Chapter 9
1254 Words
Harper
Warm. Safe. Something solid under my cheek, rising and falling in a slow rhythm that my half-asleep brain filed under "pillow, very good pillow, do not move."
I nuzzled closer. My hand landed on something firm, warm, and distinctly not a pillow. Smooth skin stretched over hard muscle, a ridge of definition that no piece of furniture had any business having.
My fingers, operating on zero supervision, poked it.
It flexed.
My eyes flew open.
Bare skin. Golden-tan, stretched over muscle that looked carved rather than built. A collarbone. Below that, a chest so defined I could've counted the ridges with my eyes closed. My cheek was pressed directly against his sternum, one of my hands curled loosely on his stomach, resting on abs that had no business being that hard under skin that warm.
I poked again. Still real.
Amber eyes opened. Looked down. Found me frozen mid-poke with the expression of someone caught stealing from a church.
I yanked my hand back so fast I nearly dislocated my own shoulder.
"What happened?" I clutched the blanket to my chest. "Why are we in the same bed?"
He blinked once. Slowly. Like my panic was a mild weather event he was choosing not to engage with.
"You passed out," he said. "I called the medic. She said you were fine, just overloaded, needed rest." He shifted onto his back, one arm behind his head, utterly unbothered by the fact that he was shirtless and I was one pillow away from a cardiac event. "Putting a patient on the sofa seemed wrong. So I moved you to the bed."
"Okay. Great. That explains why I'm in the bed. That does not explain why you're also in the bed."
"You slept for a day and a half."
My brain stalled. "What?"
"Thirty-one hours." He said it like he was reading a weather report. "The sofa is six feet long. I'm six-four. I gave you a full night. After that, I made a practical decision."
His eyes dropped to my hand, the one that had been poking his chest three seconds ago. "Nothing happened. In case you were wondering."
"I wasn't wondering!" My voice came out about two octaves too high. "Zero thoughts. Completely blank up here."
"Good." He sat up. The sheets pooled around his waist in a way that should've been illegal. "Then come eat breakfast."
I scrambled to the opposite edge of the bed, dragging the blanket with me like armor. "Hold on. Didn't you literally say 'don't touch my food' on day one?"
One eyebrow. Just the one. "You don't want to eat?"
"I want to eat. I absolutely want to eat. I'm just noting the policy change for the record."
"Noted. Get up."
Breakfast was grilled eggs, fresh bread, sliced fruit, and coffee that tasted like it came from an actual bean instead of whatever powdered substance E-class got rationed.
I ate like I'd been hibernating, which technically I had.
Vane ate across from me in silence. Not the hostile kind from three days ago. Something quieter. He refilled my coffee without being asked. I pretended not to notice.
We were clearing the table when his comm buzzed.
"Medical wing. Routine physical." He scanned the message, mouth thinning. "Two hours. They don't need you there."
"I'll survive."
He grabbed his jacket and paused at the door. "Stay here until I'm back."
"Yes, sir. Want me to sit and roll over too, or is staying enough?"
The door closed. I could've sworn I heard a breath through it that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
After he left, I wahshed the dishes, checked my phone, left Maia a voicemail about the eggs. Wandered the suite. Ate a strawberry out of pure rebellion.
About thirty minutes in, someone knocked.
A medic I didn't recognize stood in the corridor, tablet in hand, expression tightly professional. "Guide Ellis? I'm from the monitoring division. Sentinel Vane's check-up triggered an irregular psychic waveform. We need you on-site to stabilize."
He turned the tablet toward me. Vane's comm ID. Medical wing header. The words IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE REQUIRED in red block letters.
The memory of his claws buried in his own thigh flashed hot behind my eyes.
"Let's go."
We moved fast through the main corridor. Left past B-block, right at the security junction. Standard route to Medical. I'd walked it once during orientation.
Then we turned left again where we should've gone straight.
The corridor numbers changed. Section M became Section R. The overhead lights shifted from white to industrial yellow. The walls narrowed.
"This isn't the way to Medical."
"Shortcut," the medic said without turning. "Construction on the main route."
The next hallway had no windows. No cameras that I could see. The air tasted different. Damp. Old.
I stopped walking. "I want to see that message again."
"We're almost there, Ms. Ellis."
"Show me the message."
He didn't turn around. His hand went to his belt.
The door beside me opened. Not opened. Swung. A palm hit my back and I was through it before I could scream.
I hit the floor. Concrete. The door slammed shut behind me and the lock engaged with a sound that went through my whole skeleton.
My comm was dead. I checked it twice. No signal. No network. Nothing.
The room was bare. Gray walls, gray floor, a single overhead light buzzing at a frequency that made my eyes water. No furniture. No exits.
Except one.
On the far wall, a massive containment door, marked with three red stripes I'd seen only in the highest-clearance sections of Camp 07. Maximum threat. S-class containment. The kind of door they built for things they never intended to let out.
The locks disengaged one by one. Each one a heavy metallic chunk that echoed through the empty room.
Then it opened.
A man stepped out.
He was enormous. Not just tall but wide, built like someone had stacked a wall of muscle on top of a war machine and given it legs.
Scars ran across every visible inch of skin, white and raised, layered over each other like a roadmap of every battle he'd ever survived. His collar pulsed a deep, steady crimson, the gem almost black at the center.
But the thing that dropped me wasn't his size.
It was the pressure.
A wave of psychic force hit me like a wall of black water. No sound. No heat. Just weight. Pressing down on every nerve ending I had. My knees buckled. My vision tunneled. The air left my lungs like someone had vacuum-sealed the room.
Where Vane's loss of control burned like wildfire, this was the opposite. Cold. Silent. The slow, indifferent pressure of an ocean floor, where no light reached and nothing survived.
His eyes were open. Empty. Whatever this man had been before the virus ate him alive, there was nothing left. The camp had a word for Sentinels like this.
Destroyer.
Sentinels who had passed the point of no return. No Guide had ever matched one. No Guide had ever survived trying.
And someone had locked me in a room with one. They wanted me to die.
He took a step toward me.
My arms shook. My vision blurred at the edges. Every instinct I had screamed to curl up and disappear.
But somewhere under the terror, in the place that had answered when Vane was chained to a floor, something else stirred. Faint. Stubborn. Refusing to die.
I raised my right hand.
And reached for his collar.
- Writer
