Jen's patience snapped in a different way this time.
She stared at Arlo, then at Mara, then back at him. Her mind was working faster than her temper.
"Pain isn't enough for you," she said quietly to Arlo. "You can bleed and still think clearly. That's your problem."
Arlo's voice was rough. "You're repeating yourself, Jen."
She didn't look at him.
She stepped close to one of the guards and murmured something in his ear.
The guard listened, then let out a low, ugly little laugh.
Chris's stomach turned cold.
"What did she say?" he demanded. "What are you doing?"
The guard didn't answer.
He walked around until he was in front of Mara.
She was still on her knees, shoulders already throbbing, breathing hard. Her hair had fallen partly over her face, sticking to sweat and tears.
"New instructions," the guard said, voice too cheerful.
He reached out and grabbed the front of her shirt.
Mara froze.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. She knew exactly what that gesture usually meant in places like this.
Chris went wild.
"HEY!" he roared, throwing his weight forward. The guards holding him barely kept him down. "Don't you touch her like that! Do you hear me? Don't you—"
Arlo's whole body tensed.
"Enough," he bit out. "Jen, call him off."
Jen watched him closely.
The guard's fingers curled in the fabric, tugging just enough to make the threat clear. He hadn't ripped anything yet. But the intention in the air was ugly and heavy, and everyone in the room could feel it.
Mara's skin crawled.
She kept her voice low and sharp.
"If this is your plan now," she said to Jen, "then you're worse than Reed."
Jen tilted her head, eyes never leaving Arlo's face.
"Relax," she said mildly. "He's not actually going to do it. I don't waste assets that care this much about how they're seen."
The guard still held the fabric tight.
"Then tell him to let go," Arlo snapped. His voice shook with anger in a way it hadn't even when he was the one being hit. "Now."
Jen raised an eyebrow.
"Why?" she asked. "You don't care what people think of you. But you care very much what they think of her."
Her gaze flicked to Chris.
"And him," she added.
Chris was shaking with rage.
"You think you're smart," he said, eyes bright with tears. "You think you've found a new button. This isn't interrogation. This is just you being sick."
Jen ignored him.
"Here's what's really happening," she said calmly, speaking to Arlo like they were alone. "I'm giving you a picture in your head. One you won't be able to get rid of. Him helpless." She nodded at Chris. "Her humiliated." She nodded at Mara. "All because you kept your mouth shut."
The guard's grip tightened.
He still hadn't torn anything, but the fabric strained.
Mara's breath hitched despite herself.
"Stop," Chris begged. "Please. Don't do this to her. Hit me, break me, I don't care, but don't—"
"Chris," Mara said, voice quiet but firm, even through the fear. "Eyes on me, not him."
She forced herself to look straight ahead, chin lifted, refusing to curl in or shrink away.
"I survived worse rooms than this," she said. "He doesn't get to make me small. Not him, not Jen, not Johnson, not anyone."
But her hands were shaking behind her back.
Arlo saw it.
He couldn't unsee it.
Jen stepped closer to him, lowering her voice.
"This is all theatre," she said softly. "If you talk, he lets go. If you don't, I see how far I have to push before they both break in front of you."
She nodded once to the guard.
He shifted his hand, fingers spreading a little more along Mara's collar, showing he was ready to go further if told.
Mara's whole body went rigid.
Arlo's chest burned. He'd taken beatings, broken ribs, everything Reed could think of—but this? Watching someone else be used as a threat, knowing it was because of him?
That was worse.
"Jen," he said, voice low and raw. "You made your point."
"Not yet," she said. "You haven't talked."
Chris's voice cracked as he pleaded.
"Please," he said to Arlo, not Jen. "I hate you. I still hate you. But don't let her go through this because of your pride. You already took too much from one woman. Don't let her become another."
Mara shook her head sharply, even with her whole body hurting.
"Chris, no," she snapped. "You don't barter her escape for me. If Ariel got out, you do not drag her back into this room with your guilt."
The guard's hand tightened on Mara's shirt, the threat heavy in the air.
Jen watched like she was waiting for her favorite moment in a show.
Arlo stared at Chris.
Every breath hurt. His ribs felt like they were on fire. His wrists were raw where the cuffs had bitten in. His vision blurred at the edges from the earlier beating,but that wasn't the only reason his eyes were wet.
"What about your sister, Smith?" Arlo rasped.
His voice broke halfway through "sister."
A tear slipped from the corner of his good eye and tracked down his bruised cheek. He didn't bother to wipe it away; his hands were chained and he barely had the strength.
"What about Ariel now?" he forced out.
Chris went still.
The name hit him like a slap.
He looked from Arlo to Mara, then back, chest heaving.
"Ariel is out there," Arlo said, each word rough, shaky. "Running because I kept my mouth shut."
Another tear slid down. He blinked hard, but more gathered, shining in the swollen skin around his eye.
"You really want me to open it," he continued, "and hand Jen a map to her, just so this bastard takes his hand off Mara a little faster?"
Chris's throat tightened.
"I—" he started, but his voice collapsed.
His mind was a storm.
Ariel, alone in the vents, in the dark, maybe crawling through a pipe barely big enough to breathe.
Mara, shaking on her knees in front of him, someone's hand on her like she was an object, not a person.
"If you tell her everything," Arlo went on, staring at him through tears, "Jen sends people down every line you name. Every door. Every hatch."
His breath hitched.
"You think Ariel survives that?" he asked. "You think she outruns a building that finally knows exactly where to look?"
Chris's eyes stung.
"But if you don't," he choked, "she—"
He couldn't finish, looking at Mara.
Her jaw was clenched, eyes wet but steady.
"If you don't," Arlo said quietly, voice shaking, "Mara pays for it. Here. Now. In front of you."
Another tear slipped down his face. He let it.
He wasn't playing tough anymore.
"So what do you choose, Smith?" he whispered. "Your sister's chances, or a woman's pride and safety in this room?"
Jen's lips curved.
"Excellent question," she murmured.
Chris wanted to tear his own skin off.
"This isn't a choice," he said, voice raw. "There's no right answer here."
Mara sucked in a sharp breath.
"Chris," she said, voice trembling but stubborn, "look at me."
He did.
"If you sell out Ariel for me," she said, "I will never forgive you. Not because I don't care what happens to me. Because she didn't get a choice in any of this. At least I do, right now."
His tears finally spilled over.
"You want me to just stand here and watch them ruin you?" he asked, broken. "Again? After everything we've already seen in this place?"
She swallowed, shoulders shaking.
"I want your sister to stay one step ahead of them," she said. "I want your guilt to stop trying to fix everything that hurts in front of you while making something worse somewhere else."
Her voice cracked on "sister," but she didn't look away.
Arlo watched them both, tears still sliding down his face.
"You see it now?" he said softly, voice hoarse, words uneven. "This is the kind of math Reed and Jen force on people. It never balances."
His chest jerked with a short, painful breath that might have been a suppressed sob.
"That's the point," he said.
Chris let out a broken sound.
"So what, I'm supposed to just… pick?" he whispered. "Let my sister run blind, let Mara take whatever they do to her, and live with knowing I stood there?"
Arlo shut his eyes for a second.
A tear fell, then another.
When he opened them again, they were bright with pain,not only from the torture, but from the situation he'd helped create.
"You live with knowing you didn't help them hunt Ariel," he said. "And you live with trusting Mara when she says she'd rather bleed than be the reason they catch your sister."
Mara nodded, a tiny, shaking movement.
"That's exactly what I'm saying," she whispered.
Chris's shoulders shook.
"I hate this," he said. "I hate all of you for making me stand here."
"I know," Arlo said quietly.
His voice broke on the second word.
"That's why you're still better than we are."
Chris lifted his wet eyes to Jen.
"If he talks," Chris said, voice low and wrecked, "you don't just get a map. You get my sister's blood on your hands. Not mine."
Jen just shrugged.
"Blood is blood," she said.
Chris turned back to Arlo.
"If you decide to speak," he said, "that's on you, not me. But if you keep quiet and she makes it out because of that… I'll carry whatever happens in here. Not her."
It hurt to say it. It hurt to mean it.
Arlo nodded once, tears still on his face, understanding exactly how much that choice broke him.
Chris had just chosen to stand between Ariel's chances and Mara's pain,and Arlo, bleeding and crying in a chair, was the one forcing him to see both sides clearly.
The guard's fingers were still fisted in Mara's shirt.
His grip was too tight, knuckles white against the fabric.
Jen didn't look at Mara. She watched Arlo instead.
"Last warning," she said softly. "You talk, or I make sure none of you ever forget this room."
Arlo's chest rose and fell in sharp, painful breaths. His eyes were wet, his jaw clenched.
"Jen," he said, voice hoarse. "Don't."
She tilted her head just a little.
"Do it," she told the guard.
The guard grinned.
He didn't punch her this time. He didn't go for her spine or her ribs.
He grabbed the collar of her shirt with both hands and yanked it hard, dragging the neckline down and stretching the fabric until the seams strained and popped.
The sound of tearing cloth cut through the room.
Mara sucked in a breath like someone had hit her.
Her bra still covered her, but it didn't matter. The fabric of her shirt hung wrong now, collar wide, shoulder half‑bare, skin suddenly exposed to cold air and too many eyes.
It felt like being stripped anyway.
Something inside her went very still.
She went from tense to frozen, as if her nerves had been shocked into silence. Her heart thudded hard, then dropped somewhere deep in her chest.
Not again, she thought, numb. Not like this. Not in front of them.
Chris made a raw sound and squeezed his eyes shut.
He couldn't watch.
He'd seen broken bones and blood and bruises in this place, but this,this was different, aimed not just at her body but at her dignity.
He turned his head away, jaw trembling, tears leaking out even with his eyes closed.
"Stop looking at her," he choked to the guards. "Don't you look at her—"
Arlo saw all of it.
He saw the way Mara's shoulders curled in for half a second before she forced them back. He saw the shock in her eyes, like someone had reached in and snapped an old scar open.
He saw Chris shut down, eyes squeezed tight, as if the only way to survive this moment was to not see it at all.
Something ripped loose inside him that had nothing to do with broken ribs.
"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?" Arlo roared.
The words tore out of him, raw and loud, more scream than speech.
He jerked against the cuffs so hard the chair scraped on the floor.
"JEN!" he shouted. "CALL HIM OFF! NOW!"
The guard hesitated, still gripping the torn fabric, half‑smirk fading when he heard the way Arlo's voice broke.
Jen's eyes were bright and cold.
"Finally," she said softly. "There's the edge."
Arlo was shaking with rage and something close to panic.
"She is not yours to touch!" he yelled at the guard. "You hear me? You don't get to lay a hand on her like that, you don't get to strip anything from her, you don't—"
His throat closed around the rest of the words.
He'd done worse to Ariel, a cruel voice reminded him.
That only made it worse.
"Look at her," Jen said quietly.
Mara's breathing was shallow.
She was still on her knees, shirt torn, skin exposed, eyes wide and distant like she had left her body for a second just to survive it.
"You did this," Jen told Arlo. "Your silence did this. Your pride did this. You want it to stop?"
Arlo's eyes burned.
"YES!" he shouted. "I want it to stop, you twisted—"
"Then talk," she said.
He stared at Mara.
She was still there under the shock. He could see it in the set of her jaw, the way her hands curled into fists behind her back even as she trembled.
He looked at Chris.
Chris was still refusing to open his eyes, tears slipping down his face, breathing like he was about to fall apart.
"Enough," Arlo said, voice breaking. "You made your point."
He tore his gaze away from Mara and forced himself to look at Jen.
"I'll tell you," he said, each word scraped out of somewhere raw. "You want the route? You get it. But if you or anyone else ever pulls something like that on her again, I swear I will level this place even if it kills me."
Jen's smile was small and satisfied.
"That," she said, "is what I was waiting for."
The room felt smaller after that.
Mara didn't move. She kept her eyes on the floor, shirt hanging wrong, chest rising and falling in uneven breaths. Chris still had his eyes closed, jaw clenched so tight it hurt.
Arlo swallowed.
Every word felt like glass in his throat.
"There's a maintenance line," he said, voice flat and rough. "Waste and overflow. It branches off the main vent grid near sector nine, lower level. I piggybacked a sub‑route into it when Reed let me redesign the filtration."
Jen's eyes narrowed.
"Details," she said.
Arlo stared past her, like he was looking at a mental map.
"From the supply room we used," he went on, "the vent drops two floors inside the wall, then meets the main pipe. There's a manual grate with four bolts. If she got that far, she'd have to slide left, not right. Right goes to a compactor."
He forced himself to keep speaking.
"Left runs to an old access hatch behind the original loading tunnel," he said. "Nobody uses it. They bricked up the outside opening years ago, but they never logged the interior door."
Jen tapped quickly on her tablet, pulling up schematics.
"Coordinates," she said.
He gave her grid numbers, like he was reciting a code he'd been building for months.
"Once she hits the hatch," he added, "there's a ladder up. Twenty‑three rungs. It opens into a dry storage bay on the far side. No cameras inside the room. Only in the hallway."
He looked at her then, eyes red, face wrecked.
"If she's smart, she'll wait and listen before she opens it," he said. "If you rush in there with guns and noise, you'll spook her and she'll double back into the pipes."
Jen finished typing.
She checked the map once, then twice.
"You did all this under Reed's nose?" she asked, almost impressed despite herself.
Arlo gave a humorless, broken half‑smile.
"You hired me for what I can do with systems," he said. "This is what I do."
She studied him.
"You realize," she said, "that if I send a team right now and they find her, you've just undone the only good thing you claim to have done."
His jaw clenched.
"You asked for the route," he said. "You didn't ask what I hope happens when they get there."
Something in his tone made Chris open his eyes.
"What does that mean?" Chris demanded. "What are you planning now?"
Arlo didn't answer him.
Jen took a breath and stepped back.
"Team to sector nine," she said into her comm. "Route coordinates incoming. Quiet approach. If you see her, you do not fire without my order."
Static crackled, then a voice replied, "Copy."
The hunt had begun.
Jen lowered the device and looked at all three of them.
"Separate them," she told the guards. "Smith to medical, then back to central. Carter to holding. Johnson stays with me until I know if he gave me a dead end."
Mara's head snapped up at that.
"A dead end?" she repeated, through pain. "You think he just handed you a fake route?"
Jen's mouth twitched.
"If he did," she said, "then he chose you over your friend. I'd like to know exactly what kind of monster I'm dealing with."
Chris's stomach turned.
The guards moved in.
They grabbed him first, hauling him up from the floor. His legs shook but held.
He tried to look at both Mara and Arlo at the same time.
"I'll see you back there," he told Mara, voice hoarse. "You're not alone, okay? You're not—"
She managed a small nod, even though every movement hurt.
"I know," she whispered.
As they dragged him past Arlo, Chris slowed just enough to speak low.
"If this gets her caught," he said, eyes fierce even through the tears, "I'll never forgive you."
Arlo nodded once.
"I know," he said. "Do it anyway. She deserves the whole truth."
They pulled Chris out of the room.
Mara next.
When the guards hauled her to her feet, pain screamed through her shoulder. She bit down on a cry, but a small sound escaped anyway.
As they turned her toward the door, she jerked her head just enough to look at Arlo.
"You better hope," she said, voice thin but sharp, "that whatever you just did gives her a real chance. Because if this was for nothing…"
She let the sentence hang.
He met her gaze.
Tears still shone on his face.
"I know," he said softly. "You can add me to your list either way."
Then she was gone too.
The door shut behind them, leaving Arlo and Jen alone.
Waiting for news
For a moment, the room was very quiet.
Arlo's breaths were loud in his own ears.
Jen watched him without speaking, tablet in hand, eyes flicking every so often to the corner of the screen where live updates loaded from the field team.
"You could've stayed quiet," she said finally. "You were close. Just a little more pressure, and they would've broken instead of you."
Arlo let out a short, humorless breath.
"I already broke once," he said. "This is just the part where I admit it."
"Over a woman you barely know," Jen said. "Twice, if we count Ariel."
He laughed once, a rough, painful sound.
"This coming from the woman who built a prison around the first person who ever told her no?" he shot back.
Jen's expression hardened.
"You really don't know when to shut up," she said.
Before she could say more, her tablet chimed.
She glanced down.
A message flashed across the screen:
SECTOR 9 – PIPE ACCESS: HATCH FOUND. NO VISUAL ON SUBJECT. SIGNS OF RECENT PASSAGE.
Jen's eyes narrowed.
Arlo's heart slammed against his ribs.
"Well, well," she murmured. "You weren't lying about the hatch."
She typed a quick reply.
CHECK LADDER. WATCH EXIT. REPORT.
A beat later: LADDER USED. STORAGE BAY EMPTY. HALLWAY CAMS CLEAR. SUBJECT NOT IN IMMEDIATE AREA.
A slow exhale left Arlo's lungs.
She made it out of the pipe.
She wasn't in their hands yet.
Jen looked up at him.
"Seems," she said, "she's either smarter than you, or luckier."
"Both," Arlo said at once.
He couldn't help the small, pained smile that tugged at his mouth.
"She's stubborn," he added quietly. "That helps."
Jen studied him.
"If she gets out of this building," Jen said, "she'll spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder. You know that, right? Reed doesn't let loose ends roam."
Arlo's eyes were tired, but clear.
"She already spends her life looking over her shoulder," he said. "I just changed what she's running from."
Jen went silent for a moment.
On the tablet, new lines scrolled: TEAMS SPREADING. NO VISUAL YET.
The building was searching.
Arlo sat in the chair, cuffed and broken, every nerve screaming, and knew one thing with painful clarity:
Whatever happened next,whether Ariel slipped through their fingers completely, or got dragged back,he could no longer pretend he was only the monster in this story.
He was also the man who had given her a map.
Jen locked the screen and stepped closer.
"Until I know how this ends," she said, "you don't sleep. You don't move. You don't get medical."
She leaned down, close enough that he could see his own battered face reflected in her eyes.
"You wanted to feel everything you've done?" she murmured. "Congratulations. You get to sit here and wait to find out whether you just saved her or delivered her back into our hands."
She straightened.
"I hope the suspense hurts," she added, heading for the door.
When it closed behind her, the room went quiet again, except for the hum of the lights and Arlo's ragged breathing.
He closed his eyes, pain rolling through him in waves, and did the only thing he could do from that chair:
He pictured Ariel in his head,dirty, bruised, angry, crawling through some hidden path he'd carved—
and he silently begged whatever part of the world he didn't believe in anymore to let her slip out of their reach before the building fully woke up.
The guards shoved Chris through the door.
He stumbled and hit the floor hard, catching himself on his hands. Pain shot through his side where they'd already hit him. The door slammed, locks grinding back into place.
For a moment, he just stayed there, breathing in dust and metal and hurt.
"Chris," Mara said.
She was already moving toward him.
Her shirt was still torn, collar wrong, shoulder bruised and swollen. Her arm hung stiff, but she dropped to her knees in front of him anyway.
"Hey," she said softly. "My patient on the floor. That's my job, remember?"
He lifted his head.
Her face was close. Too close. He could see the strain around her eyes, the way her mouth tried to shape a smile that didn't reach them.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
It came out before anything else.
"Sorry?" she echoed.
He nodded, throat tight.
"I stood there," he said. "I let them… I didn't stop—"
Mara gave a small, tired laugh.
"You think this can break me?" she said, trying to sound light. "A torn shirt and a few bruises? No, silly. I've had worse days. You know that."
He did.
That was what made it worse.
He saw past the joke. Past the brave tilt of her chin. He saw how her fingers trembled when she reached out and lightly touched his shoulder, how her eyes flicked away from his for half a second, like she was afraid of what he'd see there.
"Mara," he said quietly. "Don't do that with me."
Her smile wobbled.
For a second, it looked like she might force it back into place.
Then she saw his face,wrecked, guilty, full of all the history he knew—and the mask slipped.
Her hand dropped.
The past
Chris had known her history before this day.
Chris and Arlo were only supposed to be passing through.
They'd come to the hospital to pull mission data from a secure terminal in the basement—coordinates, files, a quiet handoff from someone in records. In, out, no drama.
The last time Chris had been here, he'd been the patient.
He'd sat on a narrow bed, bleeding from a knife cut along his arm, cracking jokes to hide how much it hurt. A young doctor had stood over him with steady hands and a quick tongue, cleaning the wound and scolding him for "being allergic to common sense."
Dr. Mara Carter.
She'd laughed easily, rolled her eyes when he flinched at the sting of antiseptic, and wrapped his arm in neat layers of bandage.
"If you're going to get stabbed," she'd said, "at least make it look cool next time. This one's just messy."
Now, as he and Arlo walked down a familiar corridor, Chris glanced into a side room—and stopped dead.
Arlo took two more steps before noticing he was alone.
"Chris?" Arlo said, turning. "What is it?"
Chris was staring through a small glass window in a door.
Inside, a woman lay on a hospital bed.
Blanket pulled up. Gown. Hair limp on the pillow. Eyes open, but empty, fixed on a crack in the ceiling. Fading bruises marked her throat and wrists. The monitor beside her beeped slowly.
Her chart at the end of the bed read: CARTER, MARA.
For a second, Chris didn't recognize her.
Then his stomach dropped.
"That's the doctor," he whispered. "The one who patched me up. She was—"
Different. Alive.
Now she looked hollowed out.
Without thinking, he pushed the door open.
"Chris," Arlo muttered, glancing up and down the hall, but followed him in.
Up close, it was worse.
Mara's skin was too pale. There were old and new marks on her arms. Her fingers clutched the blanket like it was a shield.
"Mara," Chris said softly.
Her eyes flickered toward him.
It took a second, but recognition sparked.
"You're the stab wound," she said, voice dry and thin. "Left arm. Too much talking, not enough pain tolerance."
It was barely a joke, but it was something.
Chris let out a breath that almost hurt.
"That's me," he said. "Chris. You remember."
"Hard to forget a grown man whining more than a ten‑year‑old," she murmured.
Her lips twitched for a moment, then flattened again.
Arlo stood near the foot of the bed, watching, silent.
"What happened?" Chris asked quietly. "Last time I was here, you were bouncing between rooms, bullying nurses into better handwriting."
Her gaze went back to the ceiling.
"Home happened," she said.
The word landed heavy.
She didn't describe it. She didn't have to.
The bruises at her throat. The marks on her wrists. The way she flinched when a cart squeaked in the hallway.
Chris put it together.
"Father?" he asked softly. "Brother?"
Her jaw clenched.
"Both," she said.
Rage burned hot under Chris's ribs.
He looked at Arlo.
Arlo's expression hadn't changed, but his eyes had gone darker, more focused.
"Charges?" he asked.
"Filed," Mara said. "They're sitting in a cell somewhere, probably blaming me. Neighbors 'didn't see anything'. System shaking its head like it's a shame but not a surprise." She gave a bitter smile. "You know how it goes."
Chris swallowed.
"You shouldn't be here alone," he said.
"I'm not alone," she replied. "I've got a machine that beeps. Nurses every four hours. A social worker who says 'brave' a lot."
Her voice cracked on the last word.
Chris's hand curled into a fist at his side.
Arlo stepped closer, but kept a respectful distance from the bed.
"You were good at your job," he said. "Emergency doctor. Fast hands. Fast brain."
Mara let out a small, humorless huff.
"Was," she said. "Now I'm the patient people whisper about in the hallway."
Silence fell.
Arlo broke it.
"What happens when they discharge you?" he asked.
She shrugged, a small, tired movement.
"Some shelter, maybe," she said. "Some 'temporary housing' with too many people and not enough locks. New walls. Same kind of men walking past them."
Her eyes slid to Chris.
"You came here for something, right?" she asked. "Don't let my sob story make you miss your appointment."
Chris shook his head.
"We can wait," he said. "You're not a sob story."
She gave him a look that said she didn't believe that for a second.
Arlo spoke again, voice even.
"I'm not here for comfort," he said. "I'm here with an offer."
Mara's brows pulled together.
"An offer," she repeated. "From who? What are you?"
"Security," Chris said quietly. "The kind that doesn't wear uniforms."
"We track people who hurt others," Arlo added. "We take apart the networks that protect them. We've been looking for someone with your eye."
She laughed once, short and sharp.
"My eye?" she asked. "You mean the one that didn't see what was happening in my own house as 'dangerous enough' until I ended up here?"
"You saw it," Arlo said. "You were just trapped inside it. That's different."
She looked away.
"You read trauma," he went on. "You saw things in me when you were bandaging my arm that the others didn't. You said my story didn't match the way my muscles tensed when I talked about the knife. You were right."
Chris remembered.
She had called him out, gently, on downplaying the job that got him hurt.
"You pick up patterns," Arlo said. "Fast. In bodies. In tone. In lies. I need someone like that."
Mara stared at the ceiling for a long moment.
"And what exactly would I be doing?" she asked.
"Consulting," Arlo said. "Reviewing cases. Spotting where the official story doesn't match the injuries. Training us to see what you see. Sometimes field work, if you want it. Sometimes not."
"That sounds like walking back into everything I'm trying to get away from," she said.
"It is," Arlo said honestly. "With more control. And backup. And pay. And the right to walk out if it's too much."
He nodded toward Chris.
"He's good with people," Arlo added. "I'm not. You'd have him. And others. You wouldn't be doing it alone."
Mara's eyes slid back to Chris.
"Do you think I can do that?" she asked quietly.
He swallowed.
"I think you already have," he said. "You saw too much because you're wired to notice. Working with us doesn't make what happened your fault. It just means you're using a skill you didn't ask for against people who deserve it."
She blinked hard.
"One condition," she said after a long pause.
"Name it," Arlo replied.
"If anyone on your team looks at me like I'm something broken they get to fix with their hands," she said, voice trembling but firm, "I walk. No questions. No speeches. You don't chase me. You don't send someone to convince me I'm 'needed'."
Arlo nodded without hesitation.
"Deal," he said. "No one owns you. Not anymore."
Her throat worked as she swallowed.
"And if I can't handle it?" she whispered. "If it's too much?"
"Then you leave," Chris said. "And the fact that you tried doesn't make you weak. It makes you human."
Mara let out a shaky breath.
"I don't want another girl lying in this bed thinking it's her fault," she said quietly. "If I can help even one of them before it gets this bad…"
She didn't finish.
She didn't have to.
"Then help us," Arlo said. "On your terms."
She stared at the ceiling one more long moment.
Then she nodded, just once.
"Okay," she said. "I'll try."
That was how Mara Carter, the bright doctor who had once wrapped Chris's arm and joked about his flinching, became the one who read crime scene photos, dissected injuries with a calm voice, and taught them where to look when victims couldn't yet speak—
carrying a history she never asked for, and a strength they would only fully understand the day they saw her break again in a concrete cell.
All of that sat heavy in Chris's chest as he looked at her in the cell.
Her torn shirt.
Her shaking hands.
Her forced joke.
"Do you think this can break me?" she repeated now, trying to keep her voice steady. "No. They already did that once. This is just… them tapping old cracks."
Chris's heart squeezed.
"That's not nothing," he said quietly. "Old cracks still hurt."
She gave a small, rough laugh.
"Pain, I know what to do with," she said. "I box it up. I keep moving. That's what I'm good at."
Her eyes glistened.
"What I can't stand," she went on, voice dropping, "is seeing that look on your face. Like you failed me. Like you should've thrown yourself in front of every hand and every fist."
He stared at her, vision blurring.
"I saw you freeze," he whispered. "When he grabbed you. When he pulled at your clothes. You never freeze. Not you."
She flinched.
Just a little. But he saw it.
Her shoulders trembled.
"For a moment," she said, voice thin, "I was back there. In that house. In that bed. In every room where someone decided my body was theirs to use. Not a person. Just… something."
A tear slipped down her cheek.
"I thought I was past that," she choked. "I thought joining you, hunting men like them, meant I'd finally outrun it. And then he grabbed me and it was like—"
Her voice broke.
Chris moved.
Slowly, giving her room to pull away, he reached up and set his hands gently on her upper arms, above the bruises.
"Mara," he said. "Look at me."
She did.
Her eyes were wide, wet, furious, scared—all at once.
"You are not what they made you in that house," he said, every word shaking. "You are not a thing. You are not a toy. You are not something people get to break for fun and walk away."
Her lips trembled.
"Then why does it keep happening?" she snapped, the words bursting out with more anger than she meant. "Why do rooms keep turning into this? Why is my dignity always the first thing they go for?"
He didn't have an answer.
All he could do was be there.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "But I know this: none of it is your fault. Not your father. Not your brother. Not Reed. Not that guard. And if Arlo ever made you feel small, that's on him too."
Her chest hitched.
She let out a small, broken laugh that turned into a sob.
"I tried to be strong," she said. "In that room. In here. I tried to be your cool, unshakeable Dr. Carter. But inside, Chris—"
Her voice cracked completely.
"Inside I was just that girl again," she whispered. "The one on the floor. The one on the bed. The one everyone thought they could use and then throw away."
Chris didn't think anymore.
He pulled her in.
He wrapped his arms around her, careful of her shoulder, and hauled her against his chest. She stiffened at first—old reflex—but his scent, his warmth, the familiar way he held her brought her back to now.
Then she broke.
She clutched the front of his shirt, fingers twisting in the fabric, and sobs ripped out of her like something tearing.
"Why, Chris?" she cried, voice raw and loud. "Why does this keep happening?"
He held her tighter.
"I don't know," he said, voice shaking. "I'm so sorry. I'm so damn sorry."
"Am I a toy?" she shouted into his shoulder. "Is that it? Am I just something people pass around? Why does everyone want to crush my dignity first? Why is it always that? Why do they want to see me small and scared and—"
Her words dissolved into a broken wail.
He pressed his cheek to her hair, tears running freely down his face now too.
"You're not a toy," he whispered again and again. "You're not. You're Mara Carter. You're the one who keeps us alive. You're the one who reads a room in three seconds. You are more than anything they ever did to you."
She shook in his arms, sobbing, all the strength and control she usually showed gone for once.
And Chris held her through it, letting her scream and cry and curse, knowing she had every right to all of it—
and wishing, with everything in him, that he could reach back through time and rip every hand off her that had ever made her feel like less than a person.
After a long time, the storm in her chest started to ease.
Not because the pain was gone, but because she was too tired to sob anymore.
Mara's breathing slowed from harsh, shaking gasps to rough, uneven inhales against his shoulder. Her fingers loosened a little in his shirt, though she still held on like she was afraid he might vanish if she let go.
The cell was quiet except for the hum of the vent and their breathing.
Chris didn't rush her.
He kept one arm around her back, the other cradling the back of her head, thumb absently moving through her hair in small, careful motions. He didn't try to fix it, didn't tell her to calm down, didn't say it would be okay.
He just stayed.
After a while, Mara dragged in a shaky breath and pulled back a few centimeters, enough to see his face.
Her eyes were swollen and red. Her nose was running. Her cheeks were wet. She looked nothing like the composed, sharp‑eyed doctor she usually was.
And still, Chris thought, she had never looked more human.
"Don't," she muttered, trying to swipe at her face with her shoulder. "Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?" he asked softly.
"Like I'm going to break if you breathe too loud," she said. "I already broke. You saw it."
He shook his head.
"I see you," he said. "Not the break."
She let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
"You're getting cheesy," she sniffed. "I must really be in bad shape."
He managed a small smile.
"Yeah," he said. "You scared me."
Her gaze flicked up, startled.
"I've seen you stitched, bruised, half‑concussed," he went on. "You bounce back. You tease. You throw my own coping mechanisms in my face."
He swallowed.
"I've never seen you look like you wanted to disappear," he said. "Until today."
Her fingers tightened weakly in his shirt again.
"For a second," she said, voice low, "I did."
He didn't tell her not to say that.
He just waited.
"I was back there," she continued. "Not here. Not with you. Just… in those rooms. Those hands. Those voices. It felt like everything I've built since then was made of paper, and one pull—" she gestured weakly at her torn shirt "—and it all ripped."
Chris's hand drifted up to gently straighten the fabric, more gesture than actual fix.
"It's not paper," he said quietly. "It's you. It's work. It's every choice you made after they were finally out of your house. That doesn't vanish because one guard pulled a thread."
She looked down at her own chest, at the bruises forming.
"It feels like it," she whispered.
He nodded.
"I know," he said. "That's how trauma lies. It tells you the past is stronger than everything you've done since."
Her eyes met his, searching.
"Do you believe that?" she asked. "Really?"
"No," he said. "I believe it feels that way. Big difference."
Silence sat between them for a moment, not as heavy as before.
Mara sniffed, then winced at the movement.
"I hate that you saw that," she muttered.
"I hate that you had to go through it," he replied. "Seeing it is the bare minimum I can do."
A tiny, exhausted smile tugged at her mouth.
"Bare minimum includes hugging now?" she asked.
"Doctor's orders," he said.
She let out a breath that was almost a sigh, almost a laugh.
"Don't tell Arlo," she said. "He'll weaponize it."
Chris's expression darkened for a split second at the name, but he swallowed the comment.
"Right now," he said, "this isn't about him. It's about you."
She went quiet.
Her head dropped forward until their foreheads almost touched.
"Chris," she said softly. "If we get out of here…"
"We will," he said, automatically.
She gave him a look.
"If we get out of here," she repeated, "you need to promise me something."
"Anything," he said.
"Don't treat me like glass," she said. "Don't tiptoe every time you walk into a room. Don't stare at my scars like they're the only interesting thing about me."
He blinked.
"I don't do that now," he said.
"You will," she replied. "You saw a piece of me I don't show people. You saw the girl on the floor. Most people, once they see that, they never unsee it. They forget the rest."
He shook his head.
"I've seen you hold your own against guys twice your size," he said. "I've seen you talk a witness down from a panic attack. I've seen you dismantle a crime scene photo in five minutes and hand us three leads we wouldn't have found in five days."
He swallowed, voice going hoarse.
"And yeah," he added, "now I've seen you fall apart. That doesn't erase any of the other things. It just… adds another layer."
Her eyes filled again, but the tears sat there this time, not falling.
"Layers," she repeated. "Like an onion."
He huffed a small laugh.
"You're more interesting than an onion," he said. "Less smelly. Mostly."
She elbowed him weakly with her good arm.
"Jerk," she said, but there was warmth in it.
He sobered.
"I will mess up," he admitted. "I'll say the wrong thing. I'll probably overreact the next time someone gets too close to you in a hallway. But I won't forget who you are beyond this. I promise you that."
She looked at him a long moment.
"Okay," she said finally. "I'll try to believe you."
She leaned in again, resting her forehead on his shoulder this time instead of his chest.
The contact was lighter, more controlled, but still real.
"Thank you," she murmured. "For not walking away."
He tightened his arms around her just a bit.
"Not going anywhere," he said. "You're stuck with me."
For the first time since the torture room, she believed him.
And in the cold, humming cell, with bruises blooming and the future uncertain, that tiny, stubborn thread of trust was the first thing that didn't feel like it could be ripped away.