Page 5 of Us Defiant Few

“Tie him up,” Jack immediately ordered. Spade nodded, quietly slipping back into the Black Heart.

She opened her mouth to protest, but Brock cut her off.

“We have no choice, Khalani. Until he gets his memory back, Takeshi can’t be trusted.”

Khalani knew they were right.

She also hated that they were right.

Her bottom lip trembled as Spade emerged through the door with thick black rope looped around his hands. She reluctantly moved, her muscles tightening as Spade bound his wrists.

“Where do we go now?” Adan asked, his eyes sweeping over the shadows in the alley, like he expected a Dealer to jump out at any moment.

“We have another safe house not too far from here. We’ll take the transports in the back. Raziel.” Jack jerked his head. “Contact Lane. Let him know the situation. We’ll need his help for Ryder…and him.”

Everyone’s wary gazes drifted to Takeshi, who now lay on his front, hands tied behind him, his cheek pressed firmly to the concrete.

She silently stared, willing his eyes to open. Praying for his deep voice to speak her name.

He would wake soon.

Khalani felt it.

But what further terrors awaited when he did?

2

I thought I was comfortable in the dark, but then you tugged me deeper.

The journey to the safe house was quieter than she’d anticipated. The gnawing silence made her skin itch, and her knee bounced erratically, like her body could sense the impending doom.

They split up into three transports. Brock drove, while Serene, Adan, and Winnie sat beside her.

Lying in the back was Takeshi.

She prayed no one would pay attention to the unconscious figure in the vehicle, but Jack was clever, leading them through hidden back alleys.

She stared at the dazzling lights hanging in the distance, highlighting the drunken men and women laughing. They sung and sloshed their drinks onto the cobblestone streets.

Did they know?

Surely, they sensed it.

That sinking feeling in their chest. The one they merely dismissed as stress and anxiety, but it was really the pain from their neighbors dying not far from where they danced.

Winnie had once said that nuclear bombs weren’t what ended civilization. It was the loss of empathy that marked humanity’s collapse.

The transport screeched to a shuddering halt, jerking Khalani in her seat, wrenching her from those despairing thoughts.

Jack parked in front of a towering building, with a sharp, pointed terrace looming overhead. The stone structure might’ve been white in the past, but it was now a muddled gray. Her eyes flickered along the walls covered in patches of dirt, cobwebs, and boarded-up windows.

She dared a glance at Elise as everyone cautiously exited the transports. Elise’s eyes were dazed and unfocused as she stared at the ground, like she wanted to be as ignored and forgotten as the spatters of dirt on the road.

“Is he still out?” Jack approached, his stoic gaze fixed on Takeshi’s unmoving body under the blanket.

“For now,” Brock responded, his tone conveying just how long he thought that status would last.

Jack’s lips formed a thin line as he turned to the decrepit building. “Be quick and get him inside.”