NADIA

Nadia's POV

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Nobody spoke in the car.

Lev drove. Kane sat beside me in the backseat, jaw set, one hand pressed against his side in a way that told me the wound was screaming even if his face wasn't. I watched him do it and said nothing because I had already said everything there was to say and none of it had changed anything.

We were moving through Velmoor's streets and I didn't recognize any of them.

"Where are we going," I said.

Lev didn't answer.

I looked at Kane. "Where are we going."

"Somewhere safe."

"You said that already. I want a specific answer."

"You'll see it when we get there."

I turned to look out the window and pressed my back against the seat and reminded myself very firmly that losing my temper in a moving vehicle surrounded by men I didn't know was not a strategy.

Three minutes passed.

Then five.

"I just want to go on record," I said to no one in particular, "that I saved a man tonight. That's all I did. I was walking home, minding my business, and I stopped because it was the right thing to do." I paused. "I did not agree to any of this. I did not sign anything. I did not ask to be involved in whatever this is. I just want my apartment back. My notes. My life. I have an exam—"

"In six days," Kane said. "You've mentioned it."

"Because it's important."

"I know."

"Do you? Because nothing about this night suggests that anyone here understands what important means outside of guns and warehouses and—"

"We're here," Lev said.

I looked out the window.

It was a warehouse.

Of course it was a warehouse. A large, grey, industrial building sitting at the edge of what looked like an old shipping yard, surrounded by the kind of quiet that didn't feel like peace — it felt like everyone nearby had agreed not to look in this direction.

I stared at it.

"No," I said.

Lev had already stepped out of the car.

"I am a medical student," I said to Kane. "I live in an apartment with functioning electricity and a bed. I am not going into a warehouse in the middle of the night with people I don't know because—"

Kane opened his door and got out.

I sat in the empty car for exactly four seconds.

Then Lev appeared at my window.

"You can come in," he said through the glass, "or you can stay out here alone."

I looked at the darkness surrounding the building. At the shadows between the shipping containers. At the absolute absence of any other human being in any direction.

I got out of the car.

"This is insane," I told Lev as I followed him toward the entrance. "You know that, right? This is completely insane."

"Yes," Lev said simply.

I didn't know what to do with that so I kept walking.

Inside was warmer than I expected. Dimly lit, concrete floors, the kind of space that had been converted just enough to be functional without bothering to be comfortable. A corridor stretched ahead and Kane was already moving down it, Lev falling into step beside him, the two of them exchanging low words I couldn't hear.

Then Kane stopped at a door.

He looked back at me briefly — just once — and then at Lev.

Something passed between them without words.

"Wait here," Lev said to me.

Kane pushed the door open and went through it and it closed behind him.

I stood in the corridor with Lev and the dim light and the silence and looked at the closed door.

"Wait here why," I said.

"Because he said so."

"That's not a reason."

Lev looked at me with the expression of a man who had answered more questions tonight than he had in the past month combined. "Just wait."

I crossed my arms and waited.

From behind the door — voices. Two of them. Kane's low and controlled. The other one older, colder, with an edge to it that cut even through the wall.

I wasn't trying to listen.

But the walls were thin and the corridor was quiet and some words carried whether you wanted them to or not.

*Did you get it done.*

Kane's response, too low to catch.

*You were supposed to handle it. Simple.*

A pause.

*I got hit.*

The older voice again, sharper this time. *How bad.*

I shifted my weight and looked at the ceiling and very deliberately thought about other things.

It didn't work.

I shifted again and my bag strap caught on the wall and the buckle knocked against the concrete with a sound that was small and sharp and completely inexcusable in a silent corridor.

Both voices stopped.

Then the older one — closer to the door now, closer than before.

*What was that. Who did you bring here. Did you bring someone here, is that a woman, why is there a—*

Lev moved faster than I had seen him move all night.

His hand closed around my arm and he was already pulling me back down the corridor before I could process what was happening — quick, silent, no wasted movement, the way someone moves when they know exactly what they're avoiding and exactly how little time they have to avoid it.

"Hey—" I started.

"Quiet," he said under his breath.

"You're pulling my—"

"*Quiet.*"

Something in his voice stopped me. Not the word — the weight underneath it. The particular quality of urgency that meant this was not the moment.

We were back at the entrance. Back through the door. Back in the cold night air before I had finished understanding how we'd gotten there.

Lev pulled the car door open and looked at me.

I got in.

He got in the driver's side and pulled the door shut and the warehouse sat in front of us, grey and silent, and I stared at it and thought about the voice on the other side of that wall.

Cold and precise. Angry at the mention of me before he'd even seen me.

I pulled my jacket tighter and said nothing.

Outside was better than whatever was happening in there.

For now.