Page 5 of The Hyena’s Guardian

Matt stared after him for half a second before following. “You usually kidnap people before telling them your name, or is that a regional thing?”

“Keene.”

“That your first name or last name?”

“Yes.”

Matt snorted softly. “I’ve known you for less than five minutes, and somehow you’re already exhausting.”

Keene did not react.

They moved through the terminal in silence, weaving through travelers and rolling luggage toward a secured exit Matt had not noticed earlier. The farther they walked, the quieter the airport became. Civilian traffic thinned. Cameras became more frequent.

The sensation of being watched pressed against him before he ever spotted the cameras. Something about the attention felt wrong, carrying an awareness that did not seem entirely human. The hyena stirred beneath his skin, alert but contained.

Keene keyed a code into an unmarked gray door and pushed it open.

The hallway beyond looked nothing like the airport. Bland concrete walls and industrial lighting stretched ahead without a single window. The door shut behind them with a heavy magnetic lock.

Matt slowed. “Well. This definitely feels like the beginning of a bad decision.”

“Most worthwhile things do.”

That was the first thing Keene had said that sounded remotely human. Matt glanced sideways at him. “You rehearse these lines?”

“No.”

“Shame. You’d be great at brooding monologues.”

Keene ignored him and continued down the corridor toward an elevator at the far end. No insignias marked the walls. No unit patches. No visible cameras, though Matt knew better than to assume they were absent.

Everything about the place felt intentionally forgettable. That was more unsettling than military precision. Army bases had personalities. Noise. Bad coffee. Gallows humor loud enough to keep fear manageable.

This place smelled too precisely controlled, like somebody had scrubbed individuality out of the walls.

The elevator doors slid open, and Keene stepped inside without a word. Matt followed, and seconds later the doors shut behind them as the elevator began descending deeper underground. Matt watched the floor numbers disappear entirely after sublevel six.

“…Okay,” he muttered. “That feels unnecessary.”

“Security.”

“For what? Nuclear launch codes?”

Keene’s expression never changed. “Sometimes.”

Matt looked over. Keene stared straight ahead. Matt sighed. “I genuinely cannot tell when you’re joking.”

“That is intentional.”

“Of course it is.”

The elevator continued descending long enough for the pressure in Matt’s ears to shift, taking them far beneath any level where a normal operations center should have been. The hyena paced restlessly beneath his skin, uneasy with the enclosed concrete and too many unknown predators packed into one place.

Keene noticed. “Control issue?”

Matt narrowed his eyes. “You always poke new recruits for fun?”

“You smell tense.”