22. Novak
TWENTY-TWO
Novak
Caleb was exhausted. It was ten in the morning, and he’d been up all night, eyes fixed on screens, shoulders locked tight with a focus that had long since tipped into something closer to collapse.
He didn’t move when I stepped into the comms room, didn’t acknowledge me beyond a brief flick of his gaze before returning to whatever data held him in place.
That wasn’t acceptable.
I crossed the room and took hold of his chair, turning it so he was forced to look at me. Up close, it was worse—pale skin, shadows under his eyes, the faint tremor in his hands he either hadn’t noticed or had chosen to ignore.
“You need sleep.”
“I’m fine,” he said, already turning back, dismissing me with ease. “Give me an hour. I just need to finish?—”
“No.”
He tried to twist away again, irritation flaring, but I was already moving. I didn’t give him time to argue; I didn’t allow the conversation to become a negotiation. I hooked an arm around his waist, lifted, and hauled him up and over my shoulder in one smooth motion.
“Novak—what the hell?—”
He hit my back with a curse, hands bracing, more in surprise than real resistance. He twisted, tried to push himself upright, carrying him out of the comms room without slowing.
“Let go of me you fucker!”
“You’re not in a condition to make decisions,” I said, voice even. “So, I’m making this one for you.”
“This is ridiculous,” he snapped, though the edge of it was already fraying. “Put me down. I’m not tired.”
I ignored him.
Up the stairs. Across the hall. Into the bedroom.
I set him on the bed, but didn’t give him a chance to get up again, pressing him back into the mattress with a hand at his shoulder, caging him there more with intent than force.
“Sleep.”
“You can’t force me to sleep,” he said, the scowl deepening as he braced his hands against the mattress and tried to push himself upright despite the obvious drag of exhaustion, stubbornness overriding sense as his body lagged his intent and his balance wavered.
“That’s not how this works. I’m not—” he continued, as he made another attempt to sit up, shoulders tensing under my hand, breath catching as if the effort itself cost him more than he was willing to admit, irritation flaring because he couldn’t make his body obey the way he expected it to.
His voice cut off.
I watched the moment it happened, the exact second his body gave up the fight. The tension drained out of him all at once, his eyes slipping closed even as his mouth tried to finish the sentence. He didn’t make it.
Within seconds, his breathing evened out, slow and deep, like someone who had been running on empty for far too long.
I stayed there a moment longer, hand still braced against him, confirming what I already knew.
Asleep.
Good.
I stepped back then, but not far.
He wouldn’t thank me for it.
That wasn’t the point.
I set an alarm on my watch, a precise ninety minutes. Long enough to take the edge off the exhaustion without dropping him too deep. Any longer and he’d wake disoriented, slower than I was willing to risk.
Then I paused.
The bed was wide enough. There was no operational reason not to stay.
I pulled the blanket up over him first, adjusting it with more care than necessary, making sure he was covered, contained. Safe.
After a moment’s calculation, I lay back, staring up at the ceiling, hands flat as Caleb fell asleep.
What now?
The room was quiet, and the part of me that didn’t want to sleep started the pre-op review without being asked, the way it always did when there was nothing else to occupy it.
I ran what we had on Michael.
Michael Jennet. Father Michael at the compound, SaintMichael online, Uncle Michael to the children he’d bought. Three alter-egos attached to one fucked up asshole. Five-eleven. Heavy through the middle. Hair scraped back into a ponytail.
The control unit he had was the first target when we got inside. Without it, the kids weren’t his anymore. The guard was the second. The man was the third. I’d worked the angles already and run them again every hour since, because rehearsal was important.
The buyers above him sat on a list Caleb said he couldn’t get to yet, because the names lived on his hardware and his hardware lived in the room with the closed door. That was Caleb’s piece of the puzzle—get that information. Mine was taking out the man at the screen.
Beside me, Caleb breathed in and out, slow and unaware of everything I was imagining then turned in his sleep, rolling onto his side in a slow, unguarded movement that carried none of the control he maintained when conscious, and there was no hesitation in it, no break in his breathing, no indication that he was aware of what he was doing as he adjusted his position.
He turned toward me, fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt and holding there. I went still, not out of indecision but because every possible response stalled at the same point, caught between action and inaction with no clear directive to follow.
There was no protocol for this, no training scenario that accounted for a sleeping man choosing proximity to me like this and trusting it without question, no framework that allowed me to categorize the moment into something actionable.
I could disengage, restore distance and control in a way that aligned with every instinct I had ever relied on.
I should move him.
Instead, I stayed where I was, every calculation running through my head and failing to resolve into an action that didn’t feel wrong in a way I couldn’t quantify or justify.
His grip tightened slightly, not enough to wake him but enough to confirm that the contact was real.
I didn’t touch him because that would have been a choice, but I stayed there instead, rigid and awake, listening to the steady pattern of his breathing while the situation existed without interference, allowing it to remain as it was because, for once, control offered no clear answer, and I had nothing to replace it with.
I only closed my eyes for a second.
“She’s coming! Get ready!”
Gabriel is crouched over what remains of Brother Matthias, hands slick, breathing too fast, while Raphael is still in the corner with me, pressed back to the wall, and Patrick is by the door.
Only one of us is armed—Gabriel and the knife he took from Brother Matthias, but none of us is staying here.
This insurrection wasn’t planned, but it was happening.
Sister Mary Agnes steps inside and sees the ruin of the body, but she doesn’t scream in shock; she goes straight for the control of our collars around her, and pain detonates, dropping us to our knees as if we are nothing more than switches she can turn on and off.
Like Brother Matthias, she couldn’t know how immune we’d become to the pain.
Gabriel was already there with the blood-soaked knife, and she doesn’t hesitate as she fights him, as she scrapes and shoves and forces the blade back, and it goes wrong, everything goes wrong, because the knife arcs and there is a wet, tearing sound and then blood everywhere as Patrick makes a sound I have never heard before.
And then no sound at all, because she’s cut an artery, and Patrick is down.
Gabriel stabs and stabs, and the air fills with the copper stink of blood, thick and choking, until she’s shredded and still on the stone floor.
Raphael is still watching, and there is nothing else to do as Patrick lies on his back with his eyes open, blood pooling around his neck, a grimace on his face.
A harsh buzzing echoes in my head, a bell that shouldn’t be ringing, and Gabriel is shouting that someone is coming, that we need to get the collars off, that we need to leave.
I’m scrabbling for the control she’d dropped, smashing it under my heel repeatedly until the plastic cracks and splinters and I keep hitting it because stopping doesn’t feel like an option, and Gabriel is there, too close, talking but not shouting, his voice cutting through the noise.
There’s the knife again, and I am done with being at the mercy of anything, anyone, because no one is killing me, and my hands are on Gabriel’s throat and I’m squeezing, feeling the life under my fingers and taking it because it is the only control I have left.
No one is coming to save us.
And I plan on leaving this place alive.