JUDAS (BREAKING THE DEVIL'S HALO)

An Acceptable Loss

CHAPTER NINE

Kai's hand went through the window before either of them fully understood what had happened, a burst of movement and noise and then blood, more of it than Judas would have guessed a person's hand could produce, spreading fast across the kitchen tile.

It hadn't been an attack. That was almost the worst part, the sheer stupid ordinariness of it, Kai reaching to close a stuck window latch too hard, the old pane giving way, glass opening a gash along his forearm deep enough that Judas felt his own stomach turn. Three weeks of dodging professionals hired to hurt them, and it was a piece of cheap window hardware that finally drew blood.

"I'm fine," Kai said, which was obviously not true, his voice gone thin, already pale, sweat beading along his hairline.

"You are not fine. We need a hospital."

"We can't go to a hospital, Judas, they'll ask for ID, and every hospital in this city has probably been flagged with our names by now." Kai's other hand pressed hard against the wound, blood already soaking through the dish towel Judas had wrapped around it. "I need a different plan. Fast."

Mia, who'd arrived twenty minutes earlier, was already on her phone. "I know someone. Medical resident, does off-the-books work for sources who can't risk a paper trail. Her name's Ava. She's good. Give me ten minutes."

The call connected almost immediately, Mia's voice calm, giving an address without context. "She's coming," Mia said, hanging up. "Keep pressure on it." She crouched down, taking over towel duty with a brisk competence that surprised him.

"You're going to be fine. I've seen worse come out of a bad print deadline."

"That's not remotely comforting," Kai managed, through gritted teeth.

"It wasn't supposed to be comforting. It was supposed to be true." Mia's mouth twitched, the first real warmth Judas had seen from her since she'd shown up outside his building.

Ava arrived in nineteen minutes, not ten, apologizing before she'd even fully stepped through the door, a medical bag slung over one shoulder. She was younger than Judas expected, mid-twenties, with a quiet, unhurried competence that made the room feel calmer the moment she entered it, kneeling beside Kai without ceremony.

"This needs stitches," she said, already opening her bag. "You're lucky. Another half inch and you'd have hit something that actually mattered." She glanced at Judas and Mia, eyes flicking briefly to the laptops and filings taped to the wall. "Somebody hold his arm steady. And somebody tell me, honestly, why three people who clearly don't want to be found are hiding out in an apartment with a broken window latch and no first aid kit."

Nobody answered right away. Ava didn't push, just kept working, cleaning the wound with a focus that suggested she'd get her answer eventually, one way or another.

"You don't have to tell me," she said, threading a needle with hands that didn't shake. "I've stitched up worse without asking questions. But if you want actual help, it usually goes better when I know what I'm walking into."

Judas looked at Kai, who nodded through gritted teeth, and told her. Not everything, but enough — the shell companies, the drug, the families, the chase four nights ago. Ava's hands didn't stop moving while he talked, but something in her expression tightened as the picture assembled itself.

"A drug that killed people," she repeated quietly, once he'd finished. "And they buried it."

"That's what we're trying to prove," Judas said.

She tied off the last stitch, then looked up at him properly, her hands steady even as something behind her eyes clearly wasn't.

"I lost a patient two years ago," she said. "Sudden neurological collapse, no clear cause. I've never let that case go. I assumed I'd missed something." Her jaw tightened, the first real c***k in her composure since she'd walked in. "What's the drug called."

Judas told her.

Ava went very still. "That's the exact drug he'd been prescribed six weeks before he collapsed. I remember because I looked it up at the time, found nothing, because apparently nothing was ever documented." She stared at the bloodied gauze in her hands like it had personally betrayed her. "I've spent two years thinking I failed that man because I wasn't good enough. And the whole time, somebody already knew, and buried it, and let me carry that." Her voice cracked on the last word, just barely, quickly caught and steadied again.

Nobody said anything for a long moment. Outside, a car alarm went off somewhere down the block and faded, the ordinary noise of a city that had no idea what was unraveling inside one of its unremarkable apartments.

"I want to help," Ava said finally, whatever had cracked through a moment earlier folded back into something harder. "Not just patching people up. I want to actually help find the proof."

"This isn't safe," Judas said. "You've seen what happened to Kai's arm. That was an accident. What's coming next might not be."

"I'm aware of what I'm offering." Something flinty entered her voice. "I spent two years blaming myself for something that wasn't my fault. I don't get many chances to actually do something about that." She looked around the room slowly, at Kai's bandaged arm, at Mia's laptop, at the filings taped to the wall. "If I go back to my normal life now, I'm going to spend every shift wondering whether the next patient who collapses for no reason is somebody else this company decided was an acceptable loss. I'd rather live with the risk of this instead."

Mia caught Judas's eye across the room, something like approval passing between them. Even Kai, still pale, managed something close to a smile.

"Welcome to the world's smallest, most exhausted investigative team," Kai said, flexing his newly stitched hand experimentally. "Fair warning, the benefits package is terrible and the hours are worse. Our last recruit joined over a broken window and a medical emergency, so the bar for entry is either extremely high or extremely low."

"I've survived residency," Ava said, already packing her instruments back into her bag. "I think I can survive this."

Judas watched her pack up, methodical, unhurried, a woman who'd just agreed to risk considerably more than a hospital shift over a decision made in under ten minutes, and felt something shift in the room's fragile arithmetic. Three people had somehow, impossibly, become four. He didn't know yet whether that made them stronger, or simply gave Apex more people to eventually come looking for.

He thought about Priya's warning, days earlier, about the cost of trusting strangers with your life. Ava wasn't quite a stranger anymore, not after tonight. But trust built this fast came with its own particular danger, the danger of moving forward on adrenaline and shared outrage before anyone had fully reckoned with what they were asking of each other.

He suspected it was probably going to turn out to be both a strength and a liability, and that they wouldn't know which one mattered more until it was already too late to choose differently.