinding light explodes around us.
North.
Then everything goes dark.