Ariel was still crawling.
The vents were narrower here.
Cold metal pressed against her knees and elbows. Dust clung to her skin and hair. Every breath tasted like rust and old air. The only light came from the thin seams where panels didn't fit perfectly, strips of gray instead of black.
Her muscles burned. Her wrists ached from the cuffs, chain scraping the metal as she moved.
Left hand. Right hand. Drag. Breathe.
Don't stop.
If you stop, you start thinking.
She turned at the next junction, remembering Arlo's rough instructions inside that supply room: Left, not right. Right is the compactor.
Her throat tightened.
"Trust the physics, not the man," she whispered to herself. "Vent noise. Airflow. Down, then left. Keep going."
She listened.
A faint hum came from ahead and below, the deeper rumble of the main waste line. The air was colder that way. On the right, it felt dead. No movement.
Left, then.
She shifted her weight and crawled forward, shoulders brushing both sides now.
Her mind didn't listen to her order to shut up.
It kept dragging her back into that corridor, that door, that last look.
Arlo's hand on her arm.
His voice low: Door or cage.
His answer when she asked what if they killed him: Then I die doing one thing right.
Anger flared, sharp and hot.
"Right," she muttered under her breath. "After everything."
She remembered his smile when he'd hurt her. The way he'd described Berry's death. The way he'd thrown her trust back in her face like it amused him.
She also remembered the way his thumb had tapped that pattern against her sleeve in the lift. The way he'd shoved her toward the vent. The way he'd stood in the doorway, taking the blows meant for someone trying to run.
"Was it worth it?" she thought bitterly. "All those words? All that cruelty?"
If he'd told her the truth in that cell, would she have believed him?
No.
Not after what he did.
She would've thought it was another trick.
Her knee slipped on dust. She caught herself with a clang, breath knocking out of her.
She froze.
Held her breath.
Waited.
No shout.
No alarm.
The building hummed on, indifferent.
She let out the air slowly.
"Focus, Ariel," she whispered. "One problem at a time. You can hate him later. You can fall apart later. You get out first."
But the thoughts kept coming, crowding tight in the narrow space.
What if they found him already?
What if he was dead?
What if he'd given her up the second Jen threatened someone else?
You saw his face, another voice answered. In that last second before they took you. You saw his eyes.
He had been scared.
Not for himself.
For her.
She clenched her jaw.
"Feel sorry for him, and you deserve every bruise you get," she told herself harshly. "He chose this. He chose Berry. He chose to break you. He doesn't get to live rent‑free in your head while you're fighting to breathe."
But he was there anyway.
The Arlo who had kissed her like he meant it.
The Arlo who had watched her almost die and done nothing.
The Arlo who had told her she smelled like antiseptic, who had mocked her body and her trust.
And now the Arlo who had stood in a doorway and handed her a route out, knowing Reed and Jen would turn on him.
"Two men in one skin," she thought. "Which one am I running away from?"
Her chest hurt.
Not just from the effort of crawling, but from the war going on inside her.
She hit a drop.
The vent sloped down sharply.
Her stomach lurched as her palms slid on the metal.
"Careful," she hissed. "Slow. You rush and you fall, they won't even have to catch you. The building will do it for them."
She shuffled forward, lowering herself bit by bit, toes searching for a lip, a brace.
She found one.
A bolt sticking out, a rough edge of weld. She hooked her boot on it and let herself slide the rest of the way in a controlled skid.
Her shoulders banged the sides. Her elbows scraped.
She bit back a cry.
At the bottom, the tunnel widened again by a few centimeters. Enough to breathe.
She pressed her forehead to the cold metal, eyes closed.
A memory slipped in while she was still.
Arlo in the stairwell of some safe house, years ago, when they'd been different people. When she'd told him about her parents. About the car. About the fire.
He'd listened quietly, then said, "If I could rebuild the world around you, I would. Brick by brick."
She'd believed him.
Now she was crawling through a version of that world he'd actually built. Brick by brick. Vent by vent. Lock by lock.
Half prison. Half escape route.
"Did you plan this from the start?" she wondered. "Or did you start fixing it only after you finished breaking me?"
Her eyes burned.
She slammed the feeling down.
"I choose us," she whispered. "I choose Chris. I choose Mara. Not him."
Choosing them meant using what he'd given her, whether she liked it or not.
She forced herself forward.
Eventually, her fingers brushed something different.
A metal grid. Bolts. A faint line of fresher air against her skin.
The hatch.
Her pulse jumped.
She tested the grate with her bound hands. It rattled, not fully tight. One bolt was looser than the others, as if someone had already worried at it.
Of course he left one weak, she thought. The engineer in him couldn't resist.
She hooked the chain of her cuffs around it and twisted, teeth gritted, using her whole body as leverage.
The bolt resisted, then gave with a small, rusty squeal.
She froze again, listening.
No shout.
No boots.
She worked the next one.
As she did, the dark thoughts kept flickering.
If they catch you here, they'll drag you back past him, her mind whispered. Past whatever's left of him. Will you look at his face? Will you spit on him? Or will you see the man in the door instead of the man at the crash?
Her hands tightened on the metal.
"I don't owe him an answer," she thought. "I don't owe him forgiveness. I don't owe him anything."
But a small, treacherous part of her added: You might owe him that you're still breathing right now.
She hated that part.
"Fine," she told herself, twisting the third bolt free. "He gets credit for one thing. One right thing in a sea of wrong."
She yanked at the grate.
It shifted.
The last bolt screeched as it turned partway, then snapped.
The grate sagged inward.
A rush of colder air hit her face.
She pushed the metal aside as far as the cramped space allowed and lowered her head to peer out.
Below was a narrow vertical shaft with a ladder welded into the wall.
Just like he'd said.
Twenty‑something rungs.
Storage bay at the top.
"Please don't let this be a trap," she thought. "Please don't let this be the place Reed waits."
She knew Arlo had given Jen something by now.
He had to. They would have gone after him the second she disappeared.
Maybe he'd lied.
Maybe he'd bought her a few extra minutes by sending them down an older, unused route first.
Maybe he'd sold her exact coordinates to stop them hurting Chris and Mara.
Her stomach twisted.
"If he betrayed you again, at least you know who he is," one part of her said.
"If he didn't, and you still hate him forever, you'll have to live with that too," another part answered.
She closed her eyes for a heartbeat.
In the dark behind her lids, she saw three faces: Chris, shouting "Rule four." Mara, eyes hard, saying "We choose us." Arlo, blood on his cheek, saying "Crawl, Ariel."
She opened her eyes.
"One step at a time," she told herself. "You get out. You get them out. Then you decide what to do with him in your head."
She shifted forward and swung her legs through the opening, feeling for the first rung.
Her foot touched metal.
She gripped the edge of the vent, took a breath, and let herself drop onto the ladder, arms screaming as they took her weight with the cuffs still on.
Pain flared.
She held on.
Up.
Rung by rung.
Every pull up was a fight between her body and gravity, between her past and the small, stubborn hope that there was still a door somewhere at the top of this.
By the time she reached the hatch above, her arms were shaking and her lungs burned.
She pressed her ear to the metal.
Listened.
Nothing.
No voices.
No footsteps.
Just the humming of distant systems.
"Okay," she whispered. "Okay, Arlo. If this is another lie, I swear I'll haunt you."
She braced her shoulder under the hatch and pushed.
It resisted.
Then, slowly, it moved.
Light—dimmer than day, brighter than the vents,bled around the edges.
Ariel squinted and shoved harder until the gap was wide enough to fit through.
She hauled herself up, every muscle protesting, and rolled onto a cold concrete floor.
For a moment, she lay there, chest heaving, staring at a dusty ceiling.
Not a cell.
Not a torture room.
A storage bay. Empty shelves. Old crates. No cameras she could see inside. Only a single door, closed, with light under the crack.
Her heart pounded.
She laughed once, a short, disbelieving sound that sounded a little like a sob.
"I'm out," she whispered.
Not out of the building.
Not yet.
But out of the cage Arlo had put her in.
And for now, that was enough to start moving again.
She pushed herself up, wiped dust from her face with the back of her cuffed hands, and headed toward the door,carrying with her the weight of everything he'd done, and the one brutal fact she couldn't escape:
To get free, she'd had to follow the path carved by the same hands that had broken her.
What she did with that truth later would be its own kind of escape.
The locks clanked louder than usual.
Chris and Mara both looked up.
They were still sitting close on the bench, Mara's head resting against the wall, Chris's shoulder touching hers. The quiet after her breakdown felt fragile, like thin glass.
The door hissed, then swung inward.
Two guards stood there, breathing a little harder than normal. Between them, half‑dragged, half‑held upright, was Arlo.
For a heartbeat, Chris didn't recognize him.
Then his stomach dropped.
Arlo's face was a mess of bruises and dried blood. One eye was swollen shut. His lip was split in two places. There was a dark stain spreading across his shirt at his side that hadn't been there before, and his breathing was harsh, rattling like every inhale hurt.
His wrists were still cuffed, but his hands hung limp.
"Delivery," one guard grunted. "Your favorite warden got demoted."
They let go.
Arlo's knees buckled.
He hit the floor hard, catching himself badly on one shoulder. A rough sound tore out of him before he could choke it back.
"Hey!" Chris shouted, instinct making him lurch forward. "Careful—"
The guard nearest him lifted his rifle a little.
"Stay," he warned. "Medical's seen him. He's alive. That's all that matters."
"Alive for now," the other guard muttered.
The door slammed.
Locks slid back into place.
For a moment, the only sound in the cell was Arlo's uneven breathing.
Chris moved first.
He dropped to his knees beside him.
"Arlo," he said. "Can you hear me?"
Arlo's good eye blinked slowly, struggling to focus.
Up close, Chris saw it was worse than it looked from the bench.
There were finger‑shaped bruises around his throat. His knuckles were split and swollen. There was a deep, ugly purple mark across his ribs where a baton had landed more than once. His shirt was stuck to his side with blood.
"Don't—" Arlo managed, voice rough, barely there. "Don't touch the left."
Chris froze his hand an inch from that side.
Mara hadn't moved at first.
She was very still, eyes wide, staring at the sight of him crumpled on their floor.
Then she stood.
Something in her face shifted. Not soft. Not forgiving. Just… hit.
She crossed the cell slowly.
"Roll him," she said quietly, doctor mode sliding over her voice even as her hands shook. "Onto his back. Carefully. Support his head."
Chris glanced up at her.
"Mara—"
"Do it," she said.
He obeyed.
Between the two of them, they shifted Arlo gingerly onto his back. He groaned, jaw clenched, but didn't fight them.
Mara knelt on his other side.
"Look at me, Johnson," she said.
His good eye dragged to her.
He tried for a smirk and failed.
"Didn't think… I'd end up… on your table," he rasped.
"Lucky for you, it's free," she muttered.
Her fingers were gentle but efficient as she checked his ribs with light pressure, avoiding where the worst bruises bloomed.
He hissed when she brushed one spot.
"Possible crack," she murmured. "Maybe two. Breathing?"
Arlo gave a broken half‑laugh.
"Present," he said. "Not… recommended."
She moved to his side, peeling the blood‑stuck fabric away as carefully as she could.
The wound underneath wasn't deep enough to kill him immediately but deep enough to scare her,a nasty baton strike or boot that had split the skin and layered over older damage.
"Idiots," she muttered. "You don't get better answers by caving in lungs."
Chris watched her work.
He saw her jaw tighten when she spotted each bruise. The way her eyes flinched when she saw where they'd gone after his throat. The way she swallowed when she found old scars on his forearms that weren't from today.
She knew what repeated violence looked like.
It wasn't sympathy.
But it hit something anyway.
"Reed?" she asked quietly, not looking at his face as she pressed her hand to slow one of the bleeds.
"Jen," Arlo whispered. "Reed… supervised."
Of course he did, Chris thought bitterly.
Mara's fingers paused for the smallest moment at the name.
She forced them steady again.
"Any dizziness? Blurred vision?" she asked.
"Left eye's gone," he said. "For now. Head's… a drum."
She touched gently along his scalp.
Her fingertips found a tender swelling.
"Concussion," she said. "Probably mild. You're lucky."
He huffed another painful breath.
"Define lucky," he croaked.
"You're not dead," she said. "Yet."
His gaze flicked to her face.
She was focused on his injuries, brows drawn, lips pressed thin.
She looked like the doctor from the hospital and not like the woman whose shirt he'd watched get yanked and whose scream had finally broken him.
His throat worked.
"You shouldn't… have to patch up… the man who made this place," he said, voice small for the first time.
She finally looked at him properly.
For a second, anger flickered there.
Then something softer, more complicated, slid in under it.
"Shut up and breathe," she said roughly. "You can be guilty and my patient at the same time. That's my curse, not yours."
Chris almost smiled through the ache.
"Classic Dr. Carter," he said. "Take on more than you should."
She shot him a look.
"Hold his shoulders," she ordered instead. "I need to get the bleeding under control."
He did.
He slid his hands under Arlo's shoulders, lifting him a little so Mara could use the torn edge of her own shirt as makeshift gauze.
Arlo's head lolled toward him.
"Smith," he murmured. "You… okay?"
Chris's jaw clenched.
"You are not allowed to worry about me right now," he said. "You look like you lost a fight with a truck."
"Truck… won," Arlo said weakly.
Mara pressed harder on the wound.
He let out a strained sound, tears springing to his eye from the fresh pain.
"Sorry," she muttered. "You want to live, it has to clot."
"I'm… fine," he lied.
She heard the lie in his voice.
Her hands gentled, just a fraction.
As she worked, she realized something strange.
Every time she touched a bruise, every time he flinched, it hit a place in her chest she hadn't planned on unlocking.
She remembered the way he'd shouted in that room when the guard grabbed her shirt. The way his voice had broken. The way he'd finally given up his route,not when they were beating him, but when they went for her.
She hated him.
She also couldn't pretend it didn't mean something.
"Don't look at me like that," he rasped suddenly.
She blinked.
"Like what?" she asked.
"Like I'm… some noble idiot," he said. "I broke you. Both of you. This doesn't… fix it."
Tears pricked her eyes before she could stop them.
"You're right," she said quietly. "It doesn't."
She tied off the strip of fabric around his torso as tight as she dared.
"But it's still something," she added.
He swallowed.
"Great," he said. "I did… something."
His sarcasm was thin, barely there.
She could see how close he was to dropping into unconsciousness.
"Hey," she said softly, leaning closer without quite realizing it. "Stay with me, Johnson."
His lashes fluttered.
He obeyed.
Barely.
"Why?" he whispered. "You want to see… if I suffer enough?"
A small, wet laugh escaped her.
"No," she said. "I want you awake when we tell Ariel what you did."
Chris's head snapped toward her.
"Mara—"
She didn't look at him.
"If she gets out," she went on, eyes on Arlo, "if she survives because of that route you gave… she deserves to hear it from us. Not from Jen. Not from Reed. From the people who watched you pay for it."
A tear slid out of Arlo's eye, cutting through the dried blood on his cheek.
"You think she'll… forgive me?" he asked, voice almost childlike for a second.
Mara's face hardened.
"No," she said simply. "I don't think forgiveness is on the table. Not for what you did to her."
Her voice softened on the next words.
"But I think the truth is," she said, "that she'll hate you with more information."
A broken half‑smile tugged at his mouth.
"Fair," he breathed.
His eyes drifted, heavy.
Mara's hand found his wrist, fingers checking his pulse by reflex.
It was weak, but there.
"Sleep if you have to," she said. "Your body needs it. But don't you dare die in this cell and leave her with more questions than answers. You owe her more than that."
He nodded, or tried to.
"Okay," he whispered.
His eye finally closed.
His breathing stayed rough, but steady enough.
Mara stayed kneeling beside him a moment longer than she needed to, her hand still on his wrist.
Chris watched her.
"You okay?" he asked quietly.
She let out a slow breath.
"No," she said. "But I'm here."
She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand.
"For the record," she added, voice low, looking down at Arlo, "if you die, I will be furious. Not because I want you around. Because I want you alive when we walk out, so you have to live with what you did and what you changed."
Chris nodded.
"Agreed," he said.
They stayed like that for a while, two broken people watching over a third, in a cell that felt slightly less like a cage and slightly more like a waiting room, all of them tied, in different ways, to a woman crawling through the dark somewhere above them, following a path built by the same man now bleeding at their feet.
The next scene picks up with tension rising in the building and all three of them feeling the shift.
Time blurred.
They didn't know how long they sat like that—Mara with one hand on Arlo's wrist, Chris nearby, listening to every rough breath.
The cell hummed with the usual background noise: vents, distant doors, muffled voices.
Then something changed.
A low, pulsing alarm thudded through the walls. Not the sharp, shrill siren for a breach, but a deeper tone, like the building clearing its throat.
Chris's head snapped up.
"You hear that?" he asked.
Mara's fingers stilled on Arlo's wrist for a second, then resumed.
"Internal sweep," she said. "Localized. They're moving teams."
"Looking for her," Chris said.
He didn't say Ariel's name, but they both heard it anyway.
Arlo made a faint sound.
His eye cracked open.
"Sector nine," he rasped. "They're… close."
Mara leaned over him.
"Hey," she said. "You're supposed to be resting."
"Can't," he muttered. "Not if… they find her."
He tried to push himself up.
Pain slammed through his ribs.
He fell back with a gasp, jaw clenched, breath stuttering.
"Stop," Chris said, catching his shoulder. "You're not going anywhere."
Arlo glared weakly at him.
"I need to know," he said. "Need to see if… I broke her twice."
Mara's throat tightened.
"Or if you actually helped her once," she said.
The alarm pulse shifted, changing pitch.
Chris frowned.
"That's a perimeter ping," he said. "Outer corridors. She's farther than they thought."
Mara closed her eyes briefly.
"Good girl," she whispered.
When she opened them, Arlo was watching her.
"You trust her to make it?" he asked.
Mara nodded.
"She's stubborn," she said. "And angry. And smart. You should know. You made her that angry."
A faint ghost of a smile tugged at his swollen mouth.
"Yeah," he whispered. "I did."
Footsteps echoed in the hall outside.
All three of them went still.
A voice barked orders, too muffled to make out words, but the tone was urgent.
Another, nearer, answered.
Doors farther down opened, slammed, opened again.
They were searching cells.
"Protocol," Mara murmured. "If they think a prisoner's involved in an escape, they re‑check anyone tied to them. Ariel. You. Us."
"Good," Chris said. "Let them waste time."
He moved closer to the door, listening.
Arlo tried again to push up on one elbow.
Mara planted a hand on his chest—gently, but firm.
"Stay down," she ordered. "You pass out, I need you where I can see your face, not on the floor."
He let out a breath that might have been a laugh.
"You're bossy," he said.
"I'm alive," she shot back. "You want to keep it that way for both of us, you listen."
Outside, a shorter, sharper alarm chirped twice, then cut.
Chris exhaled.
"They lost visual," he said quietly. "Whatever camera they thought she'd hit up there, she dodged it."
Mara looked up at the ceiling.
"Come on, Ariel," she murmured. "Prove every statistic wrong."
Arlo's hand twitched against the concrete.
"Smith," he said, voice thready. "If she… if she makes it out…"
Chris looked down at him.
"You'll never see her again," Chris said flatly. "That's the point of escaping, Arlo."
Arlo nodded, accepting it like a sentence.
"I know," he said. "Just… make sure she knows… she didn't imagine it."
"Imagine what?" Mara asked, eyes narrowing.
He swallowed.
"The parts… where I wasn't a monster," he said. "The… good days. They were… real. I ruined them. But they were real."
Mara's jaw clenched.
"That's not her job," she said. "Carrying the reality of your good days. That's yours."
His eye shone.
"Yeah," he breathed. "I figured."
The footsteps outside came closer now.
Right outside their door.
Locks scraped.
Chris stepped back, instinctively shifting so he was between the door and Mara and Arlo.
Mara moved too, one hand braced on the bench, putting herself where she could get to both men fast if she needed to.
The door hissed open a crack.
A guard peered in, eyes flicking over them quickly: Chris upright, Mara bruised but steady, Arlo on the floor, bandaged in scraps, breathing hard.
"Roll call," the guard said. "Smith. Carter. Johnson. Present."
"No one's tunneled out through the concrete, if that's what you're asking," Mara said dryly.
The guard's gaze lingered on Arlo.
"Word is, your escape artist is still in the building," he said. "If she's smart, she'll find a way out before Reed does his… motivational speech thing."
Chris's hands curled.
"Is that what they call it now?" he asked. "Motivational speech?"
"Watch your mouth, prisoner," the guard snapped. "You're lucky you're still breathing. All of you."
Mara's eyes flashed.
"Funny," she said. "That's exactly what I was thinking about you."
The guard scowled.
He almost stepped fully inside.
Then the deeper alarm boomed again, this time longer.
The guard cursed under his breath.
"Lockdown shift," he said. "We're done here."
He shut the door.
Locks slid home.
The cell felt smaller again.
Mara let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding.
Chris returned to Arlo's side.
"Heart rate's up," he said, glancing at her.
"Adrenaline," she answered. "And fear. He's allowed."
"I'm not scared," Arlo muttered.
Both of them looked at him.
He rolled his eye, or tried to.
"I'm… terrified," he corrected.
Despite everything, Chris snorted.
"Welcome to the club," he said. "We meet daily. Dues are existential."
Mara almost smiled.
Almost.
"We wait," she said. "We watch the patterns. This place talks if you listen long enough."
She tilted her head, listening to the distant alarms shifting location.
"Right now," she added, "it's saying she's still one step ahead."
Arlo closed his eye again.
A tear slid sideways this time, into his hair.
"Good," he whispered.
For the first time since they'd been thrown together in this concrete box, all three of them wanted the same thing:
For Ariel to get just far enough away that this building, these walls, and the choices that had led them all here became something in her rearview mirror instead of her future.
Whether any of them deserved to see that happen was another question entirely,
one that would be answered by the alarms, the doors, and the footsteps drawing closer or fading away in the corridors beyond.