Page 24 of Make Them Pay

Sixteen hours.

I can hold the line for sixteen more hours.

I hope.

10

Enley

I don’t sleep the way he thinks I do.

I close my eyes because that’s what you do when someone tells you to rest and you know they’re right. That you need it. But behind my eyelids my mind runs on two tracks at once, and neither of them leads to rest.

One track is the video. Poe’s swollen eye and split lip. The blood dried along his temple. The way Serafina rested her hand on his shoulder like he belonged to her. The stubborn look in his one good eye that I’ve known since we were kids. He’s still protecting me. Even now. Even beaten and chained. He won’t give Serafina what she wants because unlocking that network would expose everything, including the evidence of my secret operations against Goldenbell.

I did this. My late-night work in my apartment set all of this in motion. The guilt sits heavy in my chest like a stone I can’t set down.

The second track is Render.

Something shifted tonight while I was working on the security bypass. I felt it like a change in the air before a storm. I looked up from the screen and he was watching me with an expression I’ve never seen on his face before.

Open.

No careful distance. No professional mask. Just raw honesty. Like the walls he’s kept between us for years had finally cracked under pressure.

He said nothing when I asked. But his eyes said everything.

I lie on the cot in his hoodie and listen to him pretend to work at the table. I know, with the certainty that comes from five days of watching him closely, that the careful boundary he’s maintained since he carried me out of that container is about to come down.

The real question is what happens when it does.

Morning comes on day six. Twelve hours until Knight arrives at the meeting point.

We work with the kind of focus that comes when you can hear the clock ticking in every quiet moment. The rescue plan takes shape on the shared screen. Three entry points at the same time. Knight on the outside. Render heading down the stairs to the lower level. Me handling the hidden communications from a safe spot a couple hundred yards away.

The safe spot was Render’s idea. Far enough to stay out of direct danger but close enough to help in real time. It’s a compromise. It satisfies neither of us completely.

“I should be inside,” I say.

“You should be where your skills matter most. The bypass you built works through their security system. If something goes wrong, you need to be able to fix it quickly. You can’t do that while clearing rooms.”

“You’re being protective.”

“Maybe,” he says.

I want to argue. But he’s right. I hate that he’s right. My strengths are in the digital side. Putting me inside with a gun I barely know how to use would be ego, not strategy. Poe’s life is worth more than my pride.

“Fine,” I say. “Safe spot. But full communication. I hear everything. I see everything. No cutting me out because you think I can’t handle it.”

“Full communication. Agreed.”

We spend the next four hours refining every detail. The window for action is small. Six minutes when the guards are out of position. Everything depends on those six minutes.

The hidden channel from Orchid confirms the second holding area. Poe is there. Alone. The security lock on the corridor is the type I built the bypass for. If it works, Render can reach Poe without setting off every alarm in the building. If it doesn’t, we’ll be walking into a firefight.

“It’ll work,” I say when I see his jaw tighten.

“You sure?”