Marcus watched me the way a doctor watches a patient choose whether to tell the truth. Then he nodded once, like a judge bringing down a gavel.
"Then we start from what you have," he said. "Not from what you don't."
He shifted, the plywood soft under his knee. "I knew Lily before the fall. She ran messages. She'd hate the way I'm talking now." He almost smiled. "But she'd want you safe."
Something in my chest unknotted a little, not enough to breathe freely, but enough to remember that breathing was a choice I could make. Air went in. The air went out. The world didn't end. Not today. I looked at his face, trying to commit the shape of his trust—or maybe his calculated gamble—to memory. I was a project now, not a threat.
"Why are you helping us?" Eli asked, his voice shaking slightly as he broke the heavy silence.
"Because she saved me once," Marcus said. "And because I didn't save her back."
The words made a hollow space in me ring. In that ringing, there was a memory I didn't own: a girl with dark hair sprinting across a parking lot with a backpack full of pills and a grin that said you owe me. Maybe it was someone else's story. Maybe it was mine now. Perhaps memory is just a drawer where strangers leave their fingerprints.
I realized my lie was more than just a cover story; it was a pact. I wasn't just hiding my secret; I was adopting Lily's debt, her history, and her protector. The weight of that knowledge settled on me, far heavier than the pistol against my spine. If he was going to invest in me based on the ghost of my sister, I had to honor the investment. I had to become the girl who could be saved.
"What kind of safe are we talking about?" I asked, my voice firmer than it had been all day. "If Lantern is sweeping, they'll check every hollow space eventually."
Marcus nodded grimly. "Not here. They're looking for movement, for obvious signs of trouble. This building is on their secondary list. But they won't pass up an easy find."
Outside, the engines grew louder. A convoy turned onto the main road, their tires crushing gravel. The sound stacked on itself until it became a wall—a heavy, roaring blanket that masked every other sound. Marcus killed the light. The dark wrapped us like a second skin, thicker and colder than before.
He put his ear near the seam of the crawlspace and listened. The air came in carrying diesel and wet concrete, and the constant, vibrating thrum of heavy vehicles. I focused on the noise, trying to discern the rhythm, the number of cars, and their direction. This wasn't Lily's instinct; this was my own, methodical way of assessing a threat.
"Now," he said. "We move now."
We slid out of the cavity like we were being born. The hall smelled of dust and fluoride, but the deafening noise outside muffled our movements. Our footsteps turned into whispers on the tile, and the old building seemed to hold its breath for us.
Marcus led us through a side exit, pressing against the warped metal frame, one hand raised, counting the engines like a drummer. He moved with the practiced grace of someone whose life depended on knowing the space between two seconds of noise. We moved at a near-sprint, staying low, keeping to the shadows cast by the dumpsters and the tall, skeletal weeds. We crossed the alley between the beats of the convoy's noise, slipped under a sagging chain-link fence—the cut ends sharp and rusted—and cut through a cracked parking lot. The weeds here were aggressive, creating pathways in the asphalt cracks, sharp little green things fighting for every inch.
Every scrape of my boot felt like a thunderclap. I forced myself to mimic the stride Marcus had critiqued—landing on the balls of my feet, not my heels—a small, immediate performance to affirm the trust he'd just placed in me. Eli kept pace beside me, his damp palm never leaving my elbow, a silent, trembling anchor.
At the far edge stood a storage facility, a brutalist block of windowless concrete lined with rows of orange doors like a hundred shut mouths. The sun reflecting off the paint felt harsh and exposed. Marcus keyed a code into a box with a cracked, yellowed face. The gate stuttered, grinding loudly, then lurched open enough for us to dart through. It slammed shut behind us with a loud, final clatter that made my teeth ache. We were out of the street but sealed into a different kind of trap. Somewhere, a camera clicked that wasn't plugged into anything anymore.
Marcus didn't stop until he reached Unit 17, several rows deep and shielded from the facility entrance. He opened it with a key hidden beneath a loose brick. The interior was immediately calmer: a toolbox, a water drum, a cot, and a map taped to the far wall with roads circled and crossed out. The air here was dead, dry, and cool—a relief after the crawlspace's humidity.
In the corner: a corkboard threaded with string. Pictures, faces—some smudged, some X-ed. The kind of thing you build when the world refuses to give you a plot unless you make one. Someone had written WHY HERE? in red at the edge of the map and circled a cluster of blocks like a bruise— A Watcher's Nest, I realized, finally understanding the true destination of our rescue.
Eli stood in front of it like he'd found a church after years of unconfessed sin. His finger touched a corner of a photo. "This is Lily," he said softly, as if he knew my secret.
The reality hit me then, sharp and bitter. I was standing with two people who knew the honest Lily—knew my own sister better than I ever had. They knew her scars, her secrets, her debts, and her smile. I only knew her absence.
The picture was Lily, laughing, head thrown back. A street behind her, bright and ordinary. A thumb covered part of her face—Marcus's, maybe. Proof that someone had been there to take it. The edges were dog-eared, as if someone had carried it too long in a pocket with coins. It wasn't just a picture of a memory; it was a blueprint for a life I now wore.
Marcus didn't look at the picture. He looked at me, his gaze demanding the new girl match the old girl's memory.
"If you're not the girl I knew," he said, voice steady, "then be the one she would've trusted. Start there. The rest we can build."
I met his eyes and let the lie be something bigger than itself—let it be a shelter we could all stand under for now. I gave him a single, decisive nod, the way Lily might have had when she was already in motion.
"Okay," I said. "Tell me what you need me to remember."