Reed noticed the change in her breathing before she did.
The sharp, shocked gasps from the jolt behind her ear faded into shuddery inhales, the kind that dragged over the edges of pain and refused to settle.
He clapped slowly, the sound echoing too loud in the concrete room.
"Well," he said. "That was new."
Ariel squeezed her eyes shut, trying to ride out the aftershocks. Her skull felt like someone had taken a white‑hot needle to the bone behind her ear and then left it there to throb in time with her pulse. Every tiny movement sent ripples of pain down her neck.
"What…" She swallowed, voice frayed. "…was that?"
"That," Reed said, "was your fan club getting creative."
He dragged the stool closer and sat, leaning his elbows on the backrest, studying her with bright, avid curiosity.
"See, this is why I like you," he went on. "You inspire innovation. Johnson and Chris would rather chew their own arms off than see you hurt, but look at that—first chance they get, they flick a switch and light up your nervous system like a Christmas tree."
She forced her eyes open.
The world tilted for a second, vision blurring around the edges, then snapped back into harsh, overbright focus.
"Liar," she rasped. "That was you. Another one of your toys."
He tilted his head. "I wish," he said. "I like to take credit for the fun things. But that particular spike? Wrong timing. Wrong signature. I didn't press that button."
He tapped a finger against the side of his own head, just behind his ear.
"They did," he said. "Your friends. Your brother."
The word hit different now that it had been dragged through so many lies.
She clenched her teeth, breath hitching as another dull pulse of pain rolled through her.
"You're trying to make me hate them," she said. "You're not very subtle."
"Subtlety is overrated in a room like this," he replied. "You're strapped to a chair, I'm the one with all the toys. The least I can do is be honest about how many of them have their fingerprints on you."
He sat back a little, eyes flicking briefly toward the ceiling, as if he could see through concrete to the invisible lines of signal arcing between them and the city.
"They pinged you," he said. "Smart. Risky. Painful for you, useful for them. They're trying to turn you into a compass."
"Good," she said, the word scraping out raw. "Let them. The sooner they find you, the sooner this ends."
He laughed softly. "You're assuming 'this' ends with you walking out," he said. "Optimistic."
He stood, moved around behind her chair, and she felt his presence at her back like a shadow made of heat and teeth.
"Let's talk about pain thresholds," he said conversationally. "Yours is impressive, by the way. Most people start bargaining halfway through the first scream. You? You save yours for special occasions."
She stared straight ahead, refusing to track his movement with her eyes.
He stepped back into her peripheral vision, holding something between his fingers—a thin, flexible wand of black metal with a narrow tip.
"Do you know the fun thing about nerves?" he asked. "They get tired. You hit the same pathways over and over, they start to misfire. Sensation blurs. Pain becomes noise. But if you're careful, if you change angles, stay just shy of permanent damage…" His smile widened, shark‑bright. "…you can keep someone right on the edge for a very long time."
She swallowed hard, throat clicking.
"I already told you everything I know," she said, forcing the words out evenly. "You want codes, you picked the wrong sibling. You want Harry's buyer, I gave you the same scraps I gave them. There's nothing left to carve out."
"Oh, sunshine," he said, almost fond. "You still think this is about information."
He stepped closer.
"This is about pressure," he said. "Leverage. Making them make worse and worse choices until they either impress me or break. And the quickest way to do that…" He lifted the wand slightly. "…is to see what happens when you stop being able to sound so brave."
He touched the tip lightly to the back of the chair, close enough that she could feel the faint displacement of air near her arm.
"It's not personal," she said, more to remind herself than convince him. "You don't know me."
"That's the boring part," he agreed. "You're a file, a face on a feed, a variable that got more interesting when you started screaming and still didn't beg. But them?" His voice dropped, amusement curdling into something colder. "They're very personal."
He leaned in until she could see his eyes clearly again, bright and intent.
"Let me paint you a picture," he said. "Right now, Johnson's in a car, going way too fast, doing math in his head. Every time you make a noise, he's trying to turn it into mileage, into time. Chris is sitting beside him, hearing that spike he just sent through your skull and wondering if he's any better than the people who put you on a ledger the day you were born."
Her stomach clenched.
"You're lying," she said automatically.
"Some of it," he said cheerfully. "But not all. The car part is probably true. The guilt definitely is. He felt you, you know. Not in a magic twin way. In the 'I chose to flip the switch and she screamed' way. That's going to stick."
He stepped around behind her again.
"You're trying to turn them into monsters in my head," she said, voice tight. "It's not going to work."
He laughed quietly. "Oh, I don't need to turn them into anything," he said. "They're doing that work for me. I just… provide the soundtrack."
The wand touched the side of her neck, just below the line of her jaw.
A tiny click.
White heat shot across her skin, sharp enough to rip a cry out of her before she could swallow it.
Her whole body jerked against the restraints. The cuffs held. The movement sent a different flare of agony through her stitched back.
He lifted the wand away almost instantly, giving her just enough time to gasp in air before the second point of contact, a fraction of an inch lower.
Another click.
Another bolt of pain, concentrated and cruel, like a wasp sting wired directly into her nerves.
She clenched her teeth so hard her jaw ached, a low sound escaping anyway.
"You know what I like about this one?" Reed mused, as if demonstrating a kitchen gadget. "No bruises. No cuts. Nothing Mara can point to later and say 'you did this.' She'll know, of course. She's not stupid. But there's something poetic about pain that only leaves ghosts."
He trailed the tip down, hovering over the slope of her shoulder, near the line of fresh stitches under her shirt.
He hesitated there just long enough for dread to pool in her stomach.
"Don't," she forced out. "Please."
He tsked. "You say that like it's a magic word," he said. "It's not. It's a… bell."
The wand dropped lightly onto the bandaged area and fired.
The sound that tore out of her then wasn't a word.
It was raw, ragged, the kind of sound people made when someone found exactly the wrong place and pressed.
The world narrowed to that single, burning point,fire ripping through already‑angry tissue, nerves screaming so loud her vision went white around the edges.
When it stopped, she was shaking, breath hitching in high, ugly stutters she couldn't smooth out.
"There it is," Reed said softly. "See? That one would've traveled nicely through the line. I wonder if they caught it."
She dragged her head up, blinking hard, trying to focus on anything but the pain.
"You… you think this makes you strong," she said, words slurring a little around the edges. "Hurting someone who can't… move."
"Oh, no," he said. "This doesn't make me strong. This makes them weak. There's a difference. Every second you're in this chair, they're somewhere wishing they'd made different choices. That's the fun part. You're the knife I get to twist."
He stepped in front of her again, squatting so they were level.
"You want to know what really drives men like Johnson mad?" he asked. "It's not that their enemies hurt people they care about. That's expected. It's when they realize they set the table. They built the rooms. They hired the men who turned. They handed me the tools."
He brushed a damp strand of hair away from her face, the gesture disturbingly gentle.
"And Chris?" he added. "He's getting a masterclass in how far he'll go. How much of you he's willing to spend. You think he's going to walk away from that clean?"
Ariel forced herself to meet his eyes, even as tears tracked hot and unbidden down her cheeks.
"They're coming," she said, voice rough but clear. "You can spin all the stories you want. You can hurt me. They are still coming."
He smiled, slow and sharp.
"I know," he said. "That's what makes this interesting."
He straightened, flicking the wand once against his palm, as if testing its weight.
"Let's give them something worth racing for, shall we?" he said lightly. "The clock was just numbers before. Now it has a soundtrack."
He turned the intensity dial on the wand up a single notch.
"Round three," he said. "Try not to black out too soon. It ruins the suspense."
The next touch came without warning,jaw, shoulder, the tender skin just below her collarbone—each jolt a bright, precise slice through the fog.
She screamed once, then bit the rest back, the sounds breaking out of her in hoarse, bitten‑off bursts.
Somewhere beyond concrete and distance, in a car slicing through the city, her voice would be bleeding through a cheap speaker, turning urgency into panic—
and giving Arlo and Chris exactly what they'd chosen when they told Mara to press the button:
a trail marked in pain,
and one more reason they could not afford to be too late.
They moved like they'd rehearsed it a hundred times, even though they hadn't.
Out of the car, doors closing with soft, controlled thuds. Guns drawn, safeties off. Low and fast along the warehouse wall, boots whispering over grit instead of pounding.
The side door Arlo had once used as an exit point years ago was still there, a rectangle of darker shadow in the corrugated metal. The keypad beside it was dead, panel pried open, wires hanging like veins. Reed had let himself in the quick way.
Arlo's heart thudded against his ribs, hard enough to feel in his throat.
He counted down with his fingers—three, two, one—
He shoved the door open on one, gun up, body tight.
The smell hit first.
Concrete dust. Old oil. Rust. Underneath it, the metallic tang of blood and antiseptic, faint but unmistakable.reddit+1
The interior was mostly dark, lit only by a few bare bulbs hanging from long cords, their light pooling in harsh circles on the warehouse floor. Shadows loomed everywhere—stacked crates, abandoned shelving, the skeleton of a disused conveyor line.
And in the brightest circle, center stage, was the chair.
Ariel was slumped in it, head hanging forward, hair a dark curtain hiding most of her face. Her arms were strapped down, the restraints biting into skin rubbed raw. One leg twitched weakly, the only sign she hadn't slipped all the way under.
For half a second, everything else blurred.
"Ari," Chris breathed.
He was moving before he consciously chose to, feet carrying him straight for her, gun momentarily forgotten in his hand.
"Chris—" Arlo snapped, but he was right behind him, pulled in by the same gravitational force.
Up close, the damage Reed had done was worse.
Sweat plastered Ariel's hair to her temples. Her face was too pale under the harsh light, lips cracked, eyelashes clumped with tears she hadn't had the energy to wipe away. The skin around the bandage at her shoulder was angry and inflamed under the edges of her shirt, a faint scorch mark showing where Reed's wand had found fresh stitches.
Her breathing was shallow and uneven, a little hitch at the top of each inhale like each one caught on something sharp.
"Ariel," Chris said again, voice breaking on her name.
He holstered his gun one‑handed, fingers fumbling with the buckle at her wrist, trying to undo the strap.
"Ari, it's me, it's Chris, you're okay, I've got you, we're here—"
Her head stirred at the sound of his voice, a tiny, disoriented movement.
"Chris?" she rasped, barely audible.
The relief was a blade. It cut going in both directions.
"Yeah," he said, tears blurring his vision. "Yeah, it's me. Told you we were coming, didn't I? Took the scenic route, but—"
The buckle finally gave. Her left hand fell slack, fingers curling weakly.
Arlo moved to the other side of the chair, forcing himself to catalog and not freeze.
Pale but not blue. Pupils sluggish but reactive when he lifted a lid. No obvious arterial bleed. The bandage over her shoulder was soaked through at one edge but not actively dripping. Skin cold but not icy.
Alive.
The word was a fragile, vicious little miracle.
He worked on the other strap with hands that wanted to shake.
"Ariel." His voice came out lower than he meant it. "Look at me."
Her lashes fluttered.
It took effort, but she dragged her head up a fraction, enough that he could see one eye, unfocused but trying.
"Arlo?" she mumbled. "You're… late."
A breath that might almost have been a laugh punched out of him, sharp and shaky.
"Dockside traffic," he said. "Complain later."
Between them, they got the straps off her wrists. Her arms dropped like dead weight.
Chris stepped in close, catching her before she could pitch forward.
"I've got you," he murmured again, cradling her against his chest. "I've got you, I've got you, it's over—"
The word hit the air wrong.
Something in Arlo's spine prickled.
He straightened, gun still in his hand, and forced himself to do what every instinct screaming get her out didn't want: he looked away from her.
The light over the chair was bright enough to blind them to anything beyond its immediate circle. The rest of the warehouse was a sea of shadow. Too much shadow.
The hairs on the back of his neck rose.
"Chris," he said quietly. "Don't say it's over unless—"
A soft, slow clap came from the dark.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Lights snapped on along the catwalk overhead, one after another, bathing the upper level in stark white. Figures resolved out of the shadows,men in dark clothes, rifles cradled, positions already chosen.
On the ground, behind stacks of crates, more men stepped out. Half a dozen, a dozen—enough that counting became pointless. Guns pointed their way, the dull gleam of muzzles catching the new light.
They'd been waiting.
Every single barrel was aimed at Arlo Johnson.
"—unless you've checked the room," Arlo finished grimly.
He shifted, subtly angling his body between the nearest guns and Ariel and Chris.
"Shit," Chris whispered.
He tightened his grip on Ariel, curling her in toward him. Her head lolled against his shoulder, eyes sliding half‑shut again, too far gone to register the new threat.
High above, leaning on the railing of the catwalk like a man watching his favorite play hit its third act, Reed stepped into view.
He was still holding the slender black wand, twirling it between his fingers like a baton.
"Took you long enough," he called down. "I was starting to think you didn't care."
Arlo's jaw locked.
"Let them walk," he said. His voice carried easily in the echoing space. "They're not why you set this up."
Reed's smile flashed, bright and pleased. "See?" he said to his men, gesturing with the wand. "This is why he's fun. Always cuts straight to the point."
He rested his forearms on the railing, looking down at Arlo with open curiosity.
"Guns down, Johnson," he said. "You're good, but you're not that good. You start shooting, the only guaranteed outcome is she gets hit in the crossfire."
The men on the ground shifted their aim to emphasize the point, a few muzzles tracking lazily toward Ariel and Chris.
Arlo's hand tightened on his weapon.
He ran the math in his head in a split second.
Number of guns. Distances. Angles. Ariel's position. Chris's state. His own odds.
There was no scenario where he started this fight now and all three of them walked out breathing.
The knowledge burned.
Slowly, he eased his finger off the trigger.
"Arlo," Chris hissed. "Don't—"
"Shut up," Arlo said without heat. "And keep her head down."
He let the gun drop a few inches, then a few more. He didn't toss it aside,that would mean taking his hand off it, and he wasn't ready to surrender that much. But he held it low, no longer pointed at anyone.
Around them, rifles didn't waver.
Reed nodded, satisfied.
"There we go," he said. "I knew the chair would bring out your cooperative side."
His gaze slid to Chris and Ariel.
"And look," he added. "A family reunion. Warms the heart."
Chris glared up at him, eyes dark with fury and fear. "You're dead," he said, voice shaking. "I swear to God, you're—"
Reed raised the wand a fraction, casual warning.
"Careful," he said. "She's had a big day. I'd hate to have to cut the encore short because you couldn't keep your temper."
Ariel stirred at the sound of his voice, a faint flinch running through her.
Her eyes cracked open again, unfocused, trying to find the source of the new threat.
"Don't," she whispered, voice barely there. "Don't let him—"
Her words dissolved into a cough, weak and painful.
Chris bent his head, pressing his forehead briefly against hers.
"I'm here," he murmured. "I'm right here."
From the catwalk, Reed watched them with bright, interested eyes, like a scientist observing the behavior of lab rats he'd just dropped into a maze.
"Well," he said. "Now that everyone's here, we can really begin."
The lights died with a hard clack.
For one razor‑thin heartbeat, everything went black,no bulbs, no reflection off concrete, just the echo of Reed's last word hanging in the dark.
Then the warehouse exploded into noise.
The far window blew inward with a gunshot crack, safety glass shattering into a glittering spray. A flash‑bang followed it, arcing in and hitting the floor with a hollow clink.
"Down!" Arlo barked.
He was already twisting, one hand wrenching Chris and Ariel sideways, trying to get as much of them behind the chair as he could.
The flash hit—white fire and a concussive whump that punched the air out of the room. Light slammed against closed eyelids, sound slamming through bone.
Men on the catwalk shouted, several voices breaking into panicked curses as they flinched away from the blast. A few squeezed off reflexive shots, wild, bullets chewing chunks out of concrete and metal.
Something hot stung Arlo's cheek—shrapnel or glass, he didn't care.
The darkness snapped back in, deeper now that spots danced across everyone's vision.
And through it came the sharp, controlled bark of familiar guns.
Arlo's men.
Muzzle flashes strobed from the blown‑out window and the high catwalk at the opposite end, each burst of light freezing the chaos into jagged snapshots: a man on the railing pitching backward, rifle flying from his hands; another spinning as rounds took him in the shoulder and chest; one of Arlo's people,a compact figure in black,rolling along the upper level, firing in smooth three‑shot bursts.
Mara.
"Contact high, east catwalk!" someone shouted over comms, voice tinny and distant in Arlo's ear.
"Ground team, sweep left, use the crates as cover!" another voice snapped.
The warehouse became a maze of moving shapes and flickering light.
Arlo shoved Chris hard toward the nearest stack of pallets.
"Get her out," he barked. "Back to the car, then the secondary route. Do not stop."
Chris staggered, arms tightening around Ariel's limp weight.
"I'm not leaving you—" he started.
"You're not useful to me if you're dead!" Arlo snapped. A bullet sparked off the concrete near his boot, showering his leg with grit. "Move, Chris!"
Ariel moaned faintly as Chris adjusted his grip, her head lolling against his shoulder. Even half‑conscious, she flinched at the noise, fingers twitching weakly against his chest.
Chris's jaw set.
"Okay," he said, voice shaking but resolute. "Okay."
He turned, half‑carrying, half‑dragging her toward the gap between crates, keeping his body between her and as many muzzles as he could. A spray of splinters exploded from the pallet beside them as a shot caught the wood instead of flesh.
"Left! Use the steel columns!" Arlo's man on comms yelled.
Chris ducked in that direction, disappearing into shadow with Ariel clutched tight.
Arlo pivoted back into the center of the storm.
The flash‑bang chaos had shredded Reed's perfect tableau. Half his men on the catwalk were down or disoriented, clutching at ears, eyes streaming. Two lay still, bodies draped over railings at ugly angles.
On the ground, the ambush line had fractured. Some scrambled for cover behind crates. Others fired blindly into the dark, chasing muzzle flashes instead of targets.
Arlo moved.
He darted to the nearest steel support, using it as a wedge of cover. A man popped into view between two pallets, rifle coming up. Arlo fired twice,center mass, then head when the body didn't drop fast enough.
The man went down hard, rifle clattering away.
"Johnson, three on your right!" Mara's voice cut through his earpiece, sharp and focused.
He twisted right, saw them—three silhouettes rushing the central aisle, trying to flank him, muzzle flashes turning them into stuttering ghosts.
He dropped low and fired in a tight, controlled arc.
One went down with a cry, clutching his leg. Another spun, hit high in the chest, momentum flinging him into a stack of crates that rocked dangerously. The third dove for cover, bullets chewing the air where his head had been.
From the catwalk, Mara's gun barked again, and the third man jerked, a spray of red misting the railing before he collapsed.
"Two less," she said, breathing hard but steady. "Watch your six."
He didn't answer. There was no time.
Movement on the upper level snagged his attention—a familiar silhouette, still and poised despite the chaos.
Reed.
He hadn't run.
He'd taken cover behind a support beam on the catwalk, wand tucked away now, a compact pistol in his hand. Even half‑blinded by the flash‑bang, he tracked the fight with calculating eyes, waiting for an opening.
Arlo's vision tunneled.
Guns, men, chaos—all of it narrowed to that single figure above.
He ducked around the column, snapped off another shot at a rushing shape on the ground without really seeing it, then sprinted toward the metal staircase bolted to the wall.
Bullets chased him, whining past his ears, sparking off steel. One tore through the edge of his jacket, hot and sudden against his ribs.
He hit the stairs at speed, boots pounding, metal ringing under his weight.
Halfway up, a man leaned over the railing above, rifle pointed straight down.
Arlo didn't think. He let himself drop into a slide, knees hitting the steps hard, body slamming against the railing. The sudden change in angle threw the shooter's aim off; the burst of gunfire raked the steps, sparks flying where bullets hit steel instead of flesh.
Arlo shot up through the gap between railings, three quick rounds.
The man jerked backward, weapon tumbling from lifeless fingers, his body thudding onto the upper platform.
Arlo hauled himself the rest of the way up, lungs burning.
On the catwalk, the world narrowed even further. The ceiling pressed low. The railing was a flimsy promise between him and a long fall. Shadows bunched at the corners, broken by the intermittent strobes of gunfire below.
Reed stood at the far end, near the window Mara had breached, framed by the shattered glass and the night beyond.
He had the pistol up now, both hands steady on it, barrel aimed directly at Arlo's chest.
"Stay where you are," Reed called over the din. "Let's not waste a good vantage point."
Arlo kept moving, steps measured, gun up and aligned.
"You had your chance," he said. His voice sounded thinner up here, swallowed by height and echo. "Dockside. The chair. The speeches. You don't get to walk away again."
Reed's smile flashed, bright and hollow.
"You think I ever planned to walk away?" he said. "Look around, Johnson. This is where people like you and me end up. High above the mess, pointing guns at each other while the bodies stack underneath."
He flicked a glance past Arlo, toward the chaos below.
"Your men are efficient," he added. "I'll give you that. You taught them well."
"Better than you taught yours," Arlo said. "They signed up to shoot me. Instead, they got dragged into a war they don't understand."
He took another step.
Reed's finger twitched on the trigger, then eased.
"Stop," he said. "Or I start putting holes in her from up here. I've got a clean angle."
He tilted his gun a fraction, indicating the floor below.
Arlo didn't look down.
He couldn't risk it—couldn't afford to break eye contact, not with this man.
But he felt Ariel's presence under them like a gravity well. Chris's frantic movements. The roar of the ongoing fight, punctuated by Mara's barked orders and the staccato of automatic fire.
"She's already had a busy night," Reed said. "It would be a shame to waste all that work on a quick, messy end. Unless you'd prefer that. Less screaming to listen to later when you second‑guess your choices."
"You're not going to shoot her," Arlo said. "You lose leverage the second she stops breathing."
Reed's eyes gleamed.
"Who says I need leverage now?" he asked softly. "You're here. That was the point."
Another burst of gunfire rattled the catwalk. A bullet pinged off the metal between them, close enough that Arlo felt the hot sting of a grazing splinter on his wrist.
He didn't flinch.
He raised his gun, sights lining up with the bridge of Reed's nose.
"Last chance," he said. "You can drop the weapon and crawl out of this breathing, or I can put you down and be done."
Reed laughed, sharp and disbelieving.
"You?" he said. "The man who always needs one more contingency plan? One more safety net? You don't pull triggers like this, Johnson. You send other people to do it. That's why this is fun. I get to see what happens when you are the one with blood on your hands instead of just ink on your ledgers."
Arlo took another step.
They were close enough now that he could see the dilated edges of Reed's pupils, the faint sheen of sweat at his hairline, the quick pulse ticking in his throat.
Close enough that if one of them fired, the other wouldn't have time to move.
For a moment, everything else fell away.
No gunfire. No shouts. No Ariel. No Chris. No Mara.
Just a narrow strip of metal and a decision.
Arlo tightened his grip.
He forced himself to catalogue what Reed had done:
The kidnapping. The chair. The wand. The scream over the comm that had nearly broken Chris. The way Ariel's head had hung when they found her, the way her voice had cracked on you're late.
He let the fury rise—not like a wave, but like a tide, relentless and cold.
"You hurt her," he said quietly. "You touched what's mine. You made her think we were the ones pressing the buttons."
He took the final step, closing the last of the distance in his mind.
"I'm done talking."
He squeezed the trigger.
Pain exploded in his head.
It wasn't a bullet—no impact, no hot punch of metal. It was inside, sudden and blinding, like someone had driven a white‑hot spike through his skull from temple to temple.
His vision went white around the edges, then black, then snapped back in a nauseating lurch.
His gun swung off target, arm spasming.
He staggered, boots skidding on the catwalk.
For a heartbeat, he thought Reed had some new toy, some sonic weapon or neural trick.
Then he turned—instinctive, desperate,and saw her.
Not Ariel.
Not Mara.
The woman standing at the far end of the catwalk, framed by another pool of light that hadn't been there a second ago, was older than the last time he'd let himself remember her this clearly. Lines at the corners of her eyes that hadn't existed in his mental snapshots. Hair pulled back in a simple knot, shot through with silver.
Her hands were empty.
Her eyes were not.
"Arlo," she said.
The warehouse fell away.
For a split second, he was sixteen again, standing in a too‑small apartment, listening to a lullaby drifting down the hallway,a soft, worn melody hummed over a crib where a baby cried and then didn't. The smell of cheap detergent and burnt toast. The weight of a hand on his shoulder, steady and warm.
"Jen?" he heard himself say.
The name scraped out of him like it had rusted in his throat.
Jenifer.
His sister.
The one who'd left before he built his empire. The one who'd sung lori off‑key in the kitchen to soothe a colicky baby brother while their mother worked the night shift. The one who'd told him, once, that if he kept going down the path he'd chosen, he'd forget what it felt like to hold something fragile and not break it.
She shouldn't be here.
She couldn't be here.
But she was.
Standing on the catwalk with the fight raging around them, looking at him with an expression he couldn't immediately name—some impossible mix of sorrow, anger, and something that hurt worse than the sudden spike in his skull.
The pain flared again, harsher, like his brain rejecting the impossible.
He dropped to one knee, hand slamming against the railing to keep from pitching over the edge.
Below, someone screamed. A gun jammed with an ugly click. Mara shouted something he couldn't parse.
Reed's laughter curled around the moment, thin and delighted.
"Oh, this," he said. "This I did not plan. But I am so glad I got a front‑row seat."