A hot shower eased the aches from Eanna's hike and stung her palms into honesty.

  Water hammered her shoulders and steamed the small bathroom until the mirror turned to fog, condensation running down the glass in rivers that looked almost like tears. For a few blessed minutes she could pretend she was just… tired. Just scraped up. Just a person who'd picked a trail, eaten lunch in a ghost town, and come home with a souvenir collection of scratches like a normal outdoorsy idiot who'd underestimated the blackberry situation.

  Except nothing about today had been normal.

  The antiseptic bite on her hands dragged her right back to it- storm, cave, the sudden, impossible sound of the waterfall inside the dark where no waterfall should be, and then that thought that hadn't felt like hers, that command that had bypassed every rational process in her brain:

  RUN.

  And she had.

  She could remember the motion of it like a film reel, frame by frame: her lungs burning, brush snapping against her legs and arms, her feet slipping on the lake rocks with that horrible sliding moment before the cold water hit. The cold water that didn't even register because fear had eaten the whole world, turned everything into nothing but movement and distance and away.

  She could remember being terrified.

  But she couldn't remember why.

  That was the part that made her skin crawl.

  How did you sprint like your life depended on it- hard enough to tear up your hands, fast enough to lose time itself- and not be able to name the thing chasing you?

  What kind of brain did that? What kind of threat was so fundamentally wrong that your mind just… deleted it?

  She leaned closer to the mirror, squinting at the angry scrapes along her forearms as if the pattern might spell an answer in some language she'd forgotten how to read. Whatever wasn't covered by her T-shirt was marked up: fingertip to shoulder, red welts and thin cuts that looked like she'd fought a bramble patch and lost spectacularly. Some of them were deep enough to still weep, little beads of blood welling up when she moved wrong.

  Only she'd been wearing her poncho. That ugly yellow vinyl thing had covered her almost to her knees, thick enough to turn aside thorns and branches.

  So why did it look like she'd been dragged through the bushes bare-armed?

  She paused with a Band-Aid half peeled open, a sharp tug in her shoulder making her wince. The muscle there felt bruised, deep and aching, like she'd wrenched it doing something she couldn't recall.

  And then there was the poncho itself.

  She distinctly remembered not having it after she left the cave. She didn't remember stuffing it into the car- she would've remembered that, the wet plastic sticking to itself, the awkward bulk of it. She didn't remember taking it off. She didn't remember anything after the cave except running and then… her car, her watch, that wrong light painting everything in amber and rust.

  8:45.

  She had started the hike at 6:00 a.m., early enough to beat the crowds and catch the good light. She should've been home mid-afternoon at the latest, even accounting for the detour to the ghost town. Not sitting in her apartment with sunset in her bones and blood under her nails like she'd crawled out of something she wasn't meant to find.

  Like she'd lost ten hours somewhere between the cave and the parking lot.

  Her brain tried to chase the thought down again- tried to fill in those blank spaces, reconstruct what happened, make sense of the impossible- and she cut it off on purpose.

  Not tonight.

  Tonight she cleaned her wounds with the methodical care of someone performing a ritual, swallowed two ibuprofen like they were a prayer against tomorrow's soreness, and told herself, out loud in the foggy bathroom, that tomorrow was another day.

  She needed sleep. She had work in the morning. Bills didn't care about existential dread.

  And if she didn't let her mind rest, it would turn that cave into a looping maze she'd never walk out of, a puzzle with pieces that didn't fit and edges that cut when you tried to force them.

  Some things, she decided, weren't meant to be understood. Some things were meant to be survived and then forgotten. She was good at forgetting.

  The next morning, the coffee machine in the break room dripped like it was personally offended by gravity.

  Eanna watched it with the kind of intensity usually reserved for bomb squads and reality TV finales, her eyes tracking each dark drop as it fell into the pot with excruciating slowness.

  "The look you're giving that thing," a familiar voice said behind her, "makes me worry you're going to run off into the sunset with our only working coffee pot."

  Barry stood in the doorway, dark hair rumpled like he'd lost a fight with his pillow and decided not to pursue a rematch. Green eyes half-lidded with exhaustion, the kind that spoke of either a late night or a very early morning. He was in the usual cube-farm uniform, button-down that had seen better days, slacks with a crease that had given up somewhere around Tuesday, badge clipped to his belt like it paid rent. He looked about as awake as Eanna felt.

  Which was to say: not at all.

  "I can't help it," she said, still staring at the machine like it held the secrets of the universe. "The coffee pot and I have something hot."

  Barry groaned like she'd kicked his soul, the sound emanating from somewhere deep in his chest.

  Worth it.

  The pot finally filled with a last pathetic gurgle. She poured herself a cup, the steam rising in a way that felt almost sacred, and pulled out her chair at the small break room table. Barry worked for the building management company- front desk, reception, general human barricade between tenants and chaos. Which meant he heard everything first, saw everyone coming and going, and had opinions about all of it.

  "So," she asked, wrapping her hands around the mug and letting the warmth seep into her still-sore palms, "how did the date go?"

  Barry's face did something complicated- hope, disappointment, resignation, all in the span of a heartbeat.

  "He was dreamy," Barry said, blowing on his coffee with the careful attention of someone performing a sacred rite, "right up until he started yelling at the waitress over undercooked potatoes."

  "Oof. That's rough, buddy."

  "Undercooked. Potatoes." He said it like those two words contained all the disappointment of the human condition. "Not even something reasonable like cold food or wrong order. Just... insufficiently cooked root vegetables."

  He let out a long-suffering sigh and dragged a hand through his hair, making it stand up in new and interesting directions.

  "Why is it so hard to find a good man?" he demanded, as if she kept a spreadsheet with answers to life's great mysteries.

  "I have it on good authority all the good ones are taken." She stared mournfully into her cup like it might offer wisdom. "Or feral. Or both. Feral and taken."

  "The dream," Barry said flatly.

  "Living it."

  Barry snorted into his coffee, nearly choking.

  Then, as if the universe couldn't stand them having a peaceful moment of commiseration over their collective romantic failures, the break room door swung open again.

  Janice walked in.

  Conversation died instantly- like someone had unplugged the whole room, killed the power, turned off the lights.

  Existing around Janice was a slow erosion of the human spirit, a grinding attrition of will and sanity. The tried-and-true survival method was to become furniture: quiet, uninteresting, and definitely not making eye contact. Don't engage. Don't ask questions. Don't give her an opening to monologue about her life, which she treated as a reality show everyone else was dying to watch.

  Unless you wanted a full recap of her seventh vicious breakup with her third boyfriend of the year, plus bonus details nobody asked for and most people actively wanted to unhear.

  There had been a time Eanna had been the type to ask about her day, to offer a sympathetic ear, to try to be a decent coworker.

  That time ended after a conversation involving her then-boyfriend, fried chicken, and details about their sex life that should've required a content warning and possibly a waiver.

  Even thinking about it gave Eanna the thousand-yard stare.

  Janice didn't seem to notice their collective emotional evacuation. She drifted to the window with her coffee- some complicated iced monstrosity she'd brought from the coffee shop downstairs- and frowned at the parking lot below.

  "Have those been there all morning?" she asked, her voice carrying that particular tone of someone who expected the world to arrange itself for her convenience.

  "Been where?" Barry asked, but Eanna was already standing, something in Janice's voice pinging a warning in the back of her brain.

  Outside, several black vans were parked at the entrance to the lot.

  Not delivery vans. Not maintenance trucks with logos and contact information.

  The kind of vans that looked like they didn't need to obey traffic laws because the law had been pre-notified and told to look the other way.

  Normally, they'd be getting the third degree from commuters trying to get in and out of the lot, honking and gesturing and generally making their displeasure known.

  But the street was… empty.

  No cars. No pedestrians. No delivery trucks or food carts or the usual mid-morning bustle of a downtown office building.

  For eleven in the morning on a Wednesday, it was wrong.

  The wrongness of it hit Eanna like a physical sensation- that same pressure drop she'd felt in the forest before the storm, that breath-before-the-shout feeling that made every hair on her body stand up.

  A cold little prickle climbed the back of her neck.

  "That's pretty weird," she said softly, her voice coming out calmer than she felt.

  "Do you think we should call someone?" Janice asked, finally sounding uncertain instead of imperious.

  "Who would we even call?" Barry muttered, moving closer to the window. "The cops? 'Hello, officer, there are some vans in our parking lot looking suspicious'?"

  Eanna's answer died before it made it to her tongue.

  Because a man appeared below- one of theirs, office attire, badge swinging from his lanyard, and he was being led out by soldiers in dark fatigues.

  Soldiers.

  Not security guards with their polo shirts and friendly waves. Not cops in their blues with badges that caught the light. Not building management with clipboards and frustrated expressions.

  Soldiers. Military fatigues, tactical gear, the kind of equipment that said we are prepared for violence without needing to advertise it.

  They moved him like a package with an address already assigned, with the efficiency of people who'd done this before and expected to do it again.

  He wasn't struggling. He didn't look restrained- no handcuffs, no visible force.

  But there was something chilling in the way his shoulders were held- tight, resigned, like he'd already tried arguing and learned it was useless. Like he'd discovered that this was happening whether he cooperated or not, and cooperation at least meant he kept his dignity.

  They guided him into the back of a van with hands on his elbows, impersonal and professional. The door slammed with a sound that carried all the way to their third-floor window.

  The van peeled out, tires squealing just slightly.

  Barry let out a low whistle. "Poor schmuck. What do you think- "

  A second group came into view, cutting him off mid-sentence.

  More fatigues. Another employee- this one Eanna recognized, a woman from accounting who always brought homemade cookies to meetings.

  And then another. A man from IT who'd fixed her computer last month.

  Her mouth went dry, tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth.

  A line of men and women in office clothes were being funneled between two lines of dark uniforms like cattle being herded to slaughter, like prisoners being marched to cells, like people who'd stopped being people and become a problem that needed processing.

  "Is that- " Barry started, his voice climbing with confusion and the beginning of fear.

  "That's Carol and Dan," he finished, voice sharpening with the kind of recognition that makes everything worse. Because if it was Carol and Dan, it could be anyone. It could be them.

  Janice leaned closer to the window, breath fogging the glass. "Why are they- "

  A scream cut her off.

  High, sharp, abruptly silenced.

  Then the sound of a door being shoved open somewhere on their floor, the crash of it hitting a wall hard enough to leave a mark.

  Shouting. Protesting. The distinctive sound of furniture being overturned- a desk, maybe, or a filing cabinet. Something heavy knocked over with a crash that made the floor vibrate.

  The building filled with noise fast, like panic had been poured into the vents and pumped through every room at once.

  Running footsteps. More shouting. A man's voice raised in anger or fear- hard to tell which. A woman screaming "What are you doing?" over and over until the words lost meaning.

  Barry's eyes went wide, the whites showing all the way around. Janice made a small, broken sound like a wounded animal.

  Eanna's instincts kicked in- not bravery, not heroism, nothing noble or selfless. Just the same animal certainty that had gotten her away from that cave, that had sent her running when her brain couldn't explain why.

  The same certainty that said: hide.

  She grabbed Janice's wrist, her fingers wrapping around the delicate bones.

  "Bathroom," she said.

  "What-?"

  "Now."

  She pulled Janice down the hall at a half-run, her other hand grabbing Barry's sleeve on pure instinct. If this was some kind of raid, if this was an active threat, the bathroom door gave them one extra barrier. It wasn't much- a thin piece of wood with a lock designed to stop accidental intrusions, not determined assault. But it was something. And right now she would take "something" over "nothing."

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Janice's heels clacked against the tile like a countdown, like a beacon broadcasting their location with every step.

  Eanna slammed into the bathroom door hard enough to make her shoulder ache and shoved Janice inside, reaching back to yank Barry-

  -and realized he wasn't with them.

  She spun, hand still on the door, and caught a glimpse of him at the end of the hall.

  Standing there. Just standing there, frozen like a deer in headlights, staring at something around the corner she couldn't see.

  "Barry!" she hissed, as loud as she dared. He didn't move. Didn't even flinch.

  The shouting was getting closer. Heavy boots, multiple sets, the sound of organized violence moving through the building like a wave.

  She had maybe three seconds to make a choice.

  He'd made his. Either he'd frozen in place, or he'd decided to face whatever was coming, or his brain had just... stopped working in the face of the impossible.

  Either way, she didn't have time to drag him.

  She pulled the door shut and locked it, the click of the bolt sounding too loud, too final.

  Janice stared at her like she'd asked her to recite Shakespeare while juggling knives.

  "We're going to stay calm," Eanna said, forcing her voice steady even as her heart tried to beat its way out of her chest.

  She looked around fast, cataloging. Trash can. Mop bucket. Paper towel dispenser. Nothing remotely useful as a weapon, but maybe-

  "Trash can," she said, pointing.

  Bless her, Janice moved without arguing. She grabbed it with shaking hands- the whole thing, metal frame and plastic liner- and shoved it toward Eanna, her designer blouse already rumpled from the sprint down the hall.

  Eanna wedged it under the door handle as best she could, metal scraping against tile with a sound that set her teeth on edge.

  It wouldn't hold long. Maybe not at all if they really wanted in.

  But it might buy a minute. Thirty seconds. Something.

  "Will that keep them out?" Janice whispered, her voice small and young-sounding.

  "For a minute or two," Eanna said, then immediately regretted saying it because Janice's face crumpled like she'd confirmed her worst fear.

  The sound of heavy boots thundered in the hallway, getting closer.

  Voices. Sharp commands in tones that didn't expect argument.

  A door slammed open nearby- probably the men's room, judging by the depth of the curses that followed and the sound of someone being dragged out.

  Something hit a wall hard enough that Eanna felt the impact through the floor.

  Her brain flashed to every office shooter drill they'd ever rolled their eyes through, every training video they'd watched with half their attention while eating lunch and checking their phones. Run, hide, fight. In that order.

  They couldn't run.

  So they'd hide.

  She grabbed Janice's elbow and pulled her toward the nearest stall, her mind already moving three steps ahead.

  "Up," she said, pointing.

  "What- what is this?" Janice's gaze followed hers, up to the ceiling tiles, to the darkness above them.

  Eanna had noticed it as soon as they came in- a quirk of old construction she'd filed away without thinking about it. An I-beam running above the drop ceiling at the edge of the tiles, visible through a gap where someone had shifted a panel and never put it back properly. Old construction supports, never removed during remodels when they'd lowered the ceiling to run new ductwork and wiring. A dark space you weren't meant to think about, a gap between what was and what appeared to be.

  Perfect for hiding, if you could get up there.

  "Holy crap," Janice breathed, understanding dawning. "Is that even safe?"

  "Only one way to find out," Eanna said, and held out her hand. "Kick off your shoes. Step on the seat."

  Janice hesitated- Eanna could see the calculation in her eyes, the war between fear and dignity, then yanked her heels off with sharp, angry movements and climbed onto the toilet seat. Eanna boosted her with a hand under her elbow and her shoulder braced against the stall wall, taking as much of Janice's weight as she could.

  Janice got one foot on the pipes running along the wall, then the other, her stockings already snagging. Then she hauled herself up onto the partition with a little gasp of effort and fear.

  Boots hit the bathroom door.

  Hard.

  The whole frame shuddered. The trash can scraped an inch across the floor.

  Janice's eyes went huge, all pupil, her breathing coming in short panicked bursts.

  "Move," Eanna hissed, pushing a ceiling tile up and sliding it aside, exposing the dark cavity above. "Go."

  Janice scrambled, belly to the partition like a panicked cat trying to climb a tree, and reached for the beam with hands that shook so badly Eanna didn't think she'd make it.

  And the sounds outside became methodical.

  Organized.

  Stall doors in the men's room slamming open one by one. The heavy whack of partitions being kicked, being forced, being destroyed. The sound of a systematic search by people who knew exactly what they were doing.

  A countdown.

  Their countdown.

  Janice managed to wedge herself into the ceiling space, legs disappearing into shadow, dust raining down as she shifted her weight. Her arms shook as she tried to brace herself on the beam, find purchase, not fall.

  "Come on," she mouthed, frantic, reaching back down with one trembling hand.

  Eanna jumped, fingers brushing the edge of the partition.

  Too short. Story of her life.

  She grabbed the pipes, tried to hoist herself up the way Janice had-

  -and felt the stall wall flex under her, cheap construction never meant to bear weight. Not enough leverage. Not enough height. Not enough upper body strength to pull herself up one-handed while holding the pipes with the other.

  Janice reached down again, face tight with effort and fear, but her grip wasn't strong enough to haul Eanna up. She was already shaking from holding her own weight, arms burning with the strain.

  "I can't," Eanna whispered, not because she didn't want to, not because she wasn't trying, but because her body was already deciding the physics of it and finding them impossible.

  Janice shook her head violently like she could refuse reality through sheer force of will.

  The bathroom door shuddered again. Wood splintered.

  Eanna made a flat, sliding motion with her hand, the universal gesture for close it.

  Janice's brows pinched in confusion, or maybe denial.

  "Slide the panel," Eanna whispered as quietly as she could. "Close it."

  Janice looked like she wanted to argue, wanted to refuse, wanted to do something other than abandon her.

  Something hit the bathroom door hard enough to crack it. The trash can skidded another few inches.

  Janice flinched hard enough to bump a ceiling tile, sending more dust cascading down.

  Eanna nodded once- firm, final, no time for debate, and Janice did it.

  The tile slid back into place with a soft scrape.

  Her face vanished with it, swallowed by shadow and cheap acoustic panels.

  For half a heartbeat, the bathroom was silent except for Eanna's breathing, harsh and too loud in her own ears.

  She dropped into the stall, locked it with fingers that fumbled the simple mechanism twice, and grabbed Janice's heels off the floor like they were weapons. Like they might matter.

  Then, because one locked stall was obvious- because that's where they'd look first, because she'd seen enough action movies to know the first hiding spot never worked, she ducked under the partition into the next stall over, her shoulders scraping the sides, and locked that one too.

  She climbed onto the toilet seat, feet tucked up, knees drawn in tight against her chest, heels clenched so hard in her hands her knuckles went white.

  Boots entered the bathroom.

  Two sets, maybe three. The tile amplified everything, turned every footstep into a gunshot, every breath into thunder.

  The first stall door slammed open, kicked or shouldered, the lock giving way like it was made of paper.

  The second. Metal screaming against metal.

  The third. A pause, a moment of consideration, then violence.

  Then the stall beside hers- the one she'd started in, the one Janice had climbed from.

  The handle rattled once, twice, testing.

  A sharp kick hit the door low and hard, right where the lock met the frame. The whole divider shuddered, cheap metal flexing. The lock screamed protest.

  It broke with a sound like a snapped bone, sharp and final.

  Eanna slapped a hand over her mouth, not to hide her breathing- there was no hiding that, her lungs working like bellows, but to keep herself from making any other sound. To keep from whimpering or gasping or saying anything that would give her away. Her heartbeat was a drum in her ears, so loud she was sure they could hear it.

  A pause.

  Shuffling. The sound of someone checking the stall, looking up at the ceiling maybe, checking for exactly what they'd done.

  Then her stall door jerked against its lock.

  A test. Checking which ones were occupied, which ones were locked from the inside, which ones held prey.

  Another pause, almost curious, almost thoughtful.

  Then the kick hit.

  Her stall door blasted open, the lock shattering, metal fragments hitting the floor with bright pinging sounds.

  Hands grabbed her arms before she could even think about fighting, yanking her down so hard her knees hit tile with a crack of impact that sent white stars across her vision. Pain flared bright and useless, bringing tears to her eyes. She tried to twist away, tried to pull free, and got hauled upright like a misbehaving puppet, like a doll that had forgotten its place.

  She didn't get a look at faces- just dark uniforms, black gloves, the hard angle of rifles at their chests. Tactical gear that looked expensive and well-used. Faces hidden behind the kind of neutral professionalism that was somehow worse than anger.

  They dragged her out of the bathroom, through the break room where coffee still steamed in abandoned mugs, into the hall where people were being shoved out of offices like garbage being taken to the curb.

  Some were crying. Some were arguing- futilely, desperately. Some had just gone silent, faces slack with shock.

  Eanna stumbled into someone being forced out of a private office- one of the corner offices with actual walls instead of cubicle partitions, and caught his arm automatically to keep him from falling.

  He felt… wrong under her hand.

  Not wrong like supernatural. Not wrong like the cave.

  Wrong like hard. Dense. Like muscle over bone over more muscle, compact and coiled.

  Her palm brushed the shape under his suit coat as she steadied him- flat, heavy, unmistakable.

  A concealed weapon.

  His eyes flicked to her face, sharp and assessing. Dark hair cut short and professional. Dark eyes that looked like they missed nothing, cataloged everything, calculated odds without thinking about it. His suit was immaculate, expensive, tailored like it had opinions about inferior craftsmanship. He straightened his jacket with a smooth motion that looked casual to anyone watching.

  To Eanna, it looked like a warning. Like a man making sure his weapon was still in place, still accessible, still an option.

  They held each other's gaze for a fraction too long.

  He knew she'd felt it.

  She knew he knew.

  She said nothing.

  He said nothing.

  They were both shoved forward, the moment breaking.

  They were stragglers- this was the far corner of the building, the least popular break room because it was the farthest from the elevators, and they were herded around the corner into a larger group being assembled in the main corridor.

  Chaos swallowed them.

  People shouted. Some cried- loud, messy sobs that echoed off the walls. Someone tried to argue in a voice that climbed toward hysteria, demanding lawyers and rights and explanations, and got slammed against a wall hard enough to silence them and leave a dent in the drywall.

  Rifles didn't need words. Rifles were arguments that ended conversations. They were driven down three flights of stairs- pushed, prodded, occasionally shoved when someone moved too slowly, and out the back emergency door.

  The fact that it opened without screaming its usual alarm was its own quiet horror.

  Official.

  Planned.

  Coordinated in a way that meant this wasn't random, wasn't chaos, wasn't some mistake that would be cleared up with phone calls and explanations.

  This was intentional.

  Outside, they were pushed into the back parking lot where more vans waited like patient predators.

  Eanna caught movement high up- windows on the fourth and fifth floors, dark shapes behind glass that resolved into silhouettes when she looked closer. Men with rifles. Overwatch positions.

  She forced herself to look away like she hadn't seen them, like she was just another terrified office worker scanning for escape routes that didn't exist.

  Nothing good came from staring at men with rifles on overwatch. Nothing good came from showing them you'd noticed, you'd understood, you were calculating odds and finding them poor.

  Except-

  The dark-haired man beside her shifted, his hand sliding toward the inside of his coat.

  Too smooth.

  Too practiced.

  Too fast to be anything except exactly what she thought it was.

  He was going to draw.

  Eanna stepped closer like she was just huddling in fear, seeking comfort in proximity, and put a hand on his elbow.

  He turned his head just enough to look down at her, and the expression he gave her could have peeled paint off walls. Cold. Assessing. The look of a man deciding if she was threat or obstacle or nothing.

  She flicked her eyes upward. A quiet look, barely a movement.

  He hesitated, doubt crossing his features. Why would he listen to a stranger? Why would he trust someone he'd never met?

  Then his gaze followed hers, tracking up to the windows.

  "Second window to the right," she murmured, barely moving her lips, voice pitched just for him. "Third floor."

  His hand stilled halfway to his weapon.

  His eyes snapped back to her- understanding hitting like a physical blow. Sharp. Immediate.

  He'd seen them. Or he'd seen enough.

  He eased his hand away from his coat, the movement just as smooth as the reach had been, just as practiced. Making it look natural, unconscious, like he'd just been adjusting his jacket.

  All of it happened in seconds. Maybe less.

  Eanna kept her posture small, terrified, harmless. Shoulders hunched, head down, the universal language of someone who didn't want to be noticed.

  Which wasn't entirely an act. She was terrified.

  But freezing had never gotten her anything except regret, and running had gotten her here, and sometimes the only thing left was to observe and adapt and hope you were making the right choice.

  The soldiers didn't seem to notice the exchange. Or if they did, they didn't care.

  They stopped as the people in front of them jammed up near the vans, the line compressing like an accordion.

  Then they lurched forward again, shuffling, inexorable.

  Eanna didn't see the opening until the tall man ahead of her was shoved inside, disappearing into darkness like he'd been swallowed.

  Her turn came fast.

  She tried to step up into the van, but her legs were too short, the van's lip too high, geometry working against her like it always did. A shove from behind nearly pitched her face-first into the bumper.

  "Hey!" a male voice barked, sharp with something that might have been concern.

  A hand caught her forearm and pulled, strong fingers wrapping around her wrist.

  Another hand joined it- stronger, firmer, more insistent.

  The first belonged to a big blond man who looked vaguely familiar, someone she'd maybe seen in the building but never spoken to; the second belonged to the dark-haired man in the suit, the one with the gun she'd kept him from drawing.

  They hauled her in just as the door snapped shut behind her, the heavy metal clipping her right heel hard enough to make her yelp. She stumbled, caught herself against someone's shoulder, muttered an apology that got lost in the chaos.

  The van rolled forward immediately, no pause, no hesitation.

  Inside, there were no windows. Just darkness and bodies packed tight, standing room only, maybe twenty people crammed into a space meant for cargo. A steel lattice separated them from the driver, making the front of the van feel like a different world, like they were livestock being transported and the drivers were careful not to let them contaminate their space.

  Eanna was wedged between the dark-haired man on her left and the blond man on her right.

  For reference: she was five-one on a good day with thick socks. The dark-haired man was easily six foot, maybe more. The blond was… taller. Significantly taller. Broad-shouldered, built like a guy who used doorframes as suggestions and had opinions about load-bearing walls. His hair was longer, pulled back into a low ponytail, scruff shadowing his jaw like he'd skipped shaving for a few days.

  Heartbreaker, if they were in literally any other situation. The kind of face that launched ill-advised hookups and regrettable life choices.

  The van jolted over what felt like a pothole or a curb. Eanna slammed into the suited man's side, her shoulder hitting his ribs.

  His expensive fabric hid his actual physique, but she could feel the solidness under it- lean muscle, the kind that wasn't decorative or for show. The kind that came from training, from use, from a life that required physical capability. Bodyguard? Executive security? Private military contractor? Someone who'd learned to move like violence without advertising it, who could blend into a boardroom and then break someone's arm without changing expression.

  A voice cut through the cramped air, pitched to carry without shouting.

  "Hey, Slim."

  It wasn't the man beside her.

  It came from another blond- so similar to the first it took Eanna's brain a second to accept they were different people. Cleaner cut, shorter hair, military posture that didn't disappear just because he'd put on office clothes. Even standing in a crowded van in the dark, he held himself like he was on parade ground.

  This one she knew, or at least knew of.

  Gabriel. A new manager on the second floor, hired maybe two months ago. Recently discharged- military, Marines maybe, she couldn't remember which branch. She'd never interacted with him directly, but you didn't forget a soldier's bearing once you noticed it. The way they stood, moved, scanned a room like they were still looking for threats and exits.

  He hadn't spoken loudly, but in this space he didn't need to. Sound carried, bounced off metal walls, found ears whether you wanted it to or not.

  Gabe's eyes flicked toward the suited man's coat, toward the place where Eanna had felt the weapon. "Saw you out there." A pause, weighted with meaning. "What stopped you?"

  The suited man- Slim, apparently, jerked his head in a minimal gesture, economical and precise.

  "Her."

  Eanna's stomach dropped.

  Gabe's twin- or near twin, brother maybe, the resemblance was too strong for coincidence- shifted closer, his bulk making the already-cramped space feel smaller. "What do you mean?"

  Eanna weighed her options for exactly half a second, then hooked a finger in a come here motion.

  He leaned in without hesitation, ear angling toward her mouth, close enough that she could smell his aftershave- something woodsy and clean.

  She whispered, "The windows. There were snipers."

  His head snapped back just enough to give her a look- reassessment, surprise, respect maybe, then he made a quick hand sign toward Gabe.

  Military sign language. Definitely.

  Both men went grim, faces settling into expressions that looked carved from stone.

  Gabe stared into the dark like he wanted to punch the universe until it explained itself, jaw tight enough that Eanna could see the muscle working. "None of this makes sense."

  "It doesn't," Slim said quietly, his voice controlled in a way that made Eanna's pulse spike. That was the voice of someone working very hard to stay calm, to not show fear, to maintain control when control was the only thing they had left. "Have you heard anything? Any intel? Any reason?"

  "Not a damn thing," Gabe answered, frustration bleeding through. He looked at the scruffier blond- the one who'd helped pull Eanna into the van. "You, Ben?"

  Ben shook his head once, economical as his brother. "Only enough to know they aren't contractors."

  He didn't need to explain what he meant.

  Not contractors meant not private security. Not rent-a-cops. Not civilian anything.

  Military. Government. Official in the worst possible way.

  The van rumbled on, engine noise and road vibration the only constants. Somewhere in the darkness, someone was praying- soft, Spanish, a rhythm Eanna recognized even though she couldn't understand the words.

  Someone near the front started to cry- a soft, muffled sound that turned the dark into something smaller and meaner, something that pressed down on all of them like weight.

  And sometimes silence really was the only answer.

  Because what do you say when the world stops making sense?

  What do you say when soldiers appear without warning, without reason, and start collecting people like they were inventory?

  What do you say when you don't know where you're going, or why, or if you'll ever come back?

  Eanna leaned against the wall of the van, feeling the vibration through her shoulders, and closed her eyes.

  In the darkness behind her eyelids, she saw the cave again. The smooth floor. The impossible sound of water.

  The shape at the edge of her flashlight's reach.

  And she wondered- with a clarity that felt almost like premonition, if she'd run from the cave only to run straight into something worse.

  If whatever she'd found in that mountain was connected to this.

  If running had ever been an option at all.

  The van turned, throwing them against each other, and kept going.

  And she didn't have any answers.

  None of them did.