Nicholas Quinn had learned early that silence was never empty. In the facility, silence meant observation—meant a choice had been made somewhere above the glass, and it would land on him soon enough. He’d been brought in young, cataloged for reflexes and endurance, pushed until his body learned faster than his mind. They wanted soldiers who didn’t hesitate. He hesitated plenty. He just acted anyway. Every escape attempt, every punishment, had taught him where pain lived and how long it stayed. By the time he finally made it out, his back was a map of consequences.

Caitlin Sweeney wasn’t like him. She hadn’t fought the system head-on; she’d watched it, measured it, waited it out. A week outside hadn’t changed that. They weren’t friends—weren’t anything easy to name—but they’d learned each other’s rhythms in the dark: how long she took to fall asleep, how she breathed when she was anxious, how she planned three steps ahead without announcing it. He trusted her in a way that felt dangerous, and he didn’t interrogate that too closely.

The abandoned house was a rotting thing squatting at the edge of a tree line, its windows boarded badly enough to let in thin stripes of moonlight. Nick sat on the floor with his back to the wall, the stolen rifle resting across his thighs. It felt wrong not to be holding it, so he didn’t try. Caitlin slept against him, her head tipped onto his shoulder as if it had always belonged there. She wore a faded tank top and jeans, a brown work jacket pulled around her to ward off the cold night air, the fabric creased and heavy with use. Her brown hair had slipped loose from where she’d tied it back, falling into her face. In the low light he could just make out the green of her eyes behind closed lids, lashes casting shadows on her cheeks.

He listened to her breathing because there was nothing else to listen to. In. Out. Slow. Real.

Then—something else.

A crunch, too deliberate to be an animal. A murmur of voices, low and clipped, carried by the night air.

Nick’s muscles tightened before the thought finished forming. He eased to his feet, careful, but the movement shifted his shoulder. Caitlin’s head slid off him and bumped lightly against his arm.