The sun had not yet reached Beirut when Noel realized she had been sitting at her console for nearly an entire shift with no sensation of time passing. Her eyes burned from the strain, her throat was dry, and her hands trembled each time she reached forward to reattempt a connection. The uplink room—the place she usually found grounding in its orderliness—felt unbearable now. Every surface hummed with a static tension she couldn’t quiet.
The screen in front of her still displayed the same message it had shown at dawn:
>ACCESS RESTRICTED — TIER RED
>HIVE PROTOCOL LOCKOUT ENGAGED
She’d seen lockouts before, usually brief, usually tied to network weather, code conflicts, momentary system chaos. But not like this. Not all day. Not total silence from Princeton. Not when she needed Jax the most—needed to send him the truth of what she and Tyson had witnessed in that freezing underground labyrinth. She refreshed again. Again. Again. Every attempt was met with the same refusal.
CSS and CaliberOne security had walked by twice already—never entering, just glancing at her through the glass to confirm she was present. Was that normal? Nobody else from CRD spoke, not even lingering in hallways. Whatever had swept through the system had reached them too; she could feel it in the air, a tightening of something invisible. An operational pause, unannounced but unmistakable.
She pressed her palms to her temples, trying to summon the clarity she’d been losing piece by piece since the night before. She had not slept. She couldn’t—not after what Ducks showed them. Not after the waking nightmare of those bodies sitting upright, eyes tracking nothing yet seeing everything; not after Tyson’s hollow expression as he watched his friend turned into something that should not exist.
Somewhere in this building, her badge could be flagged. Somewhere in Lebanon, a report could be filed with her name attached. Somewhere in the world, Caliber could already be making decisions about who needed to disappear.
No. Jax needed to know what was going on, and he might have answers. Noel needed guidance. She tried his private queue again.
>REQUEST: SYNC WITH NODE-JX01
>RESPONSE: NODE IS OFFLINE
>RESPONSE OVERRIDE: NODE IS UNDER AUDIT
Her stomach tightened. A full node audit? That never happened unless the upper lattice suspected either a breach or a contamination—something big enough to require administrative controls. If Jax’s node was offline, she wasn’t going to reach him through HIVE. Not today.
Her shift ended hours later than it should have, though she never remembered standing up or checking the time. Exhaustion pulled at her skin, but adrenaline kept her upright. She left the uplink room without signing off—she doubted anyone would care—and walked the cold morning streets back toward her flat, feeling the weight of every unanswered question pressing between her shoulder blades.
Beirut was quiet at this hour, unnervingly so. The streets around the American sector were normally lined with vendors opening shop or Marines jogging past in small formation. Today, there was only a thin chill drifting inland from the water, and the uneasy silence of a city holding its breath.
She reached her building, climbed the stairs, and paused at her door. Something felt off. Not danger. Not intrusion. Something else, quieter. Inevitable.
Inside, her small lamp was still on. She hadn’t turned it off before leaving. On her desk—right where she normally sorted research notes—her printer’s tray was full. A message.
A message from Jax. Her pulse spiked. She dropped her bag carelessly and rushed toward the machine, yanking the warm pages into her hands. The printout was dense, not formatted through HIVE’s standard log structure. This came from an external queue—Jax had routed around the mainframe and directly into her device. That alone told her it was bad. She sat, bracing her elbows on the table as she read.
NOEL —
CAN’T REACH THE SYSTEM. ENTIRE GRID IS UNDER INTERNAL AUDIT. LOCKOUT IS GLOBAL. NOBODY CAN GET IN.
The letters blurred briefly as exhaustion stung the backs of her eyes. She blinked and read on.
SIDNEY BILLINGS IS DEAD. FOUND OFF HIGHWAY 1 IN NEW JERSEY. EXTERNAL CAUSE. NOT NA ACCIDENT.
Her breath caught. Sidney—dead? Dead and found on a highway? Her head reeled.
WE DON’T KNOW WHAT SHE TRIED TO TAKE, BUT CALIBER DOES. THEY KNOW IT WAS HER. THEY THINK SHE COMPROMISED THE NETWORK. AUDIT IS BECAUSE OF HER.
Noel’s hand tightened around the page. Sidney had been acting strange the past few weeks. Tense. Avoidant. More irritable than her baseline. But dead? Murdered? She forced herself to keep reading.
I DIDN’T GET THIS FROM HIVE. GOT IT FROM SOMEONE CONNECTED TO PENTAGON INTEL. THEY’RE SAYING CALIBER’S BEEN FLAGGED AS A ROGUE ENTITY. THE U.S. IS WATCHING THEM CLOSELY. SOMETHING BIG IS COMING IN BEIRUT. A WAVE. NOT SURE WHAT TRIGGERS IT. THEY SAY YOU SHOULD GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN.
Her chest tightened. A rogue entity? What kind of wave was coming? ’Get out while you can?’
NOEL — I DON’T KNOW IF I’LL HAVE ACCESS AGAIN. THIS MAY BE MY LAST MESSAGE FOR A WHILE. IF I GO DARK, KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN. LEAVE IF POSSIBLE. DO NOT TRUST ANYONE.
Her breath was uneven. Another line followed.
YOU NEED TO FLEE. DON’T LOOK BACK. DON’T GO HOME.
She sat in stillness for several moments. Silence pressed on her like a weight. Home. Her mother. The lab. Jax was telling her to abandon them all.
Her mind began to spin—not the frantic spin of fear, but the slow, disorienting drift of someone suddenly unanchored from reality. A part of her felt suspended above her own body. Another part felt rooted in ice.
She read the message again—every word, every implication—until she knew what she had to do. Tyson. She grabbed the pages, shoved them into her coat, and left her flat.
Noel reached the CRD compound faster than she remembered being able to move. She wasn’t sure if she had run the whole way or simply drifted there through some numb, instinctive propulsion, but by the time she reached the access gate, her breathing was shallow and uneven, her hands unsteady against the cold metal railing.
She passed through security automatically, badge up, eyes down, ignoring the way the guards stared at her longer than usual. Everything inside the compound felt subtly off—conversations cut short as she walked by, clipped tones, soldiers congregating in tense clusters. The atmosphere had shifted in the hours she spent at her console, like the city’s tension had seeped into the walls.
Tyson’s motor pool was at the far end of the operations yard. Rows of beige and dust-stained vehicles lined the pavement, each marked with scuffs and dents from weeks of rough terrain. Mechanics moved between them in tired silence, but Tyson’s unmistakable silhouette stood out in the morning light—broad shoulders hunched over the open hood of a Humvee, hands buried in the engine compartment.
Noel hesitated.
Her heartbeat felt uneven and sharp, heavy from the weight of Jax’s warning. Tyson was the only person she could trust. The message said so. And she believed it—instinctively, irrationally, desperately.
But trust required more than need. And their last conversation had ended with Tyson barely holding himself together, his faith in her already fractured after Ducks’ demonstration. She forced herself forward.
Tyson straightened as soon as he heard her footsteps on the pavement. He turned, wiping his hands on a rag tucked into his waistband, brow furrowing when he saw her.
“You look like hell,” he said plainly. “You sleep at all?”
She ignored the question. “We have a job.”
He blinked once. Slowly. “A job.”
“Now,” she said, reaching into her coat as if searching for paperwork she knew didn’t exist. “We’re late.”
“No, we’re not,” he said, voice low. “There’s nothing on the docket. Not for me. Not for anyone. They told us to stand by until further notice.”
She kept flipping through imaginary papers, her fingers brushing the edges of Jax’s message. “We were supposed to take a vehicle out to the southern ridge. You and I. Off the books. It’s urgent.”
His expression hardened with suspicion. “Is this like yesterday? Another one of your CRD secrets you can’t talk about?”
She didn’t answer directly—she couldn’t. “Tyson, please. We have to go. Right now.”
He crossed his arms, posture broad and immovable. “Where? And don’t say ‘south ridge’ like that means something.”
She met his eyes for the first time since approaching him, letting the fear show. Not the trembling kind, but the kind sharpened into clarity. “If I could explain it, I would. But if we stay—if I stay—something bad is going to happen. I can feel it.”
“Feel it?” His jaw flexed. “You’re asking me to disobey direct orders. Again. Over a feeling.”
She stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Tyson, listen to me. I’m not lying to you. I’m not trying to use you. I just… I need to leave this base. And I can’t do it alone.”
His stare lingered on her—a long, searching look. Then he exhaled, the tension in his shoulders shifting. “Fine. I’ll get a truck. But the second I sense something’s off, I turn us right back around. You hear me?”
She nodded, relief flooding too fast and too hard.
He grabbed the keys from a hook inside the pool office and jerked his head for her to follow. Within minutes, he pulled the truck around—a sand-worn Humvee with reinforced glass and just enough fuel to get them off the grid.
“Get in,” he said.
She climbed into the passenger seat, clutching her coat tight as he put the vehicle in gear and drove out through the western service gate.
“Where to?” he asked, suspicion simmering beneath the surface.
She flipped through her coat, pretending to consult the nonexistent manifests. “There’s a site you took me to last week. An old maintenance route. Just start heading that way.”
“Southwest?”
“Yes.”
He grunted and turned onto the stretch of highway that wound out of Beirut and into the hills.
For a few minutes, the cab was quiet except for the steady hum of the engine and the sound of Noel unfolding and refolding papers she wasn’t really reading. Outside the window, early morning sunlight draped the city in a warm haze, casting long shadows across rooftops and narrow streets. The air smelled faintly of sea salt and diesel—just another Beirut morning.
They were ten minutes from the American sector when Tyson abruptly slowed the vehicle, frowning as distant shouts echoed over the rooftops. Noel lifted her head, pulse quickening.
“What is that?” she whispered.
Tyson didn’t answer. He listened—forehead creasing deeper—before shifting into neutral.
Before either of them could speak, a low, resonant boom rolled across the city. It shuddered through the truck’s frame, rattling the windows, vibrating in Noel’s teeth. She turned sharply toward the sound—toward the eastern skyline—just as a plume of black smoke began coiling upward like a serpent rising from behind the American compound.
Tyson’s face drained of color. “That’s the barracks.”
Another explosion followed—this one sharper, closer—accompanied by the rapid clatter of automatic gunfire erupting from multiple directions. The streets below them exploded into chaos. Civilians sprinted between alleys, ducking behind cars. Windows burst outward as shockwaves rippled through the district. Sirens wailed. The air filled with dust.
Noel’s breath caught. “Tyson—”
“Get down!” he barked, slamming the gas pedal.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Bullets ricocheted off the pavement behind them as the Humvee surged forward, throwing her back into her seat. Noel curled instinctively, hands over her head, heart clawing against her ribs. Tyson navigated the chaos with terrifying precision—hands steady, gaze sharp, instincts alive.
“Stay low!” he shouted again, veering hard as a shell detonated several blocks away, sending debris raining across an intersection. He maneuvered through the haze, weaving between abandoned cars, dodging falling bricks, braking just long enough to avoid hitting a fleeing family before accelerating again. A wall of smoke swallowed them whole.
Noel couldn’t breathe.
Her body trembled uncontrollably—not from the concussive force shaking the vehicle but from the primal, suffocating panic invading her mind. She had never been in war. She had never been hunted. She had never been trapped in a world tearing itself apart. Her body had no memory to draw from, no conditioning to steady her nerves. She was drowning in sensory overload—sound, heat, motion, the screams of civilians, the metallic taste of terror.
Tyson’s voice cut through the fog like a tether.
“Noel—focus on me. Keep your head down.”
Another blast erupted behind them—closer this time. The truck rocked violently. Noel cried out involuntarily, gripping the dashboard as her vision blurred with fear.
Tyson swore under his breath, jerking the wheel as they broke free of the narrow streets and skidded onto a larger roadway leading toward the outskirts. A column of smoke loomed in the distance, marking the barracks—what was left of them.
“Tyson—what is happening?” she gasped.
He didn’t answer until they cleared the densest part of the chaos, his voice steady but cold. “It’s coordinated. This isn’t random. Someone knew exactly where to hit.”
Her throat tightened. Jax’s warning echoed in her skull:
Something is coming in Beirut. Get out while you can. She caught herself holding her breath.
The truck reached the southern highway—the same road they had taken to Ducks’ facility the previous morning. Tyson slowed only enough to make sure they weren’t being pursued.
Then, through the fading smoke, he exhaled sharply. “Unbelievable.”
“What?” she asked.
He pointed ahead. “You realize where we are?”
Recognition slammed into her. The long, ascending road. The mountain ridge. The empty stretch of desert. They were headed back toward Ducks’ facility.
He turned to her—eyes fierce, jaw rigid. “Tell me the truth, Noel. What the hell did you drag me into?”
She opened her mouth—her mind desperately scrambling for the right combination of truth and fear and urgency—but the words tangled, collapsing beneath the weight of everything that had just happened.
“Noel,” he pressed, voice dropping lower, more dangerous. “Are we running from something? Or toward it?”
She swallowed hard. “Jax sent me a message. This morning. Before the attack. He said Caliber was classified as a rogue entity. That something big was coming. That I needed to leave. That you were the only one I could trust.”
Tyson stared at her, the accusation still braced behind his eyes, but something shifted—something small, subtle, enough for him to release a slow breath.
“And you believe him,” he said.
“Yes.”
He leaned back, thinking quickly, eyes narrowing on the road ahead. “If this is as coordinated as it looks, they might be grabbing everything they can from CRD. Data, equipment, personnel.”
“So?” she asked shakily.
“So,” he continued, “if we can reach Ducks’ lab before they tear it down or torch it, we can hide. We can blend with the extraction teams. We can get stateside. You know their procedures. I know their transport patterns. It’s our best chance.”
Her pulse hammered. “You want to go back?”
He didn’t look at her when he answered.
“I want to survive.”
She felt tears threaten the corners of her eyes—not from fear this time, but from the strange, fragile realization that despite everything, Tyson hadn’t abandoned her. Not yet.
He shifted into a higher gear and accelerated onto the open desert road.
The closer they drew to the foothills, the more the sounds of the city fell away behind them, swallowed by distance and rising rock. The highway thinned, the air grew clearer, and the sky widened into a pale, pitiless blue that made everything feel too exposed. Noel stared out the window, gripping the edge of her seat so tightly her fingers ached, watching the desert roll by in flat stretches of stone and dust. Her mind kept replaying the column of smoke where the barracks had been, as if some part of her couldn’t believe it would stay there once she blinked.
It stayed. It grew smaller with distance, but it stayed. She wondered how many people had been inside. How many Marines had been asleep. How many of Tyson’s acquaintances would never wake up. She wondered if any of them had had time to think, the way she had in the lab, watching Ducks’ corpses wake. That felt like a different planet now. Another life.
Tyson drove in silence, eyes scanning the horizon, jaw set in the controlled grimness of a man who had learned long ago that panic wasted oxygen. “We’ve got maybe another thirty minutes,” he said at last. “If the roads stay clear.”
“They won’t stay clear,” Noel murmured.
He glanced at her. “Probably not. But the chaos cuts both ways. They’ll be too busy pulling out the high-value assets to worry about a couple of ghosts slipping through the cracks.”
She shifted in her seat. “You make it sound easy.”
“It’s not easy,” he said. “It’s familiar.”
The facility finally came into view in the distance—a low, reinforced compound that barely broke the horizon, ringed with fencing and the faint glint of guard towers. Even from here, Noel could see trucks clustered near the loading docks, small clusters of personnel moving with that urgent, organized panic that meant the command structure was still intact, but rattled. A helicopter circled lazily to the west, banking low before disappearing behind one of the ridges.
“Looks like they got the memo,” Tyson muttered.
“Extraction protocols,” Noel said automatically. “If the city’s under coordinated attack, and our research is implicated, standard flow is: secure data, secure samples, burn anything that shouldn’t exist, ship the rest home.”
“Then we need to get inside before they lock it down completely,” he replied. “You got us this far, Doc. How do we slip through?”
She swallowed, forcing herself to think. Her mind wanted to retreat into a frayed, useless loop of fear, but long years at CRD had conditioned another reflex: process, analyze, apply. “The front gate is out. Too much visibility, too much paperwork. The side maintenance entrance near the generator yard—security is lighter there during evacuations. They assume the bigger threats aim for the main access points.”
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, and the steadiness in her voice surprised her. “I’ve read the protocols. I’ve seen the drills. They’ll reroute most of the guards to the loading bays and primary entry points. Nobody cares about old power hardware when bombs are falling in the city.”
He nodded, accepting that. “We can’t roll up in this,” he said, tapping the steering wheel. “They’ll log every vehicle entry. We park short, walk the rest. You know the camera angles?”
“I know where they were last month,” she said. “I’ll have to improvise the rest.”
“Good enough.”
He turned off the main access road a few minutes later, taking the truck down a rough service track that dipped behind a rocky rise. From there, the facility vanished behind stone and sand. Tyson brought the Humvee to a stop in the shadow of the ridge and killed the engine. The abrupt silence felt like someone had thrown a blanket over the world.
“Grab anything you don’t want to leave behind,” he said.
Noel hesitated, then reached for the inner pocket of her jacket where Jax’s printout lay folded and worn at the edges from the way she’d been handling it all morning. She slid it out, smoothed it more from habit than necessity, then tucked it into a smaller inner seam closer to her body. It felt like a splinter of reality pressed against her ribs.
They dismounted, boots crunching on gravel, and Tyson led them up the slope. The climb was steeper than it looked from the truck; her legs burned, lungs protesting the effort, the exhaustion of being awake for nearly two days finally weighing on every step. Tyson moved with practiced efficiency, choosing paths that kept them low, moving from one natural outcropping to another. It was only when they crested the ridge and slid down toward the backside of the compound that Noel realized what he was doing—approaching as if the facility were an enemy emplacement rather than a workplace.
Maybe, she thought, that’s what it always was.
From their new vantage point, they could see the generator yard: a cluster of squat concrete blocks and fenced units, half-shielded by a chain-link perimeter. A pair of technicians hustled across the yard, shouting to one another over the thrum of machinery, but there was nobody posted at the small maintenance gate near the rear corner.
“There,” Noel whispered, pointing.
Tyson studied the scene for several long seconds, watching the techs, timing their movements. “Camera?”
She followed his gaze, her heart picking up. “Yes. There.” A small metal casing perched above the nearest generator housing. “Fifty-degree cone, fixed. It sweeps the yard and the gate. There’s a blind spot along the far fence. If we move when the techs are inside, we can hug the wall and slip past the cone.”
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve watched the feeds.”
He nodded. “We move on my mark. If anything changes, we fall back. You don’t argue, you don’t hesitate, you just follow.”
She didn’t argue with that either.
They waited until the two techs disappeared into one of the blockhouses and the low whine of a door seal hissed shut. Tyson watched the camera head for two full rotations before he muttered, “Now.”
They broke from cover together, running low, boots whispering rather than pounding against the packed dirt. Noel’s entire awareness seemed to funnel into that tiny, unblinking camera, each fractional swivel of its lens feeling magnified. She followed Tyson’s line, pressing against the fence, slipping into the invisible cone of safety along the perimeter. Her pulse thudded in her ears so loudly she almost didn’t hear the generator’s steady hum. The camera turned away.
They slid through the maintenance gate, which latched but never locked properly, and found themselves in the narrow service corridor behind the yard—one of the oldest parts of the compound infrastructure. Exposed pipes ran along the ceiling, sweating condensation in the heat. Noel could almost navigate it blind; she had walked this route a hundred times during inspections and equipment deliveries.
“Right,” she said quietly, forcing herself to recall the current layout through the haze of sleep deprivation. “Two corridors down, there’s a stairwell. We can come up near the loading bay mezzanine. Fewer eyes; people are focused on the cargo, not the catwalks.”
“And from there?” Tyson asked.
“And from there we find a container,” she said. “One heading to CaliberFreight stateside. They always move high-value hardware that way. We stow away with the gear.”
“And hope nobody opens the box,” he murmured.
“Hope they’re too busy to try,” she replied.
They moved through the corridor, keeping their voices low, their footfalls soft. Every distant shout or clang made Noel flinch, her nerves stretched to the point of snapping. Twice they ducked into recessed doorways as personnel rushed past carrying crates or armfuls of files, all moving in the same general direction: out. Nobody looked closely at them; the combination of Noel’s lab coat and Tyson’s US uniform created just enough cognitive friction that everyone’s brain decided they belonged, rather than risk the mental energy of challenging them.
The stairwell was crowded—people pushing past one another, some yelling into radios, others with haunted eyes locked on the middle distance. Tyson placed a steadying hand at the small of Noel’s back as they climbed, guiding without forcing, keeping her from being shoved back down by the press of bodies. By the time they reached the mezzanine, her legs felt rubbery, and her head swam with the smell of sweat, metal, and the faint, acrid tang of burning electronics.
Below them, the loading bay was a controlled storm. Forklifts beeped and whirred as they maneuvered heavy crates toward waiting trucks. Men in Caliber uniforms barked orders, while CRD techs pointed, argued, and shoved last-minute additions onto manifests that were already overloaded. The echo of every shout reverberated in Noel’s skull.
Tyson leaned close, his voice barely audible above the din. “Which crates go to CaliberFreight?”
She frowned, scanning the sea of boxes. “The ones going to airport staging are tagged for air freight. Tactical stuff, personnel gear. CaliberFreight gets the heavy tech, the stuff they don’t want anywhere near commercial channels.”
“Markings?” he pressed.
“There,” she said, pointing to a cluster of taller containers along the far wall, already sitting on reinforced pallets. Each bore the stylized stencil of the CaliberFreight logo, followed by smaller codes and destination references. She squinted, forcing her tired eyes to focus. “CF–NY–09. New York port. That’s a primary routing hub.”
“So that’s our ride.”
“Yes, but we can’t just walk across the floor and climb in,” she said. “We need to wait for a gap. When the pallet’s on the floor and not yet loaded. If we move at the wrong time—”
“We don’t move at the wrong time,” he cut in. “We wait, we watch, we pick our moment.”
She nodded, swallowing hard.
They lingered in the shadows of the mezzanine, two more silhouettes in a day already crowded with them. From here, Noel could see everything—the hurried efficiency of people trying, against all odds, to impose order on chaos. Men she knew by name shoved equipment she had designed into containers bound for places she had never seen. Somewhere a shift supervisor shouted for a list. Someone else swore loudly about missing drives. A forklift clipped a crate and was immediately drowned in curses.
Tyson’s hand rested lightly at her elbow, grounding her as minutes stretched, warped, and bled together. Twice, she caught herself swaying, eyes half-lidding with exhausted micro-sleeps that shattered as soon as a new sound jolted her awake.
“There,” Tyson said suddenly, nodding toward the floor.
A CaliberFreight container with the New York code was being dragged off a staging dolly and set down near the bay doors. The forklift operator hopped off and went to argue with a man holding a clipboard. For a brief moment, the container sat unattended. The door was unlatched, hanging slightly ajar.
“Now or never,” Tyson said.
Her body moved before her brain caught up. They slipped down the side stairs, merging with a knot of personnel rushing toward the bay, then veered off at the last second, cutting behind a stack of crates tall enough to conceal them. Noel tried to breathe steadily, keeping her gaze focused forward, not on anyone’s eyes. One person glanced in their direction, saw a CRD tech and a US Staff Sergeant, then dismissed them immediately, mind too full of other problems.
The container loomed in front of them, its interior a dark, metal-lined cavity stacked with secured equipment crates strapped to the walls in tiered racks. A narrow strip of floor space remained near the back corner, half-obscured by a coil of tie-down straps.
Tyson yanked the door wider, just enough for them both to slip inside. Noel ducked in first, the sudden change from open light to enclosed dimness making her stumble. The air inside smelled of cold metal, synthetic grease, and dust. Tyson followed, pulling the door nearly shut behind them, leaving only a sliver of light—a pale line on the floor.
He motioned her toward the back. “There. Behind those crates. We can wedge ourselves in.”
She moved mechanically, letting him guide her into the tight recess. The space was barely large enough for them both to sit, knees bent, shoulders pressed to cold steel. Tyson pulled a dangling strap across them for the illusion of cargo, tucking loose ends around their boots.
Outside, the world kept moving. Someone shouted about the manifest. The forklift engine coughed back to life. The container jolted violently as the pallet jack slid beneath it, lifting them an inch in the air. The floor vibrated as they were pushed across the bay, every bump sending a small shock through Noel’s already frayed nerves.
She thought of the barracks again. The rising smoke. The sound of distant gunfire blending with the clatter of equipment down here.
She thought of Jax, somewhere far away, watching a different kind of chaos unfold in an office environment she had once envied and now feared.
But mostly she thought of the fact that she was now inside a box she couldn’t leave, being transported toward a future she couldn’t predict.
The container lifted higher—crane hooks clanging against the frame—and for a moment her stomach lurched as they rose into the air. Noel squeezed her eyes shut. Tyson’s shoulder pressed more firmly against hers, solid and warm despite the chill.
“You’re okay,” he murmured, low enough that it felt like thought rather than sound.
She didn’t trust her voice enough to answer.
There was another jarring impact as the container was set down again, followed by the screech-whump of locking clamps engaging. The world tilted, then steadied. The ambient noise changed quality—echoing more, less open—and she realized they must have been loaded onto a truck bed or a staging platform. The engine rumble beneath them confirmed it a moment later. Exhaustion hit her like a physical blow.
For the first time since Ducks had smiled at her in that cold room, since she had watched a dead man rise and another machine-body inhale as if life belonged to it by right, Noel allowed her muscles to loosen fractionally. Her body shook with the delayed reaction of adrenaline draining from her system. She sucked in a shallow breath and pressed her forehead lightly against her knees, trying to block out everything—the distant hum, the faint metallic creaks, the ghosts of screams still echoing from the city.
Tyson shifted, adjusting to the cramped space, his voice a rough whisper. “Once this crate’s sealed into the ship, it’s going to be a long ride. No food, no water, no light. You sure you want this?”
She let out a shaky, humorless breath. “Is there a better option?”
“Not that I can see,” he said. “Then this is what we’ve got.”
The container door finally slammed shut, the outside line of light vanishing. For a few seconds there was only darkness, absolute and complete. Noel’s heart spiked again, but then her eyes adjusted enough to make out the faintest difference between the metal wall inches from her face and the darker mass of Tyson pressed beside her. The truck lurched into motion.
Noel listened to the sounds of departure—the grinding of gears, the change in resonance as they moved out of the bay, then the subtler shifts as they left the compound’s reinforced pavement for rougher roads. Each turn and bump felt like a punctuation mark in a sentence she hadn’t agreed to write. Her thoughts fluttered toward her mother, toward her father’s old lab, toward all the places she had left unguarded because she had assumed there would be more time. There was never more time.
Her eyelids grew heavier with each passing minute, the accumulated weight of sleeplessness finally overpowering even her anxiety. Tyson’s presence, solid and quiet, became the axis her fading consciousness circled. Somewhere between one jolt of the chassis and the next, she realized her head had tipped sideways, resting against his shoulder. She considered lifting it but didn’t.
The darkness swelled, softened, and wrapped itself around her. Outside the container, the world burned and maneuvered and restructured itself. Inside, in a narrow pocket of air shared between two fugitives, Noel’s body finally claimed what her mind had been refusing.
She slept. Tried to, at the very least. For the first time since the demonstration, since she watched the dead rise and the living become something else, her dreams did not wait for permission. She hoped to him, wondering if this would prompt the vision of her father, but all she found was darkness.
