Wendy
The world has narrowed down to the sound of my own ragged, whistling breath and the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of Peter’s boots on the frozen earth.
Everything hurts. It’s a deep, vibrating agony that starts in the marrow of my bones and radiates outward, every muscle screaming as the last of the adrenaline from the hallway burns off. My lungs feel like they’ve been lined with sandpaper, and the cold night air is a serrated blade in my throat.
I’m crashing. The withdrawal is clawing its way back into my skin, turning my sweat into ice and making the shadows of the trees dance and warp. But I don’t stop. I can’t.
I grab the back of his tactical vest, my fingers cramping into the nylon. I’m stumbling, my knees buckling over hidden roots and slick patches of rotted leaves. Every time I falter, Peter’s hand is there—a crushing, grounding weight on my arm, hauling me back up before I can hit the dirt.
Behind us, the sky is glowing a sickly, bruised orange.
The safe house is a funeral pyre, the fire so hot it’s probably melting the coins in the duffel bags.
But the noise—the relentless, heavy thump-thump-thump of the .
50 cal—hasn’t stopped. They’re chewing the forest apart, blind-firing into the dark, hoping to catch a piece of us.
“Status!” Hook hisses from the flank. He’s a ghost in the brush, his rifle raised, his head swivelling like a wolf’s.
“She’s flagging,” Peter rasps, his grip tightening on my waist as I lurch sideways. “We need to slow down.”
“We slow down, we die,” Hook snaps. A branch cracks somewhere to our left—not the wind, not an animal. “They’ve got thermals, Peter. If we don’t hit the creek in five minutes to mask the heat, they’re going to pinpoint us and drop a mortar on our heads.”
I look back. Through the skeleton-fingers of the trees, I see the beams of flashlights. Long, white fingers of light stabbing through the dark, sweeping across the forest floor. They’re closer. So much closer.
The phantom itch returns—the memory of the needle. My brain is screaming for the numbness, for the white light that makes the pain go away. I want to lie down in the dirt and let the cold take me. I want to tell Peter to leave me, to take the money and run until he hits the ocean.
But then I remember the sound of the bullet hitting Viktor’s skull. I remember the way the air felt when I realised I wasn’t a doll anymore.
“I’m… okay,” I gasp, my voice a broken, wet mess. I shove Peter’s hand away and stand upright, the world spinning in nauseating circles. I pull the handgun from my waistband, the metal freezing against my skin. “Keep moving. I’m right behind you.”
Peter looks at me for a heartbeat, his eyes dark and unreadable behind the soot. He doesn’t offer me words of comfort. He doesn’t tell me it’s going to be okay. He just reaches out, grabs the back of my neck, and pulls my forehead against his for one bruising, desperate second.
“That’s my girl,” he growls. “We reach the water, we’re invisible. Hold on, Wendy. Just five more minutes of hell.”
We plunge deeper into the thicket, the thorns tearing at my face and arms, drawing blood that I’m too numb to feel. The ground begins to slope downward, the air growing thick with the scent of stagnant water and mud.
Suddenly, a flare ignites overhead.
The forest is flooded with a blinding, artificial white light. Everything is exposed—the raw, bleeding truth of our escape.
“Down!” Hook bellows.
I hit the mud hard, the breath leaving my body in a wheeze. Above us, the canopy disintegrates as a hail of lead begins to rain down. They found us.
The world is screaming.
The white glare of the flare overhead turns the forest into a high-contrast nightmare of bone-coloured trees and pitch-black shadows.
Then comes the lead. It isn’t just gunfire; it’s a storm.
The canopy above us shatters, raining splinters and shredded leaves down on my back as I bury my face in the freezing, foul-smelling mud.
Thump-thump-thump.
The heavy rounds are chewing through the log I’m huddled behind, spitting wood pulp into my hair. I can hear the shooters now—the crunch of heavy boots, the clipped, professional shouts of men who aren’t afraid of the dark.
“Wendy! Stay flat!” Peter’s voice is a roar against the chaos. He’s pressed against the other side of the log, his rifle spitting fire back into the tree line.
I can’t move. My fingers are locked around the grip of my handgun, my knuckles white and slick with mud. The withdrawal tremors are back, shaking my frame so hard I’m afraid I’ll trigger a round into my own stomach.
“They’ve got us pinned!” Hook yells from somewhere to my right. I see a muzzle flash, then the silhouette of him rolling behind a mossy outcrop. “If we stay here, they’ll just walk the fire in until we’re paste!”
Peter looks at me. His face is a mask of dirt and desperation, but his eyes—those dark, obsessive eyes—are fixed on mine. He reaches across the gap, his hand slamming onto my shoulder, grounding me.
“Wendy, listen to me!” he shouts over the thud of a nearby impact. “Me and Hook are going to flank. We’re going to go wide, left and right. We’re going to draw their eyes.”
“No,” I sob, the terror finally breaking through the shell. “Don’t leave me. Peter, don’t leave me in the dark again.”
“I’m not leaving you,” he growls, his face inches from mine, his breath hot and smelling of copper.
“I’m clearing the path. You stay behind this log.
You count to sixty. If anyone comes over that ridge who isn’t me or Hook, you empty that clip.
You hear me? You empty it until it clicks, and then you run for the water. Do not wait for me.”
“Peter—”
“I love you,” he snaps, and it’s not a soft confession. It’s a battle cry. He kisses me—hard, tasting of dirt and salt—and then he’s gone.
He and Hook vanish into the undergrowth like ghosts made of smoke.
I’m alone.
The silence of the next sixty seconds is louder than the gunfire. I’m huddled in the mud, the cold seeping into my core, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. Every snap of a twig sounds like a death sentence. Every shadow looks like Viktor coming back from the dead.
Ten. Twenty. Thirty.
I’m counting, my lips moving silently. My finger is on the trigger. I’m shaking so hard the barrel of the gun is dancing, but I don’t let go. I won’t be the girl in the booth. I won’t be the victim.
Suddenly, the gunfire from the ridge changes. It’s no longer a steady rain; it’s a frantic, disorganised scramble. I hear a scream—short, wet, and cut off. Then another. Peter and Hook have found them. The butchers are at work.
A shadow looms over the log.
I don’t think. I don’t breathe. I roll onto my back, the mud sucking at my clothes, and I point the gun at the silhouette standing above me. It’s a man in tactical gear, his face obscured by a mask, his rifle swinging toward my chest.
“Die,” I hiss.
I pull the trigger. Once. Twice. Three times.
The recoil shocks my system, but I don’t stop. I watch as the man is thrown backward, the bullets punching into his chest. He hits the ground with a heavy thud, his rifle clattering away. He’s wheezing, a wet, rattling sound that I know all too well.
I stand up. My legs are lead, my head is spinning, but I walk toward him. I look down at the man who came to put me back in a box, and I don’t feel pity. I don’t feel horror.
I feel nothing but the cold, clean weight of my own survival.
“Wendy!”
Peter breaks through the brush, his chest heaving, his knife dripping red. He sees the body at my feet. He sees the gun in my hand. He stops, his eyes sweeping over me, searching for wounds.
“I’m okay,” I say, my voice sounding like it’s coming from a long way off. “I’m whole, Peter.”
He reaches me in two strides, pulling me into him, his heart thundering against my ear.
“The creek is a hundred yards away,” he gasps. “Hook’s calling the boat. We’re going, darling. We’re going right now.”
The smell of the creek hits me before I see it—thick, stagnant silt and the sharp, metallic tang of cold water.
We’re running now, a blind, stumbling sprint through the last of the thicket.
Peter’s hand is a vice around mine, practically dragging me as my legs begin to give out for the final time.
My lungs are on fire, every breath a jagged shard of glass, but the sound of the .
50 cal is fading behind us, swallowed by the dense dampness of the lowlands.
“There!” Hook’s voice cuts through the dark, sharp and urgent.
Through the skeletal branches, I see it. A sleek, blacked-out hull sitting low in the water, its engines a low, muffled thrum that vibrates in the soles of my feet. It’s a ghost ship, no lights, no markings—just our ticket out of this graveyard.
“Go! Go! Go!” Hook bellows, spinning around to fire a final, suppressive burst into the tree line we just vacated.
We hit the mud at the bank, the freezing sludge swallowing my boots, but Peter doesn’t let me slip. He scoops me up, his muscles bunching as he heaves me over the gunwale and onto the deck. I hit the fibreglass floor hard, gasping for air, the taste of mud and adrenaline coating my tongue.
Peter leaps in after me, followed a second later by Hook, who hits the deck with a grunt of pain, clutching his shredded shoulder.
“Punch it!” Hook screams at the shadow behind the wheel.
The engines roar to life, a deep, guttural growl that sends a wake crashing into the muddy banks. The boat surges forward, the bow lifting as we tear away from the shore, leaving the burning woods and the bodies behind.
I crawl toward the stern, my fingers clawing at the deck, and look back.
The safe house is a tiny, flickering orange spark on the horizon now. It looks like a fallen star, a piece of hell that finally burned itself out. The white flares have stopped. The gunfire has gone silent. There’s nothing left but the wind and the spray of the black water against my face.
Peter collapses beside me, his chest heaving.
He reaches out, his hand trembling as he cups the back of my head and pulls me into his lap.
He’s covered in soot, blood, and the filth of the forest, but when he looks at me, his eyes are clear.
The obsession is still there, but the desperation has been replaced by a grim, terrifying peace.
“We’re clear,” he rasps, the wind whipping his words away. “We’re out, Wendy.”
I look at my hands. They’re stained dark, the blood of the man I killed dried under my fingernails. I’m shaking, the cold starting to settle into my bones, but for the first time in months, I don’t feel like I’m waiting for the next hit. I don’t feel like I’m waiting for a door to lock.
I lean back against him, letting the vibration of the boat’s engine hum through my spine. Fifty million dollars is sitting in bags at our feet. The world thinks we’re ash.
“Where are we going?” I whisper, my eyes fixed on the disappearing shoreline.
Peter kisses the top of my head, his grip tightening, his body a shield against the rest of the world.
“To a place where they don’t have names for people like us,” he says. “To the end of the map, darling. Just you and me.”
I close my eyes, the spray of the ocean hitting my skin like a baptism. The needle is gone. The cage is gone. There is only the dark water, the man who saved me by becoming a monster, and the long, silent road to whatever “happily ever after” looks like for the ruined.