Page 119 of Ruin
I go through the opening before the door has finished swinging, gun up, sightlines clear.
The room is exactly what the video showed.
Concrete walls. Exposed pipes. Harsh fluorescent lighting that makes everything look washed out and sick. And in the center, still bound to the same metal chair, is Emilia.
She looks worse than she did in the video.
Her blonde hair is matted and dark with dried blood and sweat.
Both eyes are swollen now, not just the one.
Her lips are cracked and bleeding, and there's a bruise on her jaw that's gone the color of rotten fruit.
She's conscious, barely, her head hanging forward, blood dripping, chin against her chest.
The two guards are on their feet.
One is reaching for the pistol on the table beside a half-eaten sandwich.
The other is already holding his weapon, turning toward the door with the delayed reaction of a man who didn't believe anyone would actually come.
I shoot the one reaching for the table. Center mass. He drops, and the sandwich goes with him.
The second guard fires.
The shot goes wide—panic, not aim—and punches into the concrete wall three feet to my left, spraying dust and chips.
Lionel hits him from the side, a tackle that takes them both to the ground, and what follows is brief and ugly and ends with Lionel standing up and the guard not.
"Clear," Lionel says.
I cross to Emilia.
Her head comes up slowly when she hears footsteps, and the look in her eyes is the look of an animal that has been hit so many times it flinches at everything, even rescue.
"Emilia." I keep my voice low. Even. Non-threatening, which is a particular challenge given that I'm holding a gun and standing over two bodies. "You're safe. We're getting you out."
She blinks and tries to focus.
Her swollen eyes make the effort painful and I can see her struggling to process what she's seeing—a man she doesn't recognize, in tactical gear, with blood spray on his shirt and a gun in his hand, telling her she's safe in a room that has been the polar opposite of safe for her.
Then she sees Selene.
Selene comes through the door behind me and the sound that comes out of Emilia is not a word.
It's something from before language, a raw and wrecked sound that holds relief and terror and confusion all at once.
Her body lurches against the zip ties, straining toward Selene with everything she has.
"Sel—Selene?—"
Selene is on her knees in front of the chair before I can move.
Her hands are shaking as she pulls the knife from her thigh and cuts the zip ties, and the gentleness with which she does it, the care she takes not to nick the raw and bleeding skin of Emilia's wrists, is so at odds with everything else happening in this room that something in my chest twists.
"I'm here," Selene says. Her voice is the steadiest thing in the building. "I'm here, Em. I've got you. We're going home."
Emilia collapses forward into her arms.
