The room behind the iron gate was roughly fifteen square meters. Through the bars, they could see everything: a table, a bed, a television mounted at eye level, and a chandelier that provided far more light than the small space needed. The furniture was crowded together, making the room feel tight. On the table sat wine bottles, empty cans, and the scattered remains of a long, aimless stay. There were no books, no clothes other than what the woman wore, and no personal items.
The woman herself was curled under the table. She kept her knees to her chest, her head tilted up to watch the television. The program was in Japanese. She did not look toward the door.
"What are her conditions like?" Frenchie asked.
Jude stood beside him. "Long-term confinement. Her mental state has degraded significantly—I can't say how much from here. But a functional person would have reacted to us standing in the doorway. She hasn't looked over once." He kept his voice level. "She's a supe. She could be dangerous if she's spent this long living in fear. Put the lockpick away."
Frenchie stared at the gate.
"I think we should get her out."
"I don't object. We find the Compound V first, then we open the gate."
M.M. and Butcher both looked at Frenchie. He tucked the lockpick back into his coat.
"If she snaps at us," Butcher said, "none of us are walking out of here."
He turned to Jude. "You didn't pull anyone out at Sage Grove. There were seventeen of them, and you left them all. Why is this different?"
"Sage Grove held seventeen people who had been dosed with Compound V for months without support. They were unstable, isolated, and held in a facility that would take an army to empty safely." Jude was already searching the shelves. "One person, here, with warning, is a different problem. We can manage one."
He pulled open a cabinet, checked the contents, and shut it.
"She might be Japanese."
He paused for a second.
"That made me pause. But her condition is severe enough that it complicates the assessment. We can figure out her background once she's out." He moved to the next shelf. "If she's too far gone to recover, I can find her a better place than this room."
Frenchie looked at him.
"You're serious."
"Always."
They searched the room thoroughly but found nothing. There was no Compound V—no tubes, no packets, not even a sample in the cabinets or hidden in the piles on the floor.
Butcher turned to Jude. "Your nose stopped working?"
"My nose is fine." Jude straightened up. "The scent of Compound V is everywhere in this room, strongest near where she sleeps, which means she is being injected regularly. The source isn't stored here. The guards outside are carrying it. Whoever brought the new delivery down hasn't handed it off yet."
"So we go back out there," M.M. said.
"With seventeen armed guards between us and the exit."
"Pistols against rifles," Frenchie said, already measuring the angles. "If we move fast, we might take three or four, but the rest will hear us and flank from the sides."
"No guns needed," Jude said.
He walked toward the door. "Wait here. I'll be back."
He stepped into the dim corridor and vanished. He didn't just walk around a corner; he was there, and then he was gone. The three of them watched the doorway. The orange light in the hall stayed still and empty.
The old television kept playing. A voice spoke in Japanese from behind the gate.
They waited.
A minute passed.
The basement held the heavy, stagnant silence of a room with no ventilation. It felt like the air was getting thicker. M.M. adjusted his stance. Frenchie couldn't take his eyes off the iron gate. His instincts warned him about the woman under the table, the same way they always warned him, but Jude's earlier caution held him back.
He stayed where he was.
Ninety seconds. Nearly two minutes.
"Why is it quiet out there?" M.M. whispered.
Butcher and Frenchie stiffened.
He was right. When they entered, they could hear the guards at their table—noodles slurping, low conversation, the mundane sounds of armed men eating. They hadn't noticed when it stopped.
It had stopped.
"Let's go look," Butcher said.
They crept out of the inner room and into the main basement.
The guards were still at the table. All three of them sat exactly as they had been, bowls in front of them, chairs pulled up. But none were eating. All three sat upright, eyes closed, as still as statues.
Frenchie swallowed, the sound loud in the quiet.
They fanned out, checking the rest of the basement.
"There's one here."
"Here too."
"Here."
Guard after guard was found exactly where they had been—leaning against walls, sprawled in corners, stretched out between crates. None of them looked like people who had seen a fight coming. No weapons were drawn. Every chest rose and fell in the steady, rhythmic pace of deep, forced sleep.
Seventeen armed men. Rifles within reach.
Not one had made a sound.
M.M. rubbed his arms, staring at the scene. "What did Jude do?"
"Is he a supe?" Frenchie asked, his voice shaking. "I've heard stories. Old accounts of Japanese practitioners with abilities that don't have Western names. I couldn't sleep after hearing them."
"Quit it," Butcher said. But he didn't take his eyes off the guards.
Something rolled out of the dark and stopped at Frenchie's feet.
A body.
Chest rising and falling. Eyes closed.
Jude stepped out of the shadows behind it. He carried a small carry bag.
"They're sleeping. None of them are dead." He held up the bag. "Eight vials of Compound V, still in the original packaging. We can get the woman now."
"You did all seventeen by yourself," M.M. said, looking at the sleeping guards. "Without any of us hearing a thing."
"We don't take apprentices," Jude said. "Thanks for your interest."
He led them back into the inner room and set the bag on the shelf, unzipping it. The vials sat in foam padding, labeled in small, clean type.
He stared at the label.
"This package has a name on it." He turned the cover toward them. "Samaritan's Embrace. Anyone recognize that?"
Butcher looked. "No."
M.M. looked. "No."
Frenchie looked.
"No."
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