32. Killian
KILLIAN
The server rack downstairs hums a constant, low-frequency vibration that I feel in my teeth and the soles of my boots.
I haven't closed my eyes since the basement. I can’t.
Every time I blink, I see her back in that chair.
Vacant, haunted, staring at something that only she can see.
I can still feel the weight of her body against mine when I carried her out. Just skin and bones.
I check the thermal display. The grid is a wash of empty green. North, south, east, nothing but trees and the slow orange streak of a mountain lion on the ridge. It’s hunting. Doing exactly what its biology demands. At least one of us is doing what we were built for.
I head for the kitchen, my own reflection in the dark glass of the hallway, a stranger.
Bloodshot eyes, a jaw that won't stop clenching, the puckered scar on my neck pulling tight. I look like the Ghost Julian built. I feel like I'm back in that box, three feet of dirt over my head, only this time I’m not waiting for the lid to open. I’m clawing at the wood until my fingernails rip.
In the kitchen, Kai is leaning against the counter, staring out the window. He doesn't look up when I enter. He’s watching the treeline, his focus buried somewhere thousands of miles away. God knows where his thoughts are, but I hope they’re somewhere better than mine.
"She’s in the sunroom," Kai says. He won't meet my eyes. "She's been awake for an hour. Physically, she's holding really well."
"And mentally?"
"It's messy," Kai says, finally meeting my eyes. "Grace didn't just hurt her; she cleared the board. Every emotional anchor, it's been submerged. She's running on fumes right now, Killian. The woman you knew is in there somewhere, but she's buried. Don't go in there expecting her back yet."
I don't answer. I grab the two cups and leave him there with his clinical death sentence.
The sunroom is bright and airy, with timber and floor-to-ceiling glass.
I chose the house for this view, the way the mountains punch through the horizon, but Ellie doesn't even look at them. She is swallowed by a woven chair, her frame too small for the olive cushions. She’s wrapped in a gray blanket, staring through the glass panes at a world she doesn't recognize.
The sunlight hits the slate floor in long, sharp rectangles, catching the dust motes.
Her eyes track each speck with an empty focus.
I set the coffee down on the low rattan table.
She tracks my hand, but her gaze stops there.
She doesn't find my face or even move. She sits perfectly still against the backdrop of the pines, her muscles locked like she’s waiting for a blow.
I want to reach out, to touch the hair I used to tangle my fingers in, but these hands are why she’s shattered.
I pulled her out of the basement, but I'm the reason she was in it.
Every minute she spent there was the interest on that debt.
I pull a chair closer, keeping the distance Kai warned me about.
"Is it real?" Her voice is a thin rasp, like it’s being dragged over broken glass.
"It’s real," I say. "Montana. You're home."
She blinks, squinting against the glare of the mountains. The light is clearly making her head ache. "Are... are we safe?"
"For now," I promise. It's a lie, but it's the only currency I have left. I hold out the cup. "Drink this. Jackson made it. He promised it’s better than Kai’s swill."
She takes the cup. Her fingers don't even brush mine, but she looks at me. For the first time, she really looks at me, her gaze piercing through the fog in her own head. "You look tired, Killian."
"I'm fine," I lie.
"Liar," she rasps. It’s the first thing that sounds like her. It’s not an accusation; it’s a fact.
I notice the marks on her wrists where the restraints were, the bruising faded to purplish-green now, three days out, sickly, like petrol colors on a wet floor.
The needle tracks along her inner arms are still visible, though less angry than before.
Kai's treatment regimen is working, at least for her physical injuries.
The psychological wounds will take much longer.
"Killian," she says, so softly I almost miss it.
"I'm here."
"Don't leave."
Two words that simultaneously heal and destroy me. I move my chair closer, still not touching her, but near enough that she can reach out if she chooses.
"I won't," I promise. "Not ever again."
She doesn't respond, but some of the tension leaves her shoulders. She takes a sip of the coffee, her eyes staying on me for a second too long before she drifts back to the window. The clarity is gone as fast as it came, leaving me staring at the shell of the woman I failed.
I don't push her. I just sit. We stay like that for hours, the only sound the occasional clink of her spoon as the coffee turns to ice. I watch the sun move across the slate, then the shadows. The day burns away until the vibration of my phone in my pocket snaps me back.
The temperature drops as soon as the sun dips behind the peaks. I find Gabriel out on the deck later that night, leaning against the rail with a tension that matches the silence of the woods.
"We can't sit here forever, Killian," Gabriel says. "Grace is dead, but Julian isn't. He has resources we haven't even mapped yet. The moment he realizes Grace isn't reporting back, he’s going to turn over every stone from here to Zurich."
The clear Montana sky feels like a clock ticking down.
"I know," I say. I look at the lake. It looks like black glass. "Then we move the war to them. I want Sophia and Toby. They’re the only ones who survived Grace’s earlier trials in Barcelona and Hong Kong. Julian thinks they’re dead, but they have the names of the Originals."
Gabriel’s eyes sharpen. "The Originals?" He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. "We hit them, and we aren't just fighting the Order. We're picking a fight with the people who own the world."
He’s right. The Originals are the shadows behind the shadows.
High-level titans and politicians who treat Julian Ross like their personal R&D department.
They don't just buy hits, they subsidize the research into breaking people so they never have to see the blood on their own hands.
If we hit them, we aren't just target practice anymore, we're lighting a flare and signaling them to come.
"Exactly," I say. "They buy the silence, so they have the most to lose if it’s broken. We hit the source of the money, and we hit the heartbeat of the whole goddamn thing."
Sophia was a prodigy from the Barcelona intake, an analyst who’d seen the faces behind the bank transfers before they tried to scrub her.
Toby was the one they couldn't drown in Hong Kong. A tech-specialist who’d survived the 'washout' when the rest of his unit was silenced. I’d been the one sent to finish them both, but I’d chosen to leave them in the shadows instead.
They owe me their lives, and they’ve spent the last three years off-grid and underground, waiting for the day I finally called in the debt.
"I'll reach out," Gabriel says. "But Killian, the Originals don’t hire lawyers when they’re threatened. They hire governments. Fuck, they are the government. They use the systems we can’t hide from. If we do this, it ends with everyone of us dead or in a cage."
"I've been in both. I prefer the cage I built myself. Find them, Gabe. Before Julian finds us."
I watch him go, his shadow long against the slate deck, already reaching for his phone.
I return to the sunroom. Ellie is still in the chair, but something has changed. She isn't watching the dust anymore. She’s looking at the red marks on her own wrists where the leather bit in.
I sit down beside her. I don't speak, just wait in the silence. After a long minute, she reaches out. Her fingers are ice-cold, but her grip is hard. She isn't letting go. I squeeze back until my knuckles ache, trying to anchor her to the floor, to the room, to me.
She doesn't look at me, but she shifts until her forehead is resting against my arm. I feel her shaking through my sleeve. We stay like that until the mountains disappear into the dark.
Julian is still out there. The seventeen sites are still operational, and whatever Jackson finds in those files is going to change things. But I don't care. Not tonight. Tonight, I'm staying right here.