26. Novak
TWENTY-SIX
Novak
I didn’t like the basement before we even reached it.
The air changed first, heavier, stale, carrying something sour underneath the chemical cleaner that tried and failed to mask it, and I slowed without needing to signal it, my body already adjusting, already preparing for what spaces like this usually held.
No guards.
That was the first problem.
The second was the cells.
Metal gates. Concrete. A row of them stretching into shadow, each one occupied.
Seven.
All girls.
Each of them watched us and probably thought we were a new kind of hell, and I didn’t have time to react with anything useful.
“Eden?” I asked, scanning faces.
The girl at the far end shrank back.
Target acquired.
“We need to get them out,” Kai said behind me, already moving, already assessing locks, hinges, weaknesses.
“Eden first,” I reminded them.
“We’re not leaving the rest of them,” Kai shot back.
I turned on him then, irritation cutting sharply. “No one’s getting left,” I said, voice low but edged. “But, Eden first.”
That was the priority; it had to be the priority, and then Kai found the light switch and flicked it up, flooding the room with harsh overhead light that made every girl, including Eden, flinch.
“Fuck,” Kai muttered.
I closed the distance to the end cell, Kai taking the bolt cutters from my pack as soon as he had the gate open, and I dropped to one knee in front of her.
She was chained to the wall, one wrist secured, a single narrow bed behind her, but she seemed awake and clear-eyed.
I guessed they wouldn’t let the mother of a baby die down here, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t breaking, and when she flinched as I got close, I didn’t stop until the chain was severed and the restraint was gone.
“Up,” I said, keeping it simple, offering a hand but not forcing it.
She hesitated, then took it, unsteady as I helped her to her feet.
“Wait here,” I added, already turning away because time mattered more than reassurance.
Kai worked as fast on the other locks, and between us, we cleared them in under a minute, girls stumbling free, disoriented, scared, huddled together without needing to be told.
I herded them toward the door, positioning myself at the front, Kai dropping back to cover the rear, the formation automatic.
“Stay close,” I said. Everything in me pushed for speed, because speed would break them and noise would kill us, and so we traveled painfully slow with the girls tight behind me. Eden faltered two steps in.
“She’s been really sick,” another girl said.
I scooped her up and adjusted her weight against me without breaking stride as I worked out balance, speed, and our exit route.
“Noah,” Eden said, voice thin, clutching at my shirt. “Noah’s here. I don’t know where they took Ezra and Seth?—”
“Everyone’s okay,” I said, the lie landing clean and necessary as I met Kai’s eyes over her head for a fraction of a second and saw he understood it as clearly as I did.
We had no idea if Noah was okay, and he wouldn’t be unless Caleb and Zach had already found Michael and disabled the collars, which meant we needed to move faster without making a sound.
Outside, the air hit different, colder, cleaner, but it didn’t cut through what we’d come out of, and I pushed the girls into the shadows where two more kids stood waiting, both collared, both frozen in that same braced posture I was starting to recognize.
The moment the girls reached them they bunched together on instinct, as if safety existed in numbers even if none of us could promise it.
I didn’t waste time, dropping to my knees in front of the first one and snapping the cutters into place, metal giving under pressure as I worked through removing each collar in turn, quick, efficient.
“Where’s Noah?” Eden asked, voice stronger now but still heavy with fear, and I glanced back toward the door, already calculating how I’d get Caleb to be the one to explain if we didn’t rescue her brother.
“He’s safe,” I lied. The door opened and Zach stepped out with Noah at his side, and there was her brother. I adjusted without missing a beat, as Noah stumbled toward us, his collar different, more complex, metal set into the skin at his neck in a way that made something in me go cold.
I got close, braced him, cut the collar as best I could and yanked.
He gasped as the mechanism came free, blood welling but not enough to slow us, not enough to matter right now, and I pressed a hand briefly to steady him before tapping my comm.
“Everyone’s out,” I said. “Status.”
A beat.
“Caleb?”
“Downloading,” he said in my ear. “Get everyone out of a potential blast radius. I mean, seriously far away.”
“What?” That sounded like a warning, and I didn’t like that at all. What blast radius? “I’m coming to you.”
“No! Get everyone away.”
Fuck that.
I turned to Zach and Kai, already shifting into the next phase. “Get them out of here,” I said. “Back to the cabin. It’s a long walk, but it’s safe. We’ll be right behind you.”
Zach nodded, already organizing the group, Kai falling in at the rear without argument, his earlier chaos gone, as they began to head into the dark, Zach scooping Eden into his arms.
I didn’t watch them go.
I turned back toward the building.
Caleb was still inside.
That overrode everything.
I moved fast, back through the door, up the stairs, taking them two at a time, heading straight for where he would be, because there was no version of this where I left him behind.
I found him in the comms room, hunched over the system, screens alive with code and progress bars, and the second he saw me, he didn’t slow, didn’t stop, just said, “I told you to leave.”
“And I didn’t.”
“Fuck,” he snapped, then sighed heavily. “Is everyone else away?”
“Yes.”
He indicated the keyboard. “Downloading is set to trigger a failsafe, and I can’t find a way around it.”
“Failsafe, how?”
“Bastardized military tech set up by whoever messed around in here, explosion.”
“How much longer?” I asked, already scanning the room, the exits, the angles, and the time.
“One minute thirty to download once I engage,” he said. “Failsafe triggers at three.”
“Intel is not as important as your life,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“I’m not leaving. This intel only exists here—we have to do this now . You can leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Leon—”
“No.”
We didn’t speak after that. He pressed the download, the countdown running in my head as loud as anything on the screens while he worked, and I held the door, measuring seconds in breath and distance, until the progress bar hit complete and he yanked the drive free and we moved.
Fast.
No stealth left.
We ran.
Along the corridor, around the corner, stairs ahead, leaping bodies, and I could imagine the building shifting around us, systems cycling, something deep in the structure waking up, and I pushed him ahead of me, one hand at his back, keeping him focused on the exit, putting myself between him and any danger.
We hit the main floor as the first alarm tore through the place, harsh and absolute, and I didn’t break stride, driving him toward the door, toward air, toward anything that wasn’t this.
“Go,” I said.
He didn’t argue.
We cleared the threshold as the countdown hit zero in my head and the world behind us detonated, the force of it slamming into us like a wall, heat and pressure and sound collapsing into one violent moment, and I reacted without thinking, grabbing him and throwing him forward, using everything I had to get him clear as the blast chased us out into the night.
We hit the ground hard, me over him, arms around him, taking the impact, shielding, absorbing, the shockwave rolling over us as debris rained down and the building behind us tore itself apart.
I didn’t try to turn until the pressure eased and the pain in my back was manageable.
Didn’t let go until I was sure he was breathing.
Then I dragged air into my lungs.
He was alive.
My job was done.