Page 118 of Thorne
I'm buttoning the jeans when the door creaks.
Thorne stops in the doorway. His eyes move over me, clinical at first—counting the stitches, assessing the gait. Then the mask slips, just enough for me to see the raw edge of the man who held me through the night.
"You're supposed to stay in bed for forty-eight hours." His voice is a low rumble. "Doc's orders."
He crosses the room in two heavy strides, stopping close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off him. His hand finds my hip—careful, avoiding the dressing—and holds me steady.
"You need to stay in bed."
"I'm fine."
"You lost blood. Your blood pressure is hovering in the basement."
"Skye gave me a bolus of fluids and an iron supplement. I'm functional." I meet his eyes. "What about Ghostwater? We don't have time for me to befunctional."
"We can delay." His thumb grazes the waistband of my jeans. "Halo can?—"
"If I'm not at that terminal, the ASHFALL handshake won't execute. Halo can't spoof my signature on the recursion loop. It has to be me. We don't have another day for observation."
His jaw tightens so hard a muscle jumps in his cheek. He stares at me, his eyes dark and fractured.
"Don't use my daughter to justify a suicide run."
"It's not a suicide run. It's an insertion." I reach up, my fingers brushing the rough stubble on his jaw. "I'm finishing the math, Thorne. That's all this is. Besides, I'm sure Skye can pump me full of pain meds?—"
He leans down, kissing me with a sudden, desperate ferocity. When he pulls back, the tactical mask is bolted back into place.
"I don't know what I'm going to do with you. Kitchen. Now."
The farmhouse kitchen is cramped,a chaotic nest of fiber-optic cables and maps pinned to floral wallpaper. The air smells of strong coffee and gun oil.
I take the last stool at the end of the table, moving with a deliberate, slow caution to keep my breathing shallow. Skye is already there, leaning over a tablet. She looks up, her gaze raking over my pale face with the kind of scrutiny that sees right through the adrenaline.
"You should be in bed." Skye's voice is low and uncompromising.
"I'm functional." I meet her stare, mirroring the flat, detached tone I've heard from the men for weeks. "Isn't that what the guys call it?"
Thorne's hand tightens on the back of my stool, his presence a heavy, silent warning behind me.
Ghost doesn't look up from the cluster map at the head of the table. The red dots are crawling closer to the facility perimeter, the clock ticking down the last few hours of Ghostwater's autonomy.
"Doc, I need a go/no-go." Ghost's eyes finally snap to hers, sharp and demanding. "We're on a hard burn. I need her to walk into that server room, sit, and type. Can she do that?"
Skye doesn't look away from me as she answers him. "In a clinical setting, she'd be under observation for forty-eight hours minimum. Down for a week. But the wound is stable. I've sutured the entry and exit points closed, and the bleeding has stopped. No signs of internal trauma."
She pauses, her eyes narrowing as she catalogs my tremors. "She can walk. She can sit at a terminal. But if she takes anotherhit to the abdomen or tries to exert herself, the stitches will break. She'll bleed out before I can get her back on a table. That's your variable."
"Understood. No climbing, no sprinting. She breathes and types." Ghost nods, accepting the medical clearance with a sharp, tactical focus. "Assignments," Ghost continues, his eyes sweeping the room. "Fuse and Torque on point. Whisper on comms. Halo, you're with Julianna. You provide the technical support and?—"
"No." Thorne's voice cuts through the room, cold and absolute. His hand moves from the stool to my shoulder, his fingers anchoring me.
"Halo stays on the external uplink." Thorne's tone is level, dangerous as his gaze locks with Ghost's. "I stay with Julianna. End of story."
Ghost stares at him for a long beat. The tension in the room ratchets up until it's a physical weight. Halo looks between the two of them, then shrugs, stepping back toward his monitors.
"Fine." Ghost concedes with a short, tight nod. "Thorne, you're the shadow. You get her to the server room. She deploys the framework; you get her out. We move in four hours."
I look at the map, then at the man whose hand is still heavy on my shoulder. The debt isn't paid yet, but for the first time, the numbers are starting to align.
