Good.
Angry was better.
Angry meant he could still be moved.
Ren heard it too.
"Now," she said.
Nobody argued.
The loading door boomed again, but the rhythm had changed. No more patient knocking. No more lazy little taps like he had all night. Now it sounded like he was hitting the steel with the flat of his hand and resenting that it still existed.
Jadah kept her fist closed.
Everything metal in the bay stayed tense around her. Not flying now. Waiting. A wrench on the floor quivered once and held. The chain-link behind Marlon hummed so softly it felt more in the teeth than the ears.
Isaac went to Marlon's left side.
Jadah got his right without being asked.
Good.
Still her.
Marlon looked at both of them, then at Ren moving through the bay with the case and the gun, then toward the office where the broken front window had stopped being glass and become open question.
"We are having a truly terrible night," he said.
Isaac got an arm under him. "Keep talking."
"Bossy."
"Keep doing that too."
Ty should've been the one answering that.
Ty should've said something stupid about customer service or group packages or how this definitely wasn't on the itinerary.
The silence where he belonged hit so hard Isaac nearly missed Marlon slipping.
Jadah caught him first.
Her injured shoulder pulled. Her face went white. She didn't make a sound.
Ren reached the back loading dock door and tested the bolt.
Locked.
She looked at the heavy chain looped through the inside latch, then at the padlock, then at Jadah.
One second.
Enough.
"Can you hit that?"
Jadah stared at the chain like it had personally betrayed her.
"I don't know."
"That's not no."
"It's also not yes."
Another crash from the front office.
The woman from the window this time, maybe. The crowbar man. Maybe both. The noise came with splintering wood and the hollow tumble of something heavy going over.
The janitor laughed from the loading door behind them. Not amused anymore. Interested.
"Good," he called. "Do that again."
Jadah's whole face hardened.
Not brave. Not composed. Worse. Cornered enough to stop caring how she looked while it happened.
Isaac heard himself say, "Not for him."
She looked at him.
Then at the chain on the back door.
Then at her hand.
No glow. No dramatic posture. Just a girl covered in blood and sweat, staring at her own fist like it had become a loaded weapon and a wild animal at the same time.
"Move him back," she said.
Ren didn't waste time asking whether she meant Marlon or everybody.
"All of you. Three steps."
They did it.
Isaac dragged Marlon backward. Jadah moved with them, eyes still locked on the chain. Ren stayed wide off to the side, case slung across her back now, gun up toward the office entrance while trusting a bleeding girl with a hand problem to alter the structure of the room.
Which, Isaac thought dimly, was either desperate or smart enough to count as desperation.
Jadah lifted her hand.
Nothing.
The chain stayed where it was.
The padlock hung there fat and ordinary and offensively real.
Behind them, the loading door toward the janitor bowed inward another inch.
Marlon looked at the ceiling and said, "Amazing."
Jadah swore once under her breath.
Then the battery lantern on the counter rolled two inches toward her.
Not the chain.
Wrong target.
Her face pinched like she wanted to crawl out of her own skin.
Ren said, "Again."
"I hate you."
"Take a number."
Another slam from the office.
Closer now.
Footsteps over broken glass.
Not running.
Walking.
The kind of patience that belonged to something already certain.
Jadah's fingers curled harder.
This time the chain snapped tight against the latch with a metallic shriek.
The padlock swung once.
Twice.
Then ripped sideways so hard it punched a dent into the dock door and flew off into the dark bay.
Everybody flinched.
Jadah did too, which probably meant she hadn't meant to throw the whole thing, only move it.
Good enough.
Ren was through the door first, yanking it open and checking the alley beyond in one smooth move.
"Out."
Cold air slid in.
Not normal cold. Wet, industrial, river-smell air with diesel under it and something sweet-rotten riding on top. The back alley behind the shop was narrower than the front street and somehow meaner. Loading docks. Dumpsters. Brick walls painted with old tags. One dim security light flickering over a steel staircase on the opposite building.
No people.
That didn't mean empty.
"Move," Ren said again.
They moved.
Marlon between Isaac and Jadah, every step making him bite part of himself off to stay upright. Isaac felt the weight of him through bruised ribs and the bad shoulder and kept going anyway because the alternative had gotten somebody killed already.
From inside the bay behind them came the sound of the front office door finally giving all the way.
Wood split.
A metal desk screamed over tile.
Then one of those clear, too-human voices called from deeper in the shop, "They're leaving."
The janitor answered from the other side of the bay they'd just escaped.
"I know."
That hit all four of them at once.
He was moving too.
Of course he was.
Ren pointed toward the steel staircase across the alley. "Up."
Ty would've complained about more stairs.
Ty was gone.
Marlon made the complaint for him, voice flayed thin. "You are obsessed."
Ren didn't even glance back. "Still talking. Great."
They crossed the alley.
Halfway there, a body dropped from the second-floor landing above them and hit the pavement shoulder-first with a crack that should've ended it. Human body. Delivery jacket. One shoe missing. It lay there twitching once, twice—
then started to push itself up.
Ren shot it through the temple before it got a knee under itself.
The report punched around the alley walls and came back thinner.
"Go," she said.
Isaac shoved Marlon toward the stairs.
Jadah went up ahead despite the shoulder, one hand on the rail, the other clamped against the wound like she was holding herself together manually.
Metal.
Bad idea.
He saw it too late.
The rusted handrail under her palm sang one thin note and bent inward a fraction.
Jadah yanked her hand off it like it had burned her.
"Don't use the rail," Isaac said.
She looked back over her shoulder, eyes wide and furious. "Excellent time for that."
Behind them, the dock door of the tire shop crashed open.
Not one set of footsteps.
Several.
Ren turned and fired down the alley.
A shape stumbled back into the dark. Another kept coming. The janitor's voice stayed maddeningly calm through it all.
"You don't know what to keep yet," he called.
"Shut up," Marlon whispered, not to be heard, just because the sentence had to go somewhere.
They made the landing.
Second floor.
Metal walkway bolted to brick. Doors on both sides. All locked. Laundry lines overhead somebody had rigged years ago between windows and never taken down. Sheets hanging motionless despite the air because the whole city had forgotten ordinary wind.
Ren hit the first door with the butt of her gun.
Locked.
Second.
Locked.
Third.
The knob turned halfway and stuck.
She kicked near the frame.
The wood gave with a splintering crack.
Inside was an old machine shop office, maybe. Narrow room. Filing shelves. Long table. No lights. One interior corridor leading farther in. Better than the alley. Worse than hope.
"In."
They dragged Marlon through.
Jadah slipped in after them and hit the wall with both palms to keep standing. The nearest coat hook bent toward her with a tiny metallic click.
She stared at it.
Then at her hands.
Then looked away like denying it might still work if she was stubborn enough.
Ren shoved the door shut and threw a deadbolt. Then she dragged a metal shelf across the floor until it slammed against the frame.
Outside, feet hit the landing.
Not rushing.
Wrong.
The janitor didn't pound on the door this time.
He tapped it once with one fingernail.
"You're making choices while tired," he said. "That's always when people show me the true version."
Isaac felt something hot and ugly climb up the back of his throat.
Ren heard him move before he did and said, "No."
He stopped because, apparently, tonight was just a long series of nos.
Marlon sagged onto the long table, one hand pressed to the bloody wrap on his thigh, the other hanging useless for a second before he got control of it again.
Jadah slid down the wall beside the filing shelves and sat because her body had finally overruled her pride.
The room smelled like old paper, machine oil, and plaster dust. Outside it smelled like wet brick and bad blood.
Inside, nobody spoke.
Not for a while.
Then the janitor's voice came again through the door, softer now.
"You left the loud one first."
Marlon folded in half.
Not all the way. Enough.
Isaac crossed the room before the sentence finished echoing and would have opened the door if Ren hadn't physically put herself in the space first.
"No."
He looked at her.
Really looked.
There was blood on her hands that wasn't dry yet. Gray at her temples in the half-dark. The black case hooked into one elbow. Gun steady. Eyes tired in a way he didn't have time to hate properly.
"He wants the words," she said. "Don't feed him."
The doorknob turned from the outside.
Slowly.
Testing.
Then stopped.
Jadah laughed once from the wall.
Too tired. Too sharp.
"We are in a horror movie written by an asshole."
That almost got Isaac.
Almost.
Marlon dragged in a breath that shook on the way out. "Ty would've loved that line."
No one answered.
Because yes.
Because no.
Because the room had already had enough truths in it for one lifetime.
Outside, the janitor made a small considering sound.
Then he said, "The girl's changing faster."
The whole room went still.
Jadah lifted her head slowly.
Ren's gun came up higher.
Isaac's skin went tight.
The janitor tapped the door once, gently.
"Hurts, doesn't it?"
Jadah's face changed.
Not panic.
Recognition of the pain.
The wrongness in the hand. The pull in the metal. The way the room seemed to lean around screws and hinges and rails whenever she forgot not to be afraid.
Isaac saw he'd found the bruise and knew it too.
So did she.
"Don't answer him," Ren said.
Jadah didn't.
But the filing cabinet beside her gave one tiny metallic pop from the inside.
The janitor laughed softly through the door.
"There."
Ren turned her head just enough to look at Jadah without taking the gun off the entrance.
"You need to stop reacting to him."
Jadah stared back. "I would love to."
"Then do it."
"Oh, that's helpful."
The handle turned again.
Harder.
Then the whole door jerked once in the frame, not from a body hitting it but from pressure in the lock itself.
Metal under strain.
Jadah felt it before any of them saw it. Her head snapped toward the latch and both hands clenched at once.
Bad.
The screws in the door plate began to back themselves out.
Not all the way. Tiny, horrible quarter-turns. One. Then another.
Isaac was moving before he understood what he was moving toward.
He got to her first, dropped into a crouch, and caught both her wrists.
Not hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to interrupt the line.
Her eyes flashed up to his.
"What are you doing."
"You're doing it."
"I know that!"
"Then stop helping him."
That landed.
The screws stopped turning.
One fell to the floor with a tiny bright ping.
The others held.
Jadah's whole body was trembling now.
Not subtle. Not cinematic. Just muscle and fear and blood loss and something new forcing itself into bad wiring.
Isaac kept hold of her wrists.
The pull under his own skin answered once, faint and useless, then faded again.
Still nothing he could use.
Good.
He didn't want more right now. Didn't want anything. Didn't want the world.
"Look at me," he said.
She did.
Barely.
He hated how young she looked when the anger dropped out for even a second.
"Don't touch the door with your head," he said. "Touch me."
She stared.
Then, despite everything, a ragged half-laugh escaped her.
"That sounded terrible."
"Do it anyway."
Her breathing shuddered. Then slowed by one fraction.
Enough.
Behind them, Marlon made a noise like he was trying to laugh and cry at the same time and finding neither was structurally sound.
Outside, the janitor went quiet.
Not gone.
Listening.
Thinking.
Ren used that silence to move. She crossed to the inner corridor, kicked open another door, checked, then came back.
"Storage room. No windows. One entrance."
Marlon looked at the ceiling. "We keep improving."
"Move," she said.
He did not.
Isaac didn't blame him.
Every time they moved, somebody died.
That math had gotten hard to ignore.
Marlon looked toward the outer door. Toward the voice behind it. Toward the city none of them could survive by understanding.
Then at Isaac. Then at the place where Ty should've been filling the room with noise.
"Next one," he said quietly, "we don't leave."
Isaac's throat closed around the answer because there wasn't one.
Jadah looked down at their hands—his still on her wrists, her fingers finally open again—and said, just as quietly,
"You don't get to promise that."
No one argued with her.
Because she was right.
Because tonight had eaten promises whole.
From outside the room, farther down the landing, something hit the metal walkway and ran.
Not one set of feet.
Several.
Coming fast.
Ren heard it first.
The janitor heard it too.
For the first time, his voice sharpened.
"Inside," he snapped to someone not in the room.
Not to them.
To whatever was with him.
Then the outer wall took one hard impact from the landing side, and the whole machine shop office shook with it.
The janitor had brought company.
And for the first time since they'd met him, he sounded like he was in a hurry too.