15. Ellie #2
I peel back the shredded mesh. The wound is messy. An ugly, deep gash slashing across his bicep where the bullet tore through the muscle. If it had been an inch to the right, it would have shattered bone.
My eyes are fixed on the wound. I probe the flesh with the forceps, the blood making the metal slippery.
I search the muscle until I feel the click of steel against lead.
Dissociation, the therapist part of my brain supplies from very far away.
A defense mechanism to maintain functioning during acute trauma.
It’s the only way my fingers stay steady as I draw the forceps out.
The lead shard emerges, and I drop the piece into the silver bowl on the counter.
Clink.
My fingers remain steady as I thread the needle. Needle in. Pull. Knot. Snip. Repeat. Seven sutures later, the wound edges are pulled tight, and I'm still hovering somewhere outside my own body, watching a stranger save a man’s life.
“Your old man taught you this?” Kai asks, his voice sounding small in the quiet.
“He believed in practical skills.” I wash my hands in the kitchen sink, the pink-stained water swirling down the drain. “Said you never know when you'll need to save someone.”
Or take one, I think, but I don’t say it.
“This should hold.” I drop the bloody scissors into the bowl. “Try not to tear it open before sunrise.”
“Yes, ma'am," Kai’s smile is faint. There's a new kind of respect in his eyes.
Gabriel returns, his expression grim. "You called it on the drainage culvert. Mud on the entry pipe and the brush is flattened. They must have sent a scout through.”
"They're looking for a weak spot." Killian racks the slide of his sidearm, the heavy metallic slap echoing off the kitchen tiles. “Fuck.”
Jackson’s fingers hit the keyboard, pulling up the schematic of the lower levels. The blue icons for our people are huddled in the center of the grid, a small sanctuary in a dark, spreading void.
Killian doesn’t look away from the monitors, but he reaches back and finds my hand, his grip like iron. “You don’t leave my side. Not for a second. If I tell you to drop, you drop. Clear?”
“Got movement in the tunnels,” Jackson says, his voice cutting through the hum of the monitors. “Heat signatures coming in from behind the gates.”
I step back, the cold kitchen wall hitting my shoulder. I can feel the panic, the sudden gravity of the situation trying to claw its way out of my chest. I’m staring at the monitor, watching the white-hot figures crawl toward the vertical lift like shadows in the dirt.
"They found a way in," Killian growls, jamming a fresh magazine into his weapon with a satisfying click.
"They're moving through the boiler room," Gabriel observes, his voice like grinding stones.
"Most people forget the foundation isn't just concrete; it's a history of shortcuts.
" He doesn't look at me, but his hand rests briefly on the hilt of the knife at his waist, a gesture of dark, proprietary focus. "We'll catch them in the transition."
"Gabe, Kai," Killian says, already tightening the straps of his vest, "take the tunnel system.
I'll handle the boiler room." His eyes find mine.
The man who kissed my head a minute ago is gone.
This is the version of Killian I first met.
The one who doesn't have room for a heart. "Ellie, stick with Jackson."
They’re fast. One second they’re in the light, the next they’re shapes disappearing into the lower levels.
I watch the monitor as the thermal signatures converge, blue and red bleeding into each other like ink in water.
My heart in my mouth. Muffled gunfire and explosions echo from below, making the floor vibrate beneath my feet.
"Holy shit," Jackson says suddenly, his voice sharper than usual. "Look what I just pulled from their comms."
He switches one of the screens to display encrypted text, his decryption program running in real-time. I read the words twice before they sink in.
TARGET: DR. ELEANOR HART
OBJECTIVE: LIVE CAPTURE
EXTRACTION METHOD: SECURE AND TRANSPORT
INTERROGATION: AUTHORIZED
Live capture.
They want me breathing. Conscious. So they can ask questions I can’t answer and hurt me until I break.
I’ve read research on torture techniques and studied the psychological aftermath in trauma survivors.
But what I didn’t account for is understanding it might happen to me someday.
Whatever it takes to make me spill information I don’t know, secrets my father took to his fucking grave, they’ll do to me.
And when I still don’t know what they want—because I genuinely don’t fucking know—they’ll assume I’m lying.
They’ll keep going until there’s nothing left.
My knees buckle, a brief, terrifying failure of my hamstrings before I catch myself on the edge of the granite.
The air in my lungs feels like it's been replaced with liquid lead.
Interrogation. I've testified in cases where interrogation was a polite word for the systematic dismantling of a human soul.
“They aren’t here to kill me,” I whisper, the words barely making it past my constricted throat. “They want me alive?”
I stare at the screen until the letters stop meaning anything. Four lines. My name. Live capture. Interrogation authorized. I know what that word means in practice. I've sat across from survivors and written clinical notes about them.
Jackson’s hands stop. The room is suddenly too quiet, the only sound the humming of the monitors. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t have to.
"For interrogation," he says quietly. "They think you know something about your father’s research. Something you don’t know you know."
"I don’t. My father published everything. I’m a therapist, Jackson. I help people with anxiety. I don’t know anything about government conspiracies."
He finally looks up. For once, he isn’t typing. His face is a grey mask in the low light.
“What?” I step closer. “What do they think I have?”