25. Caleb
TWENTY-FIVE
Caleb
I moved with Zach at my shoulder, matching his pace, controlled and quiet, with comms first as the plan, until we turned a corner and I froze, my hand coming up as two figures resolved ahead of us—small, too small—and Zach stilled beside me, reading it at the same time I did as we both lowered our weapons a fraction without needing to say anything, because these were the collared guards that Noah talked about.
Their eyes went wide with fear the second they saw us, their bodies bracing for pain, and I forced myself to slow everything down, deliberate and readable as I shook my head once and lifted a finger to my lips in a clear signal for silence.
They froze, which told me all I needed to know about what they’d been conditioned to expect, and I stepped closer carefully, keeping my hands visible and my posture nonthreatening, then gestured behind them, back the way we’d come, indicating the route out rather than the danger ahead.
“Unalarmed side door,” I whispered, keeping my voice low and steady. “You need to leave. Now.”
They froze, then one of them lifted a shaking hand to the collar at his throat, eyes locked on mine, asking the question without words. I nodded once, giving him the only reassurance I could without breaking the moment.
“We’re going to neutralize those,” I whispered. “You need to go.”
There was a beat where neither of them moved, and then one of them spoke, voice thin with fear. “Noah’s with him. We’re not leaving him.”
I swallowed that down and kept my focus on them, on the immediate objective, because panic would unravel this faster than anything else. “We’re getting Noah,” I said, holding his gaze, making sure he believed it. “That’s happening. But right now, you go. Side door. No noise.”
They hesitated, fear and loyalty pulling them in opposite directions.
“Go,” I said again, quieter this time but sharper, enough to cut through the hesitation.
That did it.
They slipped past us and into the dark, trusting us enough to follow the path we’d given them, and I watched until they were gone before turning back to the corridor.
I hoped we could get the connection to those damn collars disconnected.
“Comms,” Zach said, his voice low and steady.
I nodded, pushing everything else aside as we headed on again.
The next room we came to—some kind of lounge area with sofas was lit, door ajar enough for light to bleed into the corridor, and I slowed, flattening to the wall as I took a quick look inside.
A man sat in front of a TV, florid face, hair scraped back into a tight ponytail, attention fixed on whatever he was watching, while Noah stood to one side of him, head bent, posture wrong in a way that told me everything about control without needing to see the mechanism, and a single guard lingered inside the door with his back to us, weight lazy, weapon low.
I glanced at Zach and made it quick and clean with my hands—two targets, two prongs, I take the man at the console, he takes the guard—and he nodded once, already changing his angle.
We moved together.
Zach went first, silent and fast, closing the distance to the guard in three steps and dropping him before he could even register the threat, while I cut inside and brought my weapon up on the man at the screens.
“Michael?” I said, and he turned enough to confirm it.
He went for something.
I fired and the shot hit him high rather than center mass, and he folded, but his hand came up clutching a small control unit, fingers tightening even as he sagged, and his voice broke into a wet shout.
“Stop—”
Zach didn’t hesitate.
He fired once, the round hit Michael’s hand cleanly, the control unit dropping from his grip as he screamed.
I was already dropping to a knee and grabbing the device, scanning it fast, searching for the interface, for anything that would tell me how to shut the collars down, my brain switching tracks even as the room tilted with noise.
Michael was still alive.
Whimpering now, dragging himself back across the floor, leaving a smear behind him as he tried to put distance between us and whatever control he thought he still had.
Noah moved.
I saw it out of the corner of my eye, the switch from stillness to intent, the way his hand came up with the gun, the line of it snapping toward Michael with a certainty that wasn’t hesitation but decision.
I stepped between them before he could fire.
“No, Noah,” I said, sharp, immediate, blocking his line, forcing him to look at me instead of the man on the floor. “Not you.”
“He has to die,” Noah said, voice shaking but resolute, eyes burning with something that went way past fear. “He bought all of us. He sold Ezra and Seth—they’re kids—and Eden—” his voice broke, then hardened again. “She’s pregnant, he sold her. He has to die. You must let me?—”
I lifted a hand, holding him there with the same control I’d used on the boys in the hall.
“No.”
I turned to Michael.
He’d dragged himself up against the wall, one bloody hand splayed across his thigh, the other lifted between us, palm out, slow and easy, as if he were the one calming a frightened room instead of the one bleeding out in it.
His eyes flicked past me to Noah.
“Son,” he said, soft, the cadence the reverend had described on the recording. “Son, you don’t want to do this. Whatever they’ve told you?—”
“Don’t talk to him,” I snapped.
His gaze slid back to me, reassessing, the same soft cadence following without missing a beat. “Son. Listen. Your father didn’t want you and we took you in and?—”
“He sold us!”
Michael nodded, “None of their parents wanted them—not one. They were cast out, abandoned, set aside, and I gathered all the children in. I gave them a name. A home. A place at the table. The men who give to this work are good men, son, faithful men who pour out what God has given them so these children might have what their own fathers refused them. I made better lives for them. You don’t take that from a man?—”
“ Care ?” Noah broke, his voice cracked.
“ Care? You’re no better! You sold my sister!
You sold her! She’s pregnant—she’s a kid and you let men use her and she’s pregnant—you sold Ezra, he’s eleven , you sold Seth, you put a fucking collar on me—” The gun came up in his hand again, shaking now, breath ragged.
“You don’t get to talk like that. You don’t get to call anyone son ?—”
I caught his wrist before the barrel cleared the line. “Noah.”
“Let me?—”
“Look at me.” I waited until he did. “This isn’t on you.”
Michael’s voice came again, soft, undeterred, threading into the silence Noah had cracked open like he was filling it with something gentle.
“Whoever these men are, they don’t understand, son.
Your sister—she was being cared for. She was being lifted and given to a man who would care for her, who would?——”
I raised the gun and shot him between the eyes mid-word.
The body slumped sideways and the room went very quiet.
I lowered the weapon, lowered Noah’s wrist with it, and turned him to face me.
“I won’t have that on your conscience, okay?”
Noah stared at me for a moment, breathing heavily, the fight still burning in him.
“The rest of the team is rescuing Eden. Go with Zach, get out of here.”
He blinked at me, coming out of his stupor. “What about Henry and Jack, the other two with collars?” Noah asked.
“Already gone,” I said. “We sent them out. Go.”
Zach nodded and gripped Noah’s arm, tugging him from the room, heading for the rendezvous. It was up to me to find the comms room and download every bit of data I could on this entire enterprise.