The rain had softened to a distant hiss by the time the door opened again. The harsh overhead light clicked off, replaced by a dim, yellow lamp in the corner that threw long shadows across the concrete floor. Ariel flinched at the sudden change, her eyes straining to adjust, the sting of dried tears burning the skin beneath them. Her wrists throbbed where the plastic ties bit into them, every small movement sending a fresh ache through her shoulders.
Footsteps crossed the room,lighter than Arlo's, not as sure, almost reluctant. Whoever it was didn't rush. They took their time, as if deciding whether to come close at all.
A figure stepped into the pool of lamplight. A man in a plain black shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows, dark hair pushed back like he'd done it with frustrated fingers. He kept his gaze down at first, like he didn't particularly want to be seen. When he finally looked at her, there was no smugness, no gloating, no delight in her state. Just something that looked suspiciously like regret.
"Don't," Ariel rasped, before he could say anything. "If you're here to continue his little lecture, save it. I'm done listening."
He stopped a few feet away, hands loose at his sides. "I'm not here to hurt you."
She let out a hoarse laugh that scraped her throat. "That's what he said."
A small wince tightened his jaw. "I'm not him."
"Then who are you?" Her voice sharpened, brittle around the edges. "Let me guess,another one of his 'ecosystem'? Another piece on his board?"
He hesitated, then stepped closer into the lamplight. She caught the faint outline of a thin scar near his temple, disappearing into his hairline, like someone had once tried to erase him and failed.
"You can call me Chris," he said quietly.
The name jolted her. Arlo's voice drifted back, uninvited—Chris is family. He stepped between us. The knife went into him instead of me. The memory made her stomach twist.
"Right," Ariel said, words sharpening like glass. "The loyal shadow. The one who 'saw' Harry. The hero in his story."
Chris's mouth twitched, not quite into a smile. "Is that what he told you?"
"Don't act surprised." Her fingers burned against the restraints as she shifted. "You're alive. Harry isn't. I can do the math."
He studied her for a long moment. "Math isn't always the same as truth."
"You know what would really help?" she shot back. "Untying me instead of speaking in riddles."
His gaze dropped to her wrists. The skin was red and angry where the zip ties dug in. For a second, he looked like he might move toward her.
Then his hand curled into a fist at his side, and he stayed where he was.
"I can't," he said.
"Of course you can't." Ariel's laugh came out hollow. "No one in this place ever can. Orders, right? King's crown. Obsidian Halo. All of that."
"You shouldn't have been brought here," Chris said. "Not like this."
"Well," she said tightly, "you're a little late to that realization."
He didn't argue. He just watched her, eyes moving over the bruises on her cheek, the dried blood at the corner of her lip, the way her shoulders sloped with exhaustion. Something softened in his expression—not pity exactly, but close.
Without a word, he moved behind her chair.
Ariel tensed so hard the wood creaked. "Don't touch me—"
"I'm not untying you," he said, voice low near her ear. "Relax."
The word made her want to scream.
She felt him shift something near the back of the chair. A faint click sounded above her. The light brightened just a little, no longer stabbing straight into her eyes. Overhead, the cool breath of air that had been pouring down the back of her neck shifted, redirected so it wasn't freezing her spine.
She blinked, thrown. "You adjusted the… ventilation?"
"You'll be here a while," Chris replied. "No point in you getting sick on top of everything else."
"That's your big act of mercy?" she said. "Air?"
"I'm working with what I can," he said, moving back around to face her.
This time, he stopped closer. Close enough that if her hands were free, she could have reached out and shoved him away. He didn't flinch under the thought; he just looked at her like he was trying to decide how much to say.
"You want answers," he said. "But answers come with a cost here. And you've already paid enough today."
"You think being honest with me is a luxury?" Ariel asked. "After everything he did to them? To me?"
"In this world?" His eyes didn't waver. "Yes."
She swallowed, the taste in her mouth sour and metallic. "Did Berry really work for you?" The words scraped on the way out. "Not Arlo. You. Did you see her? Talk to her? Or is that just another convenient detail you're all using to make yourselves feel better?"
Chris looked away for the first time, toward the glass wall where the rain still dragged the city into streaks of light. His shoulders shifted with a tiny movement she almost missed.
"I knew her," he said.
The admission hit harder than she expected.
"How?" Ariel's voice dropped. "Through Harry? Through Arlo?"
He shook his head once. "Through numbers."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I can give you right now."
Her chest tightened. "Did she betray him? Arlo. Is that true?"
Silence stretched between them. The hum of the vent filled it, the patter of rain, the faint, distant rumble of traffic beyond the glass. Chris's jaw worked, but he said nothing.
"Chris." She hated that her voice softened, but it did. "Please."
He met her eyes again, and there was something almost apologetic in his gaze, like he wished she had asked anything else.
"Berry made choices," he said slowly. "Some of them to protect Harry. Some of them to protect you. Some of them to protect herself." He paused, choosing his next words like they were shards. "In this business, motives get tangled. Outcomes don't care."
"That's not an answer either," Ariel whispered.
"It's more than you had," he replied.
"And Harry?" Her throat burned as she forced the name out. "Was he really trying to kill Arlo?"
Chris's gaze darkened with a memory she couldn't see. "Harry did something very stupid," he said. "Whether he meant it the way Arlo tells it… depends who you ask."
A humorless sound escaped her. "And you? If I asked you?"
"I'm not the one you're supposed to believe," Chris said. "Not yet."
She let her head fall back against the chair for a moment, eyes closing, the weight of too many half-answers pressing down on her. "Then why are you here?" she muttered. "If you're not allowed to untie me and you won't really tell me anything, what's the point of this little visit?"
He was quiet long enough that she opened her eyes again.
"Arlo is giving you a villain to hate," Chris said finally. "That's easier than what's underneath."
"The underneath where you all somehow become victims?" she snapped.
He let the jab pass. "He thinks if you hate him enough, you won't look too closely at the rest. At what Harry did. At what Berry did. At what you were meant to be, to all of this."
Her blood ran cold. "What I was meant to be?"
Something in his expression warned her he'd gone further than he'd meant to. His face closed up, shutters slamming down.
"You were never supposed to walk into that street the day he pulled you back," Chris said. "Let's leave it there for now."
"What does that mean?" Ariel's voice spiked, fear punching through her fatigue. "What does that mean?"
"It means," he said, "your story with him didn't start where you think it did. And if you want to survive this, you need to stop treating it like a love story gone wrong."
Her eyes burned. "Then what is it?"
He moved toward the door, and the lamplight slipped off his face as he reached for the handle.
"Wrong question," he murmured. "Ask instead why a man like Arlo spent months searching for a girl who just sells books and believes in happy endings."
Her breath stuttered. "Months…?"
But the door was already opening. Cold air slid into the room from the hallway. His silhouette blurred as he stepped through.
"Chris!" she called, the word tearing at her throat.
He didn't look back.
The lock clicked shut, sealing her in again. The vent hummed gently above her, no longer freezing, but the chill inside her only deepened.
She stared at the door until her eyes stung, Chris's last words replaying in her head, stretching and warping into shapes she didn't want to recognize.
Months.
Arlo hadn't just found her the day he pulled her out of traffic.
He'd been looking for her. Long before the hot chocolate, before the bookshop, before Berry's vanished ring and Harry's last flight.
Whatever story she thought she'd been living with him, it had started long before she opened that front door.
And almost nothing about it, she realized, had ever been an accident.
Outside the room where Ariel sat bound, the corridor was narrow and half lit, a strip of dull white running along the base of the walls. The rain was louder here, drumming on the metal roof, beating against the distant glass. It made the whole place feel like it was underwater.
Chris closed the door behind him with more care than necessary, fingers lingering on the handle for a second too long. The image of Ariel—eyes red, wrists raw, voice cracking around questions he couldn't answer—wouldn't leave him, no matter how hard he tried to shut it out.
He didn't get the chance.
Arlo was already waiting at the far end of the corridor, leaning against the wall near the stairs with a cigarette burning low between his fingers. The ember flared when he took a slow drag, painting his face in an orange glow that did nothing to soften it.
"You took your time," Arlo said.
Chris walked towards him, jaw tight. "You didn't tell me you were going to do it like that."
"Like what?" Arlo flicked the ash onto the concrete. "Talk to her? Enlighten her? She asked for answers."
"You're not enlightening her," Chris snapped. "You're ripping her apart."
Arlo's eyes narrowed, but he stayed where he was. "Careful."
"No," Chris said, voice finally cracking under the restraint he'd been forcing on himself. "You tell me to go in there. You tell me not to touch the ties. Not to say too much. You stand there watching her shake like she's half frozen, and then you sit down like it's a board meeting. Why are you doing this? Why are you pushing her to hate you?"
The question came out too loud, echoing off the walls. For a moment, Arlo just studied him, brow furrowing as if he were examining a crack in the foundation.
"Because it's necessary," Arlo said at last.
Chris let out a harsh laugh. "That's not an answer."
"It's the only one that matters right now."
He pushed off the wall, closing the distance between them with an easy, unhurried stride. Up close, the sharp cologne and smoke clung to him, along with the faint metallic scent that never quite washed out.
"You want more detail?" Arlo asked quietly. "Fine. She needs a target. Something simple. One face to pin everything on. Better it be me than the people I can't afford to touch yet."
Chris stared at him. "So you'd rather let her drown in a lie as long as you get to script it."
Arlo's mouth twitched. "She's not drowning. She's waking up."
"Is that what you call this?" Chris's voice rose again, hands balling into fists at his sides. "You sit there, parade Harry and Berry in front of her like trophies, and expect her to 'wake up' grateful?"
Arlo's gaze hardened. "Watch your tone."
"Or what?" Chris stepped closer, close enough that Arlo had to tip his head back a little to keep eye contact. "You'll add me to the list of things she's supposed to hate?"
They stared at each other, tension tightening the air between them. It had never been like this before,never this close to snapping. In the quiet of the corridor, the rain sounded almost like static.
Arlo was the one who broke eye contact first. He sighed, dragging a hand through his hair, the cigarette hanging between his fingers.
"You're too close to this," he said. "That's why you're talking like that."
"Too close?" Chris repeated, incredulous. "You're the one who spent months tracking her. Who walked into her bookshop like some wandering patron. Who drank her cocoa and listened to her talk about her dead parents like it was bedtime reading. Then you dragged her in here and tore her life apart in a single night. And I'm too close?"
"Exactly," Arlo said, voice suddenly flat. "You're letting whatever you think you feel get in the way. You're not objective."
Chris's laugh this time was quieter, but more dangerous. "You think I'm the one not being objective?"
Arlo lifted the cigarette to his lips, then seemed to reconsider and crushed it out on the wall instead. "Control your feelings, Chris," he said, every word deliberate. "You can't get soft on her. Not now."
A muscle jumped in Chris's jaw. "Soft," he repeated, like the word tasted wrong.
"Yes," Arlo said. "Soft. You went off script in there. You weren't supposed to hint at the street. Or at timelines. You weren't supposed to move the vent, either."
"It was freezing," Chris muttered.
"It was controlled," Arlo countered. "Like everything else here. She needs pressure, not comfort. She needs to see me clearly so she stops trying to save something that never existed."
Chris shook his head slowly, disbelief and anger twisting together. "You're enjoying this," he said. "You can dress it up as strategy, call it 'pressure,' but I've seen you when you're just doing business. This isn't that. This is personal."
Arlo's eyes flashed. "Of course it's personal. Harry made it personal. Berry made it personal. She—"
He cut himself off, lips pressing into a line.
"She what?" Chris pushed. "She breathed? She smiled at you over a book counter? She made you feel something you didn't know what to do with?"
"Drop it," Arlo said.
Chris shook his head again, more sharply this time. "No. You're planning to kill her."
The words landed between them like something solid.
Arlo didn't flinch. "Yes."
"Just like that," Chris said. "You'll burn everything you touched in her life and then you'll snuff her out and call it symmetry."
"If she leaves this place," Arlo said calmly, "she takes more than bruises with her. She takes names. Places. Faces. Patterns. You know that. You've spent your life erasing our tracks. She's a fracture line. It doesn't matter how innocent she is—"
"She's not a fracture," Chris snapped. "She's a person."
"And people," Arlo replied, "are the most dangerous kind of leak."
For a second, Chris looked like he might hit him. His fingers trembled with the urge before he forced them still.
"You're crossing a line," Chris said, voice low. "You know you are."
"I've crossed so many lines I don't even see the paint anymore," Arlo said. "Don't pretend you haven't followed."
"This is different."
Arlo studied him, eyes searching his face the way they'd searched Ariel's,looking for weaknesses, for cracks.
"She will die here," he said at last, each word slow and heavy, as if placing bricks. "That's the plan. Unless something miraculous changes the board, that's how her story ends. You knew that the moment we brought her in."
"Wtf, Arlo?" The words tore out of Chris before he could choke them back, louder than anything he'd said so far. His voice bounced off the metal and concrete, raw, half-strangled. "You're talking about her like she's some anonymous body, some random liability. She is my—"
He stopped himself so abruptly it looked like someone had yanked an invisible chain. His throat worked around the word he refused to let out. His hands were shaking now, not from fear, but from the effort of swallowing everything he didn't dare say.
Arlo's eyes sharpened, catching every flicker.
"Careful," he said again, but this time the warning was softer, almost weary. "You're not the only one with something to lose, if that slips."
Chris turned away, scrubbing a hand over his face, trying to pull himself back under control. The knot in his chest refused to loosen. He saw Ariel at eleven, mud on her knees and sunlight in her hair in a memory he should not have, overlaid with the woman tied to that chair, looking at him like he was just another stranger in Arlo's orbit.
"She doesn't deserve this," he said, quieter now. "Whatever Harry did. Whatever Berry did. She doesn't deserve to be punished for their choices."
Arlo's voice, when it came, was cool but not entirely untouched. "You think I don't know that?"
"Could've fooled me," Chris muttered.
Arlo exhaled, a long, controlled breath. "Deserving has nothing to do with survival. You, of all people, should understand that. You don't walk away from a warzone because the civilians are nice."
"This isn't a warzone," Chris said. "It's you, locking a girl who trusted you into a room and deciding what kind of ruin she gets."
"That's the job," Arlo said. "Of the king. Of the villain. Pick whichever title makes it easier to sleep."
Chris was silent for a moment, chest rising and falling too fast.
"Then why send me in there?" he asked finally. "If all you want is for her to hate you, why let me talk to her at all? Why not just keep me on the other side of the glass like always?"
Arlo's gaze shifted, drifting past him to the closed door behind them, as if he could see straight through it to the girl on the chair.
"Because she needs another voice," Arlo said. "Something that doesn't sound like me. Something to make what I say feel less like manipulation and more like… confirmation."
"So I'm just a prop," Chris said. "An echo."
"No," Arlo replied. "You're insurance. If she survives, she'll need someone to anchor to. Someone who can tell her I didn't lie about everything."
Chris's head snapped up. "If she survives? You just said—"
"I said that's the plan," Arlo cut in. "Plans change. Conditions change. People change." His eyes met Chris's again. "But none of that happens if you unravel now. So get a grip. Control your feelings. You can't get soft on her. Not now."
Chris held his gaze for a long, unblinking beat. Then he looked away, because if he didn't, he knew something would break he couldn't fix.
"Too late," he muttered under his breath.
Arlo heard it. His jaw tightened.
"Then you'd better learn to hide it," he said. "From her. From everyone. Especially from me."
With that, he turned and started down the corridor, shoes tapping a steady rhythm on the concrete. At the corner, he paused and glanced back over his shoulder, his silhouette sharp against the stairwell light.
"Chris."
Chris didn't answer, but he shifted just enough to show he was listening.
"You want to keep her alive?" Arlo asked. "Do your job. Keep the board clear. Keep the wrong people away from that door. And keep your mouth shut about anything that ties her to you."
Chris's fingers dug into his own palm until it hurt. "And if I can't?" he asked.
Arlo's smile was brief and humorless. "Then she won't die because of me," he said. "She'll die because you couldn't stay the hell out of the way."
He disappeared around the corner, footsteps fading.
Chris stood alone in the corridor, staring at the door he'd just come through. Behind it, Ariel was breathing in the air he'd redirected, replaying words he wished he'd never said, hating a man who had just admitted, in his own twisted way, that there was still a choice left on the table.
Chris dragged in a slow breath, forced his shoulders to straighten, and smoothed his face back into something blank.
Then he turned and walked the other way, because if he went back in there now, he knew he wouldn't be able to leave her tied to that chair.
The hum of the vent and the steady tick of the clock swallowed the last echo of footsteps outside. Ariel stared at the door until her eyes stung, Chris's unfinished sentence looping in her head like a broken record.
She is my—
Her wrists ached. Her shoulders burned. But more than anything, her mind wouldn't stop chewing on those three words and the way he'd strangled them back like they were a noose around his own neck.
The lock clicked again.
Ariel went still.
This time, the door didn't fly open with drama. It eased inward, just enough for a sliver of light from the corridor to spill in. Arlo stepped through, shutting it behind him with almost exaggerated gentleness, as if noise offended him.
He didn't sit right away. He just stood, hands in his pockets, gaze sweeping over her,face, wrists, the shallow rise and fall of her chest,as though taking inventory.
"You're quieter," he observed.
"Maybe I finally ran out of tears," she muttered.
"Unlikely," he said. "You're more stubborn than that."
He dragged the chair back to its place in front of her and sat, relaxed, like they were about to discuss a misplaced shipment instead of the ruins of her life.
Ariel watched him, jaw tight. "Done rehearsing whatever speech that was out there?"
One of his brows lifted. "You heard that?"
"Not the words," she said. "The tone. Yours. His. Sounded like a dog being kicked."
Arlo's mouth twitched, not quite into a smile. "You always were good at reading rooms."
"Just bad at reading people," she shot back. "Clearly."
He ignored that. "How's the arm?"
She blinked. "What?"
"The left one," he clarified. "You're favoring it."
The fact that he'd noticed made her stomach turn. "It's fine."
He leaned back, crossing an ankle over his knee. "Pain has a way of making people… honest."
"Is that your medical degree speaking," she asked, "or your God complex?"
Now he did smile. "There she is."
Ariel's patience snapped. "What do you want, Arlo? Another round? New set of stories where everyone I ever loved turns out to be your employee?"
"Tempting," he said. "But no. Today we're doing something different."
"That supposed to relax me?" she asked.
"It should worry you," he replied.
There it was,the switch. The air seemed to thin out, the edges of his charm sharpening into something that cut.
"Chris was here," Ariel said suddenly.
Arlo's eyes didn't flicker. "Yes."
"He knew Berry," she pushed. "He saw Harry. He talks like he's been orbiting my life for years and somehow never hit the atmosphere."
Arlo tilted his head. "You don't like mysteries?"
"I'm done with mysteries," she said. "I want one straight answer."
He gestured lazily. "Ask."
"What was I 'meant to be'?" Her voice shook, but she forced the words out. "To all of this. To you. To him. He said I was never supposed to walk into that street. That you were looking for me before that day. Why?"
Silence stretched out between them. For a heartbeat, she thought he might actually give her what she asked for.
He didn't.
"That's more than one question," he said lightly.
"Pick any of them," she snapped. "I don't care which lie you start with."
He studied her, amusement gone now, replaced by something heavier, more cautious. "You really want to know why I was looking for you?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "For once in your life, Arlo, try honesty."
He considered that, fingers drumming once against his knee.
"All right," he said. "Here's something honest: you weren't supposed to be a weakness."
Her breath hitched. "I didn't ask to be anything."
"No," he agreed. "You just… existed. Bookshop. Daffodils. Sad eyes you hid behind recommendations and coffee. You were meant to be leverage, if we're being clinical. A pressure point."
"For who?" Her voice dropped. "Harry? Berry?"
His gaze held hers. "Does it matter?"
"Yes."
He didn't answer.
"You ruined my life for a leverage you won't even name?" she whispered.
"You're assuming I ruined it," he said. "You're still breathing, aren't you?"
She let out a sharp, humorless laugh. "This isn't living."
Arlo's expression shifted, just enough that she could see the man who had once wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and stayed in an armchair until she fell asleep.
"What did Chris tell you?" he asked.
"Enough to know you're not the only one lying to me," she said. "Enough to know someone here actually remembers I'm human."
"He feels sorry for you," Arlo said. "That doesn't mean he's honest."
"Funny," she said. "That's exactly how I feel about you."
He stared at her for a long moment, then exhaled, the sound threaded with something like irritation.
"You want another truth?" he asked.
"I want you to stop talking in puzzles," she said. "But sure. I'll take whatever crumbs you don't choke on."
"Fine," he said. "Here's a straightforward one: in seventy-two hours, this building won't exist."
Her skin went cold. "What?"
"We're burning it," he said, matter-of-fact. "Obsidian Halo doesn't leave tracks. This place has served its purpose. After three days, it goes."
"And me?" she whispered.
He didn't blink. "You're one of the tracks."
Her heart stuttered. "You said plans change."
"They do," he said. "If they're given a reason."
She stared at him, chest rising and falling too fast. "So that's what this is? Some sick audition? If I impress you enough, I get to live?"
"Think of it as… data gathering."
"I'm not a file, Arlo."
"No," he said quietly. "That's the problem."
She swallowed hard, anger pushing its way through the terror. "You want data? Here. I despise you. I wish I'd never met you. I hope whatever you think you are,king, villain, monster,it eats you alive from the inside. Does that help your calculations?"
He watched her, and for a moment, she thought she saw something crack. It was gone so quickly she could have imagined it.
"You really believe that?" he asked softly.
"Yes."
"Good," he said. "Hold on to that."
The door opened again before she could respond. This time, the entry wasn't slow. It was abrupt, the metal handle smacking the wall with a sharp bang.
Chris stepped in, eyes flicking from Ariel to Arlo, reading the room in a heartbeat. His expression was guarded, his posture tight.
"You said twenty minutes," Chris said to Arlo. "It's been forty."
"Time flies," Arlo replied without looking at him.
Chris ignored the dig. "We've got movement on the east cameras. Two vehicles we don't recognize. They're holding outside the perimeter like they're waiting for something."
Ariel's pulse jumped. "Police?"
"Too clean," Chris said automatically, then seemed to regret answering her at all.
"Interesting," Arlo murmured. "Friends of Harry, perhaps. Or of Berry. Or yours, Ariel. You've been more resourceful than you look."
"I didn't call anyone," she said. "They wouldn't even know where to—"
"That's the thing about storms," Arlo cut in. "You don't have to invite them. They find you anyway."
He stood, all easy calm again. "Stall them," he told Chris. "Keep them from getting curious for as long as you can."
"And her?" Chris asked, jaw tight.
Arlo's gaze slid back to Ariel. He held it, weighing something she couldn't see.
"Her clock just started," he said.
Ariel's fingers tightened uselessly against the plastic binding. "If I'm already dead on your schedule, why do you care who's outside?"
"Because," Arlo said, "if the wrong person walks through that door before I'm finished, you won't die for my reasons. You'll die for theirs."
"And yours are better?" she demanded.
"No," he said. "Just clearer."
Chris stepped closer to him, voice low. "We don't have to let it get that far. Move her. Somewhere else. Somewhere that isn't about to go up in flames."
Arlo's eyes flashed a warning. "Control your feelings, Chris. We already discussed this."
Ariel watched the muscle ticking in Chris's jaw, the way his hands curled and uncurled at his sides. He didn't look at her. He didn't dare.
"Get to the perimeter," Arlo said. "Find out who they are. If they're here for her, we redirect. If they're here for me, we… improvise."
"And if they're here for both?" Chris asked.
Arlo's smile was thin. "Then it's going to be a very interesting night."
Chris hesitated,a fraction, but Ariel caught it. Then he turned and left, the door slamming harder than it needed to behind him.
The sound made Ariel flinch.
Arlo noticed.
"You still have a choice, you know," he said.
"Between what?" she demanded. "Dying scared or dying angry?"
"Between dying as collateral," he said slowly, "or as a player."
She frowned. "What does that even mean?"
His eyes held hers, dark and unreadable. "It means if you want a different ending than the one everyone has written for you, you're going to have to get your hands dirty, Ariel."
Her laugh came out hoarse. "You want me to help you?"
"I want you to decide," he said. "Who deserves your hate more: the man who pulled the trigger, or the ones who loaded the gun and handed it to him with a smile?"
"Is there an option where I hate all of you and walk out anyway?" she asked.
His mouth curved, but there was no humor in it. "That," he said, "would be the miracle I mentioned."
He moved behind her chair. For a heartbeat, panic surged,memory of gloved hands and blindfolds—but he didn't touch her skin. There was another small click near the back of the chair.
The pressure around her wrists loosened.
Ariel gasped, jerking her hands forward. The zip ties were still there, but someone had cut them halfway through. One good pull and the plastic would snap.
Her head whipped around. "Why?"
Arlo was already walking to the door. "Because storms are easier to survive when you're not tied to a chair."
"That's not an answer," she said.
"It's the only one you're getting," he replied.
The lock turned.
"Arlo!"
He paused, hand on the handle, but didn't face her.
"If I run," she said, "will you stop me?"
A beat of silence.
"Depends," he said. "On which direction you choose."
The door opened, swallowing him into the hallway.
Ariel stared at her wrists, at the thin, weakened strip of plastic, at the door, at the blurred rain-streaked city beyond the glass.
For the first time since she woke up in this room, she realized something terrifying:
She might actually get a choice.
And that, somehow, scared her more than having none at all.
The building seemed to breathe around her.
Somewhere above, a door slammed, muffled by concrete. Voices bled faintly through the vents—too distant to make out words, just sharp edges, rising and falling like an argument on the other side of a wall. The rain outside the glass had turned heavier, blurring the city into streaks of gray and gold.
Ariel stared at her wrists.
The zip ties were still in place, but the plastic at the inner edge was thinned, cut just enough that a stronger pull might snap it. The skin beneath was angry red, marked with shallow grooves.
She flexed her fingers once, twice, testing.
The ties held.
"Of course," she muttered. "Nothing's ever actually easy with you."
She closed her eyes, inhaled slowly, counting in her head like Berry once taught her. Four in, hold for four, six out. It barely helped. Her heart still thudded so hard she could feel it in her tongue.
Leverage. Fracture lines. Tracks.
Her stomach roiled. Was she really thinking about helping Arlo? About anything beyond surviving the next hour?
A shout echoed faintly from the corridor—Chris's voice, sharper than she'd heard it before, clipped and professional now. Another voice answered, unfamiliar, lower, confident in that way people were when they thought they held the upper hand.
So there was someone outside.
Ariel took another breath, gathered every shred of strength she had left, and pulled.
The ties dug in, biting deep. Pain shot up her forearms, but she didn't stop. She twisted her wrists, grinding the weakened plastic against bone, breath hissing between her teeth.
"Come on," she whispered. "Just break."
A crackle—not the ties. The old fluorescent light above her flickered, humming with a brief surge. Then, at last, a different sound: a small, sharp snap.
Her right hand broke free.
For a second, she didn't move. The absence of pressure where the plastic had been was so shocking it almost felt wrong. Then sensation flooded back in a rush—pins and needles stabbing all the way to her fingertips.
"Okay," she breathed. "Okay."
Her fingers clumsy with numbness, she fumbled at the remaining tie around her left wrist. It was easier now, the angle better. A twist, a yank, and that one gave way too, falling to the floor with a soft tap that felt far louder than it should.
She was free.
Not safe. Not rescued. But no longer bound to the chair like a piece of forgotten furniture.
For a moment she just sat there, hands lying in her lap, staring at them as if they belonged to someone else.
If I run, will you stop me?
Depends… on which direction you choose.
She pushed herself up, legs shaking from hours of stillness. Her knees almost buckled, but the instinct to stay upright kept her moving. The room swayed once, then steadied.
Her first thought was the door.
She took two steps toward it, then stopped, eyes drawn instead to the glass wall that overlooked the city. From here, the world looked distant, unreal—a painting behind rain-streaked plastic.
No one down there knew she was missing.
No one knew Berry had vanished.
No one knew that somewhere between daffodils and hot chocolate, Ariel Smith had stepped off the map.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and moved to the door. The handle was cold beneath her fingers.
Unlocked.
Of course it was. He'd left it that way on purpose. Freedom and trap, wrapped in the same gesture.
Ariel pressed her ear against the door.
Footsteps, somewhere farther down. A murmur of voices. One of them—Chris, she thought—was saying something about "perimeter" and "blind spot." Another voice cut in, amused, unfamiliar.
She pulled back.
If she stepped out now and turned the wrong way, she could walk straight into whoever had come for Arlo. Or for her. Or for both.
Her pulse raced.
She looked back at the room. For a holding cell, it was almost clean. Almost gentle. A single camera in the corner, its red light dark. A metal table bolted to the floor in front of where her chair had been. A drain beneath the vent she kept trying not to think too hard about.
On the table now, she noticed something she hadn't seen before.
A phone.
Black, face down, no visible logo. It hadn't been there when she woke up. It hadn't been there when Chris left.
He—or Arlo—had put it there while she stared at the door.
She approached it slowly, suspicion prickling the back of her neck.
"What are you?" she whispered.
The screen was dark. No notifications. No calls. Just her reflection, pale and wild-eyed.
If she picked it up, was she triggering something? A tracking beacon? A recording? Another move in Arlo's endless game?
Or… was it the only chance she'd get to call anyone on the outside before the building "stopped existing"?
Her fingertips hovered just above the edge of the device. Her throat felt tight.
Berry's laugh brushed the edges of her memory. Harry's name. Oliver's empty stand. Her parents' car.
Ariel snatched the phone off the table.
The screen lit up.
No lock screen. No passcode. Just a single app open in the center: a dialer, with one number already typed in, waiting.
Her chest constricted.
It wasn't Arlo. It wasn't some unknown international code. It wasn't an emergency line.
It was a local number.
Berry's.
Her hand went cold, her thumb trembling over the green call button.
It could be a trick. It probably was a trick. Arlo could have programmed it to route somewhere else entirely. To his own number. To a recording. To whoever was sitting outside in those "too clean" cars, waiting.
But what if it wasn't?
Outside, a sudden crack split the air—a short, sharp pop like a gunshot muffled by distance. Then another. Shouted commands, clearer now, funneled through the vents.
The storm had reached the building.
"Ariel," she whispered to herself, heart beating almost painfully. "Choose."
Her thumb hovered.
For one dizzy second, she imagined Berry picking up. Imagined a breathless, shaken voice on the other end saying, "Ari? Oh my God, where are you?" Imagined a chance to say anything that wasn't scripted by Arlo Johnson's plans.
Her thumb came down.
The line rang once.
Twice.
The voices outside rose—a crash, boots running, a distant order to "clear that stairwell now."
Three rings.
Four.
On the fifth, the call clicked over.
Someone answered.
A breath, faint through the speaker, like they were too close to the phone.
Then a voice she knew better than her own broke through the static, soft and hoarse and utterly wrong.
"Ari…?"
Berry.
Ariel's knees nearly gave out. She grabbed the edge of the table, knuckles whitening.
"Berry? Berry, where are you, are you okay, I—"
"Ariel, listen to me," Berry cut in, words rushed, shaking. "You can't stay there. Do you hear me? You can't trust—"
The line warped, a squeal of interference stabbing her ear. Ariel winced.
"Berry? Berry!"
The distortion eased just enough for one more phrase to slip through. When Berry spoke again, her voice was choked with fear.
"He's not the one you should be afraid of," she said. "He's trying to—"
The call dropped.
Silence.
The screen flashed CALL ENDED, then went dark, as if the phone itself had gone dead.
Ariel stared at it, her own breath loud in the sudden stillness.
He's not the one you should be afraid of.
He. Arlo.
Or… someone else.
The door handle rattled.
Ariel's head snapped up, pulse exploding in her veins. This time, there was no polite pause, no measured entry.
The door flew open.
Someone stepped into the frame.
It was not Arlo.
And it was not Chris.
The stranger's silhouette filled the doorway, water dripping from the edge of a dark coat, a gun already raised and trained directly at her chest.
"Hands where I can see them," the stranger said, voice steady, eyes cold. "Ariel Smith, you're coming with me."
Ariel's fingers tightened around the dead phone.
For the first time since this began, she realized something far worse than being trapped with Arlo Johnson:
There were people out there who wanted her even more.