41. Ellie
ELLIE
The frost works through the seams of my gloves, a slow, biting burn against my knuckles as I watch the glow of the compound pulse in the dark. It doesn’t look like a fortress from here. It looks like a laboratory for a life I’m trying to forget.
Killian is sat beside me with his legs wide, checking the tension on his rifle sling for the fifth time. He's doing it for the same reason I'm fiddling with my gloves, to give his fingers something to do besides reaching for me.
He told me to run. To get as far away as possible if he goes dark. But looking at the hard line of his jaw, I realize I’m not going anywhere. I’m terrified of the words that will turn his eyes into empty glass, but I’m more terrified of the man he’ll be if I’m not there to pull him back.
The white wing of the paper swan looks absurd tucked behind his ballistic vest. I felt like a fool when I gave it to him, but folding it was the only way I could stay half-sane in the safehouse.
Now, in the eye of the storm, I’m desperate enough to hope that a bit of folded paper is enough to anchor him.
"Killian," I say, my voice barely making it over the hum of the engine.
He stops messing with the nylon strap. He won't look at me, but I see his jaw tighten. "Tell me you checked the clip on that Glock."
"I've checked it three times, Killian."
"Check it again," he rasps. "Jackson says the lobby is all glass and marble. If you miss that first guard, you’re standing in the light with nowhere to go."
"Killian, look at me."
He doesn't. He stares through the glass while the heater hums, the muscles in his jaw working overtime. Then he lets the rifle go and reaches for me, his hand wrapping around the back of my neck. His thumb is rough, pressing into the base of my skull, a heavy, familiar weight that says he’s still in there.
"If he gets in my head," he says, his voice a low, dry sound. "You don't stay, Ellie. You don't try to be the doctor. You run. Because if I hurt you... I won't live with myself."
"No," I say, leaning into his palm. "I stay. And I find you. Julian doesn't get to own you."
He searches my face for a long second, his eyes dark and wide in the moonlight.
He doesn't agree, but he leans in, pressing a hard, desperate kiss to my forehead. He stays there for a beat, his forehead dropped against mine with his eyes closed, as if he’s breathing me in one last time before pulling away.
"Their electronic systems going dark in ten," Jackson’s voice is a dry rasp in the earpiece.
The floodlights vanish. The white-out of the snow swallows the compound for a few seconds before the dull red of the backup generators kicks in. The hum of the mountain changes, and now the silence of dead electronics is louder than the wind.
The SUV jerks to a stop at the edge of the ridge. The door clicks open, and the freezing mountain air rushes in, stripping away the cabin's heat in a second. We move as one. Our boots hit the frozen ground with a crunch.
"Gabriel north. Kai south," Killian speaks into the comm, his eyes locking on mine for one last heartbeat before he moves. "Ten minutes, Ellie. That’s the window Jackson gave us before the backups override the loop. After that, the whole mountain knows we're here."
"I'll see you on the other side," I say.
I slide down the embankment, the frozen scree clicking under my boots. I’m not a patient anymore. I’m the variable Julian didn’t account for.
The glass doors are dark, reflecting nothing but the red emergency strobes.
The lobby is freezing and smells of industrial lemon cleaner and floor wax.
My boots are loud on the marble, echoing into the vast space, announcing my presence to anyone listening.
Three hallways branch from the central lobby, leading deeper into the compound, but I take the center path.
According to the blueprints Kai pulled, Julian’s private office is on the second level.
I’m thirty feet from the elevators when the first guard rounds the corner.
He’s relaxed, his rifle slung low. Not a care in the world, waiting for a shift change until he sees me. His face drops. His hands scramble for the rifle.
I pull the trigger.
The Glock kicks back, a sharpness that vibrates up my arms. The first round spins him.
The second takes him in the center of his chest. He collapses, his boots scraping the floor as he tries to stand on legs that won’t work anymore.
The smell of burnt sulfur and gunpowder is sharp, stinging the back of my throat.
I step over the dark pool on the white floor without looking down.
The elevator arrives with a mechanical groan, sliding the doors open to reveal mirrored panels.
For a second, I don’t recognize the woman looking back.
She is pale and smudged with dirt, her eyes reflecting the light until they look like glass.
I watch the stranger in the glass, the way her finger doesn’t tremble on the trigger, the way she doesn’t even blink. I watch her until the doors close.
The second floor is a corridor of glass and dark wood, Julian’s executive wing. It smells of expensive leather and carries the low, persistent hum of server racks. It’s the kind of quiet that makes every heartbeat in my ears feel like a drum.
I’m halfway down when the silence breaks. A door at the far end kicks open. Two guards fly through, the sudden crack of gunfire flaring, a deafening echo of shots in the narrow hall.
The first burst of fire shatters the glass partitions. I dive behind a mahogany desk as shards rain down in a sharp, glittering sleet. I’m showered in splintered wood and I can taste the chalky grit of the walls on my tongue. My ears are ringing.
I wait for the rhythm to break. As soon as the firing sputters, I roll out. I fire three times, the recoil jarring my teeth. One guard goes down hard, his body slamming into the doorframe. The other tries to scramble for cover, but I’m faster. Two rounds into his chest and he hits the carpet.
I reload the way Killian taught me. Eyes on the hallway, my hands moving without me having to tell them what to do. The metallic click of the magazine seating home is the only thing I can hear over the ringing in my ears.
I find the office at the end of the hall. The double doors of dark oak are slightly open, and I can hear the mechanical whine of a shredder catching on too many pages at once.
I push the door open with the muzzle of the Glock.
Julian Ross is hunched over the machine, his suit jacket discarded on his chair.
He looks like an aging executive in a charcoal suit, his skin sallow and pasty in the strobe of the emergency light.
When he sees me, his hand jerks, and the paper he was holding misses the shredder and flutters to the polished floor.
"Eleanor," he says. His voice is greasy. "You're trespassing."
I keep my gun pointed directly at him. "Move away from the desk, Julian. Now."
"You look healthy. Usually, they don't recover that quickly. Grace was always too heavy-handed." He wears a trace of a smile.
Hearing her name makes my palms sweat.
“Nothing is ever truly over in this lab, Eleanor. Death is simply a reconfiguration. Did Killian tell you otherwise? Did he make you believe he was your hero? Your father would be so disappointed in how much of his work you’ve destroyed.”
He lets out a breathless, ugly laugh. "And when I told Killian to end it, he wanted to feel the life leave your father's body. He wanted to be close enough to hear Gregory’s last breath.
He didn't even blink. He just performed the task I gave him. Do you think you’re special?
You're just the next body he's been assigned to carry. "
Everything in the room narrows until all I can see is the barrel of the gun centered on the bridge of Julian’s nose.
My vision is blurring at the edges. My hand is so tight on the grip that my knuckles are turning white.
I want to pull the trigger. I want the jolt of the gun to drown out his voice.
But I hear Killian instead. Breathe. Don't look into his eyes. Focus.
"I know exactly what he is," I say. "And I know who made him. You didn't just kill my father. You tried to make me hate the only thing I had left."
"And look at you now," Julian says. "Holding a gun. Standing over bodies. We won, Eleanor. We turned the doctor into a murderer."
"No." The word booms off the walls of the office.
Killian enters, tracking melted snow across the floor. He centers his rifle on Julian’s throat.
"I wondered how long it would take you to find your way home," Julian says.
Killian’s jaw is so tight, the muscles are bulging. "This isn't home, Julian. It’s a grave. I’m only here to put you in it."
Julian sneers, leaning back against his desk as if the weapons trained on him are mere inconveniences.
"With what? That rifle? You spent seven years in a concrete box living with the things I taught you. You think a few months of playing house with a doctor makes you a different man? Look at her, Killian. She’s terrified of you. She should be."
"Shut the fuck up," Killian rasps. His knuckles are white on the rifle. I can see the hum of tension running through him, the way his muscles are corded in his neck, so tight they look like they’re about to snap. He looks like a man trying to hold back a landslide with his bare hands.
"Every time you touch her, you see my face," Julian continues, his voice sharpening with a sick kind of pride. "Every time you close your eyes, you hear my voice. You didn't escape me. You took me with you. You're still the weapon I built, just better at lying to yourself."
"I will kill you," Killian says. He takes a step forward, the muzzle of his rifle nearly touching Julian’s throat.
"Then do it. Pull the fucking trigger," Julian says. He doesn't blink. "Remind the doctor exactly what kind of man she’s sharing her bed with. Prove that after all these years, you’re still just the one who put her father in the ground."