“Is this all?” Mark asked, hefting the duffel bag in his right hand. The weight felt substantial—reassuring, yet somehow insufficient for what lay ahead. The canvas was worn and frayed at the edges, speaking of countless transactions in Gab’s shadowy world.

Gab lounged in his creaky wooden chair like a king on a throne of rust and splinters, one leg draped carelessly over the armrest. He took a long drag from his cigarette, letting the smoke curl between them before nodding with lazy indifference.

“Should be—unless you added something to your request I don’t know about.” His voice carried the rasp of a man who’d inhaled too much smoke and seen too much darkness. “Everything you asked for is in there. The rest… well, that’s up to you.”

The apartment bore the scars of a life lived in society’s margins. Pale green paint peeled from the walls like diseased skin, revealing patches of yellowed plaster beneath. The few pieces of furniture—a single mattress on a rusted frame, a kitchenette with a sink that had seen better decades, and a refrigerator that hummed with mechanical exhaustion—told the story of a man who traveled light and trusted little.

Mark positioned himself by the grimy window, its glass so smudged with grime that the world outside looked perpetually overcast. His eyes swept the street below.

“Also, about that info you wanted me to look into,” Gab began, unfolding himself from the chair with the fluid grace of someone accustomed to moving silently. He padded to his bed, bare feet silent on the cracked linoleum. With practiced efficiency, he lifted the mattress, revealing his hidden arsenal.

The storage box beneath was a testament to Gab’s profession—files alongside an array of weaponry. Pistols of various calibers, ammunition clips stacked like silver dominoes, and knives that gleamed with lethal promise. Everything a man in his line of work might need on short notice.

He selected a folder, thick with documents, and tossed it toward Mark with casual accuracy.

Mark caught it reflexively, but his hands hesitated over the cover. Inside lay answers he’d been seeking, yet something twisted in his gut—a premonition of truths that might cut deeper than any blade in Gab’s collection. His jaw tightened as frustration bubbled beneath his carefully maintained composure, a nameless dread that felt like standing at the edge of a precipice.

Why does knowing feel worse than not knowing? he wondered, staring at the folder as if it might bite him.

Gab observed the hesitation with knowing eyes, taking another contemplative drag. Smoke escaped his lips in a thin stream as he settled back into his chair. “There’s internal strife going on in the Nest,” he said finally, his tone deceptively casual. “The best time to make a move… is now.”

“Yeah. I know.” Mark’s response came clipped, controlled, but Gab caught the tension in his shoulders, the way his knuckles whitened around the folder’s edge.

“Seems like you know who’s behind it,” Gab mused, studying Mark’s profile with the interest of a man who made his living reading people’s secrets.

“Nah. I just won a bet.”

The words hung in the air, deliberately cryptic. Gab raised an eyebrow, waiting for elaboration that never came. He’d learned long ago when to push and when to let sleeping dogs lie.

If I hadn’t won that bet, Mark thought, his free hand unconsciously moving to his ribs where purple bruises still ached beneath his shirt, I wouldn’t be here right now. Wouldn’t be holding this folder. Wouldn’t be planning what comes next. The memory of those punches and kicks flashed through his mind—bone-deep impacts that had left him questioning everything he thought he knew about pain. Damn, I can still feel how heavy those hits were. Like getting worked over by a sledgehammer with surgical precision.

He straightened, tucking the files into the duffel bag with deliberate care. The weight of the bag seemed to increase with each addition—not just physical weight, but the gravity of choices made and bridges burned. He offered Gab a casual wave, the gesture betraying none of his inner turmoil.

“Thanks. I’ll definitely repay you sometime.”

His hand was already on the back door’s handle when Gab’s voice stopped him cold.

“You’re really going this far… for that girl?”

The question hit Mark like being punched in the gut. His entire body went rigid, every muscle coiled with sudden tension. For a moment, the only sound was the apartment’s ambient noise—the refrigerator’s mechanical wheeze, the distant hum of traffic, the soft crackle of Gab’s cigarette.

For that girl. The words echoed in his mind, carrying implications he wasn’t ready to examine. Was it really just about Elishia? Or was it about something deeper—redemption, purpose, the desperate need to prove he could protect someone who mattered?

Mark didn’t reply. Couldn’t reply. The words lodged in his throat like broken glass.

He didn’t turn around either. Instead, he pulled the door open with measured control and stepped into the alley, closing it behind him with a soft click that sounded like finality.

Inside, Gab ran a hand through his cropped hair and sighed, a sound like that of watching a good man make bad choices for the right reasons.

“Should I say… he’s a lovestruck puppy?” he murmured to the empty room, though his tone suggested he knew it was more complicated than that. Love, in their world, was often indistinguishable from obsession, protection from possession, salvation from damnation.

****

Back at the clinic, Elishia returned from the kitchen to her room, her internal clock running with anxious precision. She’d been counting seconds since Mark left, each tick measured against her growing unease.

Should be twenty minutes since he left, she calculated, glancing at the electric clock on her nightstand. 

She collapsed onto her bed, covering her eyes with her forearm to block out the morning light filtering through her curtains. Strangely, her usually active mind had gone blank—no racing thoughts about what’s going to happen next or about what her future would be. Only the relentless ticking of seconds filled her consciousness, each one a reminder of Mark’s absence.

The silence felt oppressive, pregnant with possibility. In her experience, silence in their neighborhood was rarely peaceful—it was the held breath before violence, the pause before the storm.

Some indeterminate time passed—could have been minutes or hours in her anxious state—when the distinct sound of the front doorknob turning cut through the quiet.

The metal-on-metal click was unmistakable, intimate in the way that sounds in your own space always are. But something about it felt wrong—too careful, too deliberate.

Her bedroom door had been left ajar. Now that openness served a different purpose as the sound carried clearly to her ears.

She turned her head toward the noise, then sat up with sudden urgency, her body responding to instincts she didn’t yet understand.

Without hesitation, she scrambled to her feet and rushed from her room, bare feet silent on the hardwood floors as she hastily made her way down the hallway. Her heart had begun to accelerate, though she couldn’t name why.

But before she could distinguish any voices or identify the approaching footsteps—

A sickeningly sweet smell struck her like a physical blow.

She stopped dead in her tracks, her forward momentum halted so abruptly she nearly stumbled.

Her train of thought screeched to a complete halt, every other consideration wiped away by the alien scent invading her sanctuary.

Is that… cologne? The question formed with growing alarm.

It was a dark, syrupy fragrance—synthetic sandalwood married to tonka bean and exotic spices, heavy and cloying in a way that seemed designed to overwhelm rather than attract. The scent was completely foreign inside the clinic. Mark didn’t wear cologne, and Dr. Chen vehemently abhor such fragrances.

The wrongness of it hit her strongly.

Suddenly, every self-preservation instinct she’d developed through years of living began screaming in unison. Her body knew danger before her mind could list the reasons why. Experience had taught her to trust these primal warnings—they’d kept her alive when logic would have led her into traps.

Her heartbeat shifted into overdrive, hammering against her ribs with increasing urgency.

She held her breath, fighting the instinct to hyperventilate, and began backing away from the hallway’s mouth with exaggerated care. Each step was placed with the precision of someone who understood that the wrong floorboard could mean the difference between safety and catastrophe.

She retreated to her bedroom, easing the door closed with the gentleness of a mother tucking in a sleeping child. The soft click of the latch engaging sounded thunderous in her ears.

That’s when she heard them clearly.

Footsteps.

Not the confident stride of someone who belonged, but something far more sinister—slow, light, cautious. The gait of a predator stalking through unfamiliar territory, trying not to alert its prey.

Someone trying not to wake the clinic, she realized with crystalline clarity. Someone who doesn’t want to be heard.

That confirmation sent ice through her veins. Whoever was out there didn’t just not belong—they were actively trying to remain undetected. In her experience, people only moved like that when they had dark intentions.

She retreated deeper into her room, pressing her back against the far wall as her heart pounded like artillery fire against her ribs. The sound was so loud in her ears that she worried it might give her away.

Then—another sound cut through her terror.

Different footsteps. Heavier, more natural, with the rhythm of someone walking normally rather than skulking. The contrast was immediately apparent.

A voice followed, and her blood turned to arctic slush.

“Who are you?”

The tone was challenging, authoritative. Not Mark’s voice, but someone who clearly had every right to ask that question.

“Eh? Shouldn’t I be asking you that? Who are you?”

The second voice was different—languid, almost amused, carrying the casual confidence of someone accustomed to being in control. Late twenties or early thirties, with an accent she couldn’t quite place.

Neither voice belonged to anyone she knew. Neither belonged in the clinic.

Her mind began racing through possibilities, each more terrifying than the last. Who are these people? Why are they here? Are they the same people as that night? 

More questions flooded her consciousness in a torrent of panic. She slowly moved towards the door and pressed her ear against it, straining to hear every nuance, every clue that might help her understand what was happening. Her entire body trembled with the effort of remaining still and silent.

“Hey, hey, what are you doing with that gun—put that down,” came the second voice again, but now there was an edge beneath the casual tone.

Gun? The word exploded in her mind.

Then—

BANG!

The gunshot cracked through the clinic like thunder, reverberating off the walls with deafening finality.

Elishia flinched so violently she nearly cried out, her knuckles going white as she gripped the doorframe to keep from falling. The sound seemed to echo endlessly in the sudden silence that followed.

A heavy thud followed—unmistakably the sound of a body hitting the floor. Dead weight. Final weight.

Her knees nearly buckled as the reality hit her: someone had just died. Someone had just been murdered twenty feet from where she cowered.

Then came the dragging.

Heavy, deliberate scraping sounds—fabric and flesh being pulled across hardwood floors. The sound seemed to go on forever, a grotesque symphony of disposal.

Then—

Click.

A door closing. 

The back door.

She remained frozen against her bedroom door, counting seconds that felt like hours, willing her ragged breathing to quiet before it gave her away. Her entire body shook with suppressed terror and adrenaline.

But no more sounds came.

No more footsteps echoing through the hallway. No more voices discussing violence with casual indifference. No more evidence that death had just visited her sanctuary.

Only silence stretched beyond her bedroom door—but it was a different silence now. Not peaceful, but hollow. The kind of quiet that followed violence, heavy with secrets and saturated with the lingering scent of that cloying cologne.

Still trembling uncontrollably, she leaned her forehead gently against the cool wood of her door, taking shallow, careful breaths as she tried to process what she’d witnessed. Her limbs felt disconnected from her body, operating on pure instinct while her mind struggled to accept the reality of her situation.

Someone is dead, she thought with crystalline horror. Someone died in the clinic, and I don’t know who or why or if they’re coming back for me.

For what felt like an eternity, she simply stood there, locked in a paralysis born of terror and uncertainty. Every small sound—the barks of a dog, arguing neighbors, her own heartbeat—made her flinch.

Until she heard something that made her heart stop entirely.

Knock. Knock.

Two measured raps against her bedroom door.

She might have fainted right then, might have collapsed into unconsciousness rather than face whatever fresh horror awaited, if not for the voice that followed:

“Princess. It’s me.”

Mark.

The single word hit her like salvation and devastation combined. Relief so powerful it left her gasping crashed over her like a tidal wave, sweeping away every other thought and emotion.

She flew to the door with desperate urgency, her shaking hands fumbling with the handle before finally managing to wrench it open.

And there he was.

Standing in her doorway like an answer to prayers she hadn’t known she was praying. Solid, real, alive. His dark hair was slightly disheveled, his breath slightly labored like he’d run a marathon, but his eyes—those steady, determined eyes—held nothing but concern for her.

Relief hit her like a physical force, so intense it swept her breath away and left her legs feeling like water. The terror, the uncertainty, the paralyzing fear—all of it crumbled in the face of his presence.

Her knees weakened, and she staggered forward—

But he was already moving, catching her in an embrace so strong and secure it felt like coming home after a lifetime of wandering in the wilderness.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” he whispered against her hair, the words a mantra repeated over and over as his arms wrapped firmly around her trembling form. His voice carried absolute certainty, as if his presence alone could remake the world into something safe.

Only then did the tears she’d been unconsciously holding back finally spill over. They came in a rush—all the fear, the helplessness, the terrible isolation of the last hour pouring out in a torrent of relief and residual terror.

A muffled sob escaped as she clutched his dark jacket with desperate fingers, burying her face against his chest and losing herself in the only thing in the world that felt safe right now. He smelled like leather and mint and something indefinably him—a scent that meant protection, meant everything would be all right because he was here and he would make it so.

In his arms, surrounded by his strength and certainty, she finally allowed herself to fall apart.