Zubair took the pressure in his chest, the heat in his hands, and shoved it out. Not at the walls, not at the door, but along the line Psycho had briefly made.
Like pouring fire down a live wire.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then there was an explosion that rocked his world and changed everything that he ever thought he knew.
He felt her, and it was so much clearer this ti. Not a flash. Not a vague pressure.
Her.
It wasn’t a picture. It wasn’t a voice he heard with his ears. It was awareness brushing directly against his own. Thick. Heavy. Calr than he expected.
And behind it—sothing that might have been her creature—teeth and darkness and river-water, amused and ancient.
You’re loud, it comnted, in a texture that wasn’t quite words. But that’s to be expected. Fire always is.
Zubair’s creature flared in answer. You’re late, it shot back.
There was a brief pause before Zubair could hear a lazy, dangerous chuckle. The building is big. The rats are noisy. Hard to find the wolves under all the squeaking.
Zubair’s knees nearly locked.
He didn’t drop. He wouldn’t.
But the sheer relief that hit him then was almost enough to knock him down.
Sera was there.
Trapped, yes. Surrounded, yes. Restrained, yes.
But present. Controlled. Watching.
Alive.
She funneled sothing through the thin connection. Not comfort. Not reassurance. More like... assessnt. Taking stock of them. Checking their bodies and minds. Making sure the n on her line were still the sa blades she’d left in the block.
Lachlan swore softly in his cell. "Okay. Okay, that’s definitely her. I know that feeling. That’s the ’you screwed up my hunt’ feeling."
"She isn’t upset," Alexei countered. "She’s... interested."
"That’s worse," Lachlan muttered.
The link flickered once.
Then Sera’s awareness focused on Zubair.
Just him.
Everything else faded back a degree.
He straightened unconsciously.
"Little river," he rasped. The word slipped out before his brain caught it. "You feel crowded."
There was no answer in words, but the mood shifted. Dry humor cut through the pressure like a knife through tendon.
She agreed.
Her creature pushed closer, a sharp, amused presence. So. The boys learned to knock.
Zubair’s creature bared its teeth in what almost counted as a smile. It’s from the last ti we ate, it replied. It helped.
It shows. Your fire reaches farther. A faint sense of teeth scraping along tal. Sha it’s still behind a door.
Zubair swallowed. "Do you want out?" he asked quietly.
Lachlan made a choked noise. "What kind of question is that—"
"No," Zubair cut him off, still locked into the strange shared space. "Not you. Her."
Another pulse of dry amusent. Sharper now. Hungrier.
Of course she wanted out. But there was more under it. Restraint. Calculation. Timing.
Sera didn’t break things early. She broke them when it mattered most.
Her creature finally gave sothing like words, blunt and clear. Stay breathing. Stay angry. Stay sharp. There was a brief stab of colder frustration, focused sowhere else entirely. I’m busy.
Zubair frowned. "Busy how?"
He caught just a fragnt before she throttled the link—brief impression of Elias’s scent, rcer’s thin clinical voice, the sensation of tal against her skin and a needle in her arm. Elias stepping between scalpel and flesh.
Then it snapped shut.
His creature snarled. She cut us off.
"Because we’ll get her killed if we keep pulling," Zubair answered.
His chest hurt.
Not from exertion. From having that presence ripped away so fast.
Alexei let out a slow breath in his cell. "Psycho says that’s all we get for now."
"Better than nothing," Lachlan ground out. "But if that traitor so much as scratches her—"
"We saw him stop rcer once already," Alexei pointed out. "He’s playing close to the blade, but he’s not cutting her. Yet."
Zubair sank back onto the bed.
His muscles humd, adrenaline still running hot.
The creature prowled along the edges of his nerves. You know what cos next.
"More waiting," Zubair replied.
Planning, the creature corrected. Waiting is for prey. We are not prey.
It wasn’t wrong.
He leaned back against the wall and let his thoughts lay out the situation like a battlefield.
Sera, in so upper-level chamber, wired and watched, tolerating it for now. Elias, walking the narrow strip between cooperation and treason, believing he could stay on the right side of both. Alexei’s Psycho weaving thin, careful threads through whatever weird ntal space lay between them. Lachlan ready to rupture sothing the mont a lock failed. Zubair himself, hands on steel, heat growing with every breath.
rcer thought he’d separated them.
And to give him credit... He had.
Physically at least.
But the more the man poked at Sera, the more excuses Zubair had to pull at his own limits, to test how far his fire could reach without breaking the cage.
And now he knew one more thing.
They weren’t in here alone anymore.
Every step rcer took toward Sera shook the line they shared. Every change in her heart rate, in her patience, in her decision to keep tolerating this, would ripple through their creatures long before a guard reached for a radio.
They would feel when things shifted.
They would know when enough was enough.
Zubair flexed his fingers and felt the tal answer—just a little. A tiny give. Not much. But there.
Lachlan groaned. "This waiting is eating ."
"Good," Zubair told him. "Let it. Hunger makes you faster when it’s ti."
Alexei chuckled softly. "He’s right."
Lachlan muttered sothing inventive, obscene, and definitely not anatomically possible, but he didn’t hit the bars again.
Zubair closed his eyes.
The creature lay down inside him—if a thing made of fire could ever be said to lie down—coiled and ready, not sleeping.
We have a line to her now, it mused. Thin. Small. But there. When she pulls, we answer. When she burns, we follow. If we want it stronger, we need to be prepared to eat more.
"And when the door opens?" Zubair asked, not overly upset about the idea of getting stronger.
And he didn’t an the cell door. Not really.
He ant the bigger one. The mont Sera stopped tolerating and started tearing.
The creature’s answer was simple. Then we stop thinking about walls, and we start thinking about exits. For us. Not for them.
Zubair’s lips curved, humorless and sharp. "Good."
Above them, sothing in the facility bood softly—a door, a distant piece of equipnt, a shift in power flow. Hard to tell. It didn’t matter.
He wasn’t listening to the building anymore.
He was listening to the thin, faint place in his chest where Sera’s presence had brushed him and might soday settle fully.
For the first ti since the CDC locked the block behind them, the cage didn’t feel permanent.
It felt temporary.
Like a bad idea waiting to et a worse consequence.
He flexed his hands again.
Heat answered under his skin.
Not yet, he told it.
Soon.
The creature purred like a furnace. When she calls, we burn.
And this ti, when the door opened, he promised himself, he was not going to stop at just one.
Reviews
All reviews (0)