Chapter Text
The first thing Jane noticed was that the floor wasn’t still.
It wasn’t shaking, not the way people expected shaking. There was no sharp jolt, no impact that demanded attention. Just a slow, rolling movement underfoot, subtle enough that if you weren’t already tuned to it, you might blame your balance instead of the building.
She shifted her weight deliberately and felt it again. Sideways. Controlled. Wrong.
“Do you feel that?” she asked.
Weller had been leaning over the table, one hand braced on the edge as he watched Patterson’s screens. He paused, straightened, and planted his boots flat against the concrete.
“Yeah,” he said. “I thought that was just me.”
Patterson didn’t look up. Her eyes were locked on the power graphs, jaw tight. The lines weren’t spiking. They weren’t even climbing. They were holding steady in a way that made her skin crawl.
“It’s not you,” she said. “It’s the building.”
Another roll passed through the floor, longer this time. The overhead lights trembled, a faint metallic rattle echoing through the room like something dragged slowly through a vent.
Tasha felt it in her ribs before she really understood what she was feeling. The vibration settled low, deep enough that it bypassed her ears and went straight to bone. She pressed a hand to the nearest rack without thinking, grounding herself as the motion eased.
“That’s not normal,” she said.
“No,” Jane agreed. “It’s not.”
Afreen rolled her chair back from the console and stood, eyes scanning the secondary readouts. Power was moving through the system in smooth, deliberate patterns. Too smooth. The draw wasn’t concentrated anymore. It was spread.
Her stomach dropped.
“It’s cumulative,” she said. “Not a surge. A load.”
Patterson finally turned away from the monitors. “Load on what?”
Afreen hesitated, eyes flicking to a different overlay. Not servers. Not racks.
Infrastructure.
“On everything,” she said carefully. “It’s dumping into the grounding paths. Conduits. Structural steel.”
The words landed heavy.
Patterson’s pulse kicked hard. “Those aren’t rated for this.”
“No,” Afreen said. “They’re not supposed to carry it at all.”
As if on cue, dust sifted down from a seam near the ceiling tile above the far rack. Not a lot. Just enough to notice. It drifted lazily through the light before settling on the equipment below.
Weller looked up at it, then back at Jane.
“You thinking structural?” he asked.
Jane was already moving, stepping toward the hallway, tipping her head back to study the ceiling. The lights swayed again, slightly out of sync with one another.
“Yes,” she said. “And it’s already started.”
The building rolled beneath them once more, the motion slow and sickening, like a ship settling into rough water. Somewhere overhead, metal groaned—not a snap, not a crack, but a strained, heated sound that made Tasha’s stomach clench.
Patterson’s fingers flew back to the keyboard. “The system isn’t escalating,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. “It’s stabilizing its draw.”
“That’s worse,” Rich muttered.
Another vibration rippled through the room, stronger now. A keyboard skidded across a workstation before Rich caught it, swearing as he shoved it back into place.
Weller braced himself against the table, eyes tracking the ceiling as another rattle shivered through the fixtures.
“At what point,” he asked, “do we worry this place doesn’t stay standing?”
No one answered.
The floor rolled again, longer this time, as if the building were drawing in a breath it couldn’t release.
***
Footsteps hit the stairwell hard enough to register through the floor.
Not careful. Not slow.
Jane felt the shift immediately. The rolling motion sharpened, the added vibration feeding straight into a structure already under load.
She turned toward the door just as it banged open.
Cross came through first, shoulder-checking it out of reflex, dust streaking his jacket like ash. Devlin followed half a step behind him, coughing as he waved a hand through the air, eyes already tracking the ceiling.
“The stairs were moving,” Cross said. “Tell me that’s not just me.”
“It’s not,” Jane said.
Mick stepped inside with easy familiarity. He’d been here before. Knew the space. Knew where to stand without getting in the way. He stopped just inside the threshold, half-turned back toward Cross, like he was about to make some dry comment about their timing.
Another slow roll passed through the floor.
Tasha felt it immediately, deeper now, the vibration crawling up her spine. “Mick,” she said. “Why are you here?”
He blinked at her. “You called.”
The room went still in the way it only ever did right before something broke.
“I didn’t,” Tasha said immediately. “I didn’t call anyone.”
Mick frowned and pulled out his phone. He didn’t rush. He didn’t expect this to be complicated. He turned the screen toward her.
The call log was short.
Her name sat at the top.
“That’s not me,” Tasha said, sharper now. “I haven’t had my phone on.”
Cross’s attention snapped to Patterson. “You?”
Patterson shook her head once. “No.”
The building rolled again, longer this time. The overhead lights swayed out of sync, the rattle deepening into a groan. Dust spilled more heavily now, catching in Jane’s hair and on the shoulders of Cross’s jacket.
“This place is carrying the load,” Jane said. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Cross let out a humorless breath. “Yeah. That tracks.”
Patterson turned back to the monitors, fingers flying, trying to isolate the flow, break the path, force the draw somewhere safer.
The numbers refused to spike. Refused to give her a clean failure point.
“It’s not just routing through the servers,” she said, voice tight. “It’s using the building itself as the circuit.”
The floor lurched sideways.
Tasha grabbed the nearest rack as the motion threw her off balance, the metal biting into her palm. The surface beneath her hand felt warm. Hotter than it should have been.
Something shrieked overhead—metal under stress—followed by a sound like a bolt tearing loose.
“That’s too much,” Weller said. “That’s—”
The sound cut him off.
Not a bang.
A tearing.
Power went where it had no business going.
Structural steel expanded, anchors failed, and something massive gave way. Stored energy released all at once as the ceiling collapsed inward, pressure slamming through the room.
Everyone was thrown.
The floor dropped.
The world tilted.
Lights exploded.
Heat and dust swallowed everything.
Sound fractured into something sharp and meaningless as the building screamed around them.
Then—
Nothing.
Chapter Text
The weight came back before the sound.
Tasha woke to crushing pressure across her legs and hips, metal pinning her at a wrong angle that made her body revolt instantly. Cold concrete burned against her shoulder. Steel bit into her thigh, sharp and unyielding, pain flaring so fast it stole her breath.
Her skin screamed where it pressed. Not the dull ache of a bruise, but the raw, angry heat of burns that hadn’t had time to calm down yet. Every point of contact felt like it was being branded all over again.
She tried to move.
Nothing happened.
Panic spiked hot in her chest, sharp enough to make her vision pulse. She forced herself to breathe through it, shallow and fast, until the ringing in her ears sharpened into something she could recognize as sound instead of static.
The building wasn’t screaming anymore.
That almost made it worse.
Dust coated her tongue and throat. She coughed, and the motion ripped through her ribs hard enough to make her see stars. The impact landed exactly where the damage never quite faded, pain flaring deep and merciless as the rack above her shifted in response.
Metal ground against concrete.
The vibration tore through her lower back and hips, jarring the still-tender spot where the bullet had grazed her weeks earlier. She sucked in a breath and tasted blood.
“Okay,” she rasped.
Her voice came out shredded, the sound scraping raw over a throat that already burned.
She pressed her palms against the floor. The concrete felt gritty, hot in places, and she hated that she could feel the texture so clearly. She pushed, testing the weight instinctively.
The rack didn’t lift, but it slid.
The shriek of metal was sharp and awful. Pain detonated everywhere at once as the pressure shifted, heat flaring across her skin where the burns were scraped and compressed.
She shoved again, harder, teeth clenched so tight her jaw ached. Something in her back protested viciously, and her ribs screamed as she twisted, but the rack moved another inch.
Then another.
Her thigh howled as the weight shifted. She dragged one leg free, the motion tearing a sound out of her that she didn’t bother trying to swallow. The metal scraped past skin that was still too tender to touch, and white-hot pain exploded through her nerves.
She collapsed onto her side the moment she was clear, curling instinctively, breath coming in sharp, broken pulls that set her ribs on fire all over again.
The floor tilted beneath her. The room spun.
She pressed her cheek to the concrete and stayed there, breathing shallow and fast, riding out the wave until the dizziness ebbed enough for the world to settle back into place.
She didn’t wait for it to stop hurting.
It wasn’t going to.
She pushed herself up onto an elbow and forced her eyes open.
The room was wrecked.
Server racks lay twisted at angles they were never meant to hold. A desk had overturned nearby, its contents scattered across the floor like debris after a storm. One of the overhead lights hung by a single cable, swaying gently, its motion throwing slow, warped shadows across the wreckage.
She opened her mouth, tested her voice.
It came out rough, scraped raw, but it existed.
No answer came back.
Her heart rate spiked, sharp and immediate, and she forced it down by muscle memory alone. Breathe. Move. Find.
Patterson.
The thought cut through everything else.
She got to her feet too fast and paid for it instantly. The room pitched violently, pain flaring through her ribs, back, and hip all at once, and she had to grab the nearest rack to keep from going back down.
She stood there, teeth clenched, until the spin passed enough to move.
“Patterson,” she called.
She saw her near the workstation, half-curled on her side, one arm trapped beneath her. Dust coated her hair and jacket, her face slack and terrifyingly still.
For one awful second, the pain disappeared entirely.
No.
Tasha crossed the distance on pure refusal and dropped to her knees beside her, the impact lighting up every injury she had like a fuse. Her hands shook as she pressed her fingers to Patterson’s neck, searching desperately for a pulse.
Nothing.
Her breath broke. “No—no, no—”
She shifted her grip, pressed harder, fought the rising panic that threatened to drown out everything else.
Then Patterson coughed.
It was weak. Rough. Real.
Relief slammed into Tasha hard enough to make her sag forward, forehead dropping to Patterson’s shoulder as a broken laugh tore out of her chest. It hurt like hell, and she didn’t care.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Don’t do that. Don’t ever—”
Patterson stirred beneath her, a faint crease forming between her brows. “Tash?” she murmured, the word slurred but unmistakable.
“I’m here,” Tasha said immediately. She brushed dust from Patterson’s face with trembling fingers, careful not to jostle her. “I’ve got you. You’re okay. I think. You’re okay.”
Patterson’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused. She winced as she tried to move. “The building—”
“I know,” Tasha said. “Just stay still. Please.”
She stayed there longer than she should have, kneeling beside her, one hand anchored at Patterson’s shoulder like she could keep the world from collapsing again if she just held on tight enough.
Then she forced herself to move.
She didn’t go far.
Her legs were shaking now, the adrenaline bleeding off just enough for the pain to make itself undeniable. Tasha backed into a half-standing rack and slid down until she was sitting on the floor, one arm braced behind her, the other wrapped tight around her ribs. The concrete was cold through her clothes. She welcomed it.
She stayed there, breathing shallow, eyes tracking the room.
A sound cut through the haze.
Not debris.
A voice.
“Oh good,” Rich said hoarsely. “Because if this is the afterlife, I want to file a complaint.”
Relief hit her hard enough to make her dizzy.
“I hear you,” Tasha said. “Stay where you are.”
“I wasn’t planning on a victory lap,” he said. “Pretty sure my dignity is under a desk somewhere.”
Another cough echoed from the other side of the room. Controlled. Familiar.
“Tasha?” Jane’s voice. Strained, but steady.
“Yeah,” Tasha said. “I hear you.”
“I’m up,” Jane said. “Give me a second.”
Boots scraped against concrete. Someone swore under their breath, then louder.
“Okay,” Weller said. “That answers the question about whether the ceiling was load-bearing.”
Tasha let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “You bleeding?”
“Head,” he said. “Nothing dramatic.”
“Good,” she said. “Keep it that way.”
Afreen spoke next, voice tight with irritation. “I appear to be intact. I am extremely unhappy about it.”
A weak huff of laughter escaped Tasha before she could stop it. It hurt like hell and she didn’t care.
“Everyone stay where you are,” she said, louder now. “Let the dust settle. Nobody moves unless they have to.”
The room answered her in the small sounds of survival: coughing, scraping, the shift of weight as people tested what still worked.
They came together without planning it, drawn into a loose cluster amid the wreckage. Close enough to see each other clearly. Close enough to count.
Jane.
Rich.
Weller.
Afreen.
Alive.
Tasha’s pulse slowed.
Then stalled.
Her gaze slid, unbidden, toward the entryway.
The collapse was worst there. Twisted metal. Broken concrete. A thick drift of dust that still hadn’t fully settled.
No voice from that direction.
No coughing.
No swearing.
No familiar baritone cutting through the chaos with dry commentary and terrible timing.
Her stomach tightened.
“Mick?” she called, not loud. Just enough to carry.
Nothing answered.
She swallowed and tried again, lifting her head despite the protest in her ribs. “Hey. Mick.”
The dust near the doorway shifted slightly as it settled.
That was all.
Her pulse ticked up, sharp and fast.
“Cross,” she said next. Louder now. “You with us?”
Silence.
Not stunned silence.
Not unconscious silence.
The wrong kind.
Jane’s gaze followed hers to the doorway. Weller stilled. Even Rich stopped talking.
“They were right there,” Tasha said finally, her voice low and tight. “They didn’t go anywhere.”
Chapter Text
The building would not let them linger.
It wasn’t collapsing—not yet—but it complained constantly, low and exhausted sounds running through the concrete and into Tasha’s bones. Vibrations she felt more than heard. Dust sifted down in uneven sheets, catching in her hair and along the shoulders of her jacket. Somewhere above them, metal scraped against metal, a slow grinding sound that set her teeth on edge.
Jane stood still, head tilted slightly, listening.
“This isn’t stable,” she said.
Tasha barely heard her. Her attention was fixed on the entryway, on the dark gap where the floor had simply ceased to exist.
“They were right there,” she said, voice tight. “They didn’t go anywhere.”
Weller followed her gaze. The collapse near the doorway was worse than it had looked at first glance. Concrete had sheared away in a jagged slope, steel exposed and bent downward, debris piled thick enough to swallow whatever it had landed on.
Rich shifted behind them, careful not to move too much.
“That’s… not ideal.”
Jane stepped closer to the edge and looked down. Dust drifted upward from below, slow and constant, like the building was breathing through broken lungs.
Tasha didn’t look away from the drop.
“Does anyone have a light?” she asked.
No one answered immediately.
“Um, no. Wait. Phone,” Rich said as he fumbled in his pockets. He pulled it out and frowned at it. “Screen’s cracked. I knew I should have gotten that insurance, stupid Boston telling me it was a waste of money.”
“Rich,” Tasha snapped impatiently, her hand out expectantly.
“Right, sorry,” he said quickly. He tapped the cracked screen. “Okay, there we go.”
Jane pulled her own phone out at the same time, swiped, and angled the beam downward.
The light cut through the dust in a narrow cone.
“That’s not a controlled drop,” Jane said. “And it’s not how we’re going down.”
Tasha didn’t argue. She was already scanning the room, already moving.
“The stairs,” she said. “If they’re alive, we need a way to get them back up.”
That stopped everyone.
Weller crossed to the stairwell and tested the first step with his boot. The railing was bent inward, concrete cracked and flaking, but the landing held.
“Damaged,” he said. “But it’s still taking weight.”
Tasha grabbed the railing and started down.
Jane swore quietly and followed.
Behind them, Weller turned back to the others.
“You stay here,” he said. “If this place shifts, you get out.”
No arguments. No debate.
The stairwell swallowed sound.
Every step echoed, every movement answered by the building with a low, exhausted groan. Dust thickened as they descended, coating the air until it burned in Tasha’s throat. Her ribs protested with every breath, pain flaring sharp and insistent, but she didn’t slow.
Halfway down, Jane stopped. She tilted her head, listening.
“Devlin,” she called. “Cross.”
Her voice carried differently here—tighter, sharper, thrown back at her by concrete and broken walls.
For a moment, there was nothing.
Then—
A cough.
Wet. Strained. Human.
Jane’s head snapped up.
“There,” she said. “Someone’s alive.”
The sound came again, closer this time, followed by a hoarse voice cutting through the dust.
“Yeah,” it said. “Over here would be great.”
They took the last landing carefully and stepped into what was left of the lower level. The urge to rush toward the sound was overwhelmed by the desire to stay safe.
It wasn’t a room so much as a pocket of space the collapse had spared—one wall still standing, the others reduced to slanted planes of concrete and rebar that funneled debris inward. Broken ceiling tiles crunched underfoot. The air smelled scorched and metallic, wrong in a way that made her stomach knot.
Jane angled toward the sound, phone light sweeping ahead.
Tasha followed, boots crunching over fragments of ceiling and wall. The beam caught on twisted metal first, then a boot, then a leg pinned beneath a slab of concrete that had landed just shy of catastrophic.
The man beneath it shifted as the light hit him.
“Took you long enough,” Cross muttered hoarsely.
Jane dropped beside him immediately.
“Don’t move.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” he said, jaw tightening as the building answered him with another low groan.
Jane swept the light over the beam, her assessment fast and precise.
“You’re pinned,” she said. “But not crushed.”
Tasha crouched on his other side, breathing hard now, eyes already scanning past him, over the debris field that sloped away behind the beam.
“…anyone else make it down here?” Cross asked, voice rougher now.
Her chest tightened.
“Mick,” she said. “Did you see Mick?”
Cross’s expression shifted.
“He was right behind me,” he said. “When it went. I heard him…” He broke off, swallowed. “He went down hard.”
Tasha didn’t wait.
She moved past the beam, ignoring the sharp protest from her ribs, dropping to her knees where the debris thickened.
“Jane,” she said. “Here.”
They worked together without talking, hands clearing broken ceiling tile, chunks of concrete, a bent strip of metal that shrieked softly as it shifted. The debris gave reluctantly, settling and sliding in small, dangerous movements that made the building complain again.
A sleeve emerged first, dark fabric caked in dust.
Then a hand.
Still.
For one terrible, hopeful second, Tasha’s brain refused to go any further. She pressed her fingers to Mick’s wrist even before the rest of him was clear, searching desperately for something she could hold onto.
Nothing.
“No,” she said under her breath. “No, hang on.”
Jane was there instantly, light steady as they cleared the last of the debris from his upper body. Mick lay at an angle that made Tasha’s stomach drop, his weight pinned in a way that explained everything her hands didn’t want to accept.
Jane found his neck.
She checked once.
Then again.
The silence stretched.
Jane shook her head.
The sound that left Tasha wasn’t a word. It tore out of her, sharp and broken, scraping its way up from somewhere deep in her chest as the truth finally landed.
She leaned forward, one hand braced hard against the concrete, the other still wrapped around Mick’s wrist like if she held on tight enough she could change what Jane had just told her.
“No,” she said. “No, that’s not…”
She pressed her palm flat against his chest, harder than she meant to.
“Mick,” she said, voice cracking. “Come on. You don’t get to do this.”
Nothing moved beneath her hand.
Jane stayed close, quiet and steady, her presence unyielding.
Tasha bowed over him, forehead hovering just above his shoulder. Her breath came fast and uneven, each inhale scraping against ribs that burned with protest.
“You came because you thought I called,” she said. “You came because of me. Dammit, Mick. Why did you come?”
The building answered with a long, strained groan. Dust shook loose, falling heavier now.
“Tasha,” Jane said quietly.
She didn’t look up.
“You can’t leave him here,” Tasha snapped. “You don’t leave him like this. He’s my partner.”
Another vibration rolled through the floor, stronger this time.
Cross sucked in a breath behind them.
“This place is coming apart.”
“You’re pinned,” Tasha shot back. “You don’t get to tell me to leave.”
“No,” Cross said, forcing the words through clenched teeth. “But I get to tell you you’re not helping.”
Jane gestured upward.
“If we keep digging, we shift the load,” she said. “That comes down. On him. On us. On Cross.”
“So what,” Tasha said. “We just walk away?”
“No,” Jane said. “We call it in. We make sure he’s found.”
Cross fixed his gaze on her.
“Look, Zapata, you staying doesn’t change what happened,” he said. “It just makes sure someone else doesn’t walk out.”
Another crack sounded overhead, louder now.
That broke it.
Tasha leaned forward one last time, forehead pressing briefly against Mick’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
When she straightened, Weller was there, hands firm but careful as he helped her to her feet. She didn’t fight him.
Jane was already moving.
“We’ll call it in,” she said. “Explosion. Deceased. Unstable structure.” She met Tasha’s eyes. “He won’t be left.”
Sirens wailed somewhere above them, distant but real.
The building groaned again, deeper now, as if reminding them it was done waiting.
Chapter Text
Jane came up the stairs first. Her boots hit the landing and she stopped, one hand braced against the wall as the building answered her weight with a low, irritated groan. The sound rolled through the concrete like a warning it had already given too many times.
Weller followed a step behind her, slower now, eyes already tracking the ceiling, the racks, the places where stress had settled into visible fractures. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
The room was wrecked.
Not destroyed outright but pushed past the point where pretending otherwise would be useful. Racks leaned at angles they weren’t designed to hold. Ceiling tiles lay shattered across the floor, insulation spilling out in pale, fibrous clumps. A desk had collapsed entirely, its monitors spiderwebbed and dark.
The air smelled hot. Burnt metal. Dust.
Rich stood near what had once been his workstation, hands planted on his hips, staring at the debris with open offense.
“I just cleaned this,” he said.
No one answered him.
Patterson stood a few feet away from her racks, jacket streaked with grime, hair pulled back with a haste that spoke to adrenaline rather than intention. One hand rested against the edge of a table, fingers splayed as she breathed carefully through her nose, eyes scanning the damage.
Afreen hovered near her, unsure whether to step closer or give space, watching Patterson’s face more than the equipment.
Another vibration rolled through the floor, stronger than the last. Something clattered and slid across concrete.
Jane didn’t raise her voice.
“We can’t stay.”
Weller nodded immediately. “Agreed.”
Patterson didn’t argue. She didn’t even look surprised. She just swallowed once, eyes still on the racks.
“How long?” she asked.
Jane glanced toward the ceiling, listening to the way the structure answered itself.
“Minutes,” she said. “Not hours.”
That finally got Rich’s attention.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “So that’s… bad. That’s a ‘grab your stuff and run’ kind of minutes, right. Not a ‘let’s sit down and process our feelings’ minutes.”
Another groan rippled through the building, deeper now, followed by a sharp crack from somewhere overhead.
“Yes,” Jane said. “That kind.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs.
They all turned as Tasha emerged onto the landing, moving slower than she had gone down, one hand trailing the wall for balance. Dust streaked her jacket.
She took in the room in one sweep. The damage. The people. The fact that everyone was upright.
Then she looked at Jane.
“We’re leaving,” Tasha said. Not a question.
“Yeah,” Jane said.
Tasha nodded once. No hesitation. No argument.
“Then tell me how long we have.”
Jane met her gaze.
“Not enough,” she said.
The sirens wailed again, closer now.
The building answered with another long, strained complaint, as if it had reached the end of its patience.
Tasha exhaled, sharp and controlled.
“Okay,” she said. “Then we better do this fast.”
The building creaked in response. The sound traveled sideways through the concrete, metal scraping where it shouldn’t. It was occasionally followed by a sharp tick that made everyone freeze for half a heartbeat before realizing the ceiling was still where it had been a second ago.
Patterson stood at the nearest rack longer than she meant to, hands braced on the edge, eyes tracking a hairline crack in the concrete above it as another vibration passed through. The rack shuddered under her palms, warm enough now that she pulled her hands back with a quiet hiss.
“Okay,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone else.
She shrugged out of her jacket and dropped it over the back of a chair that was missing one leg. Cables came free next, fingers working by muscle memory even as dust drifted down and caught in her hair.
Behind her, Afreen took in the mess, the unfamiliar layout, the way nothing was where it should have been anymore.
“Left or right?” she asked.
Patterson didn’t look back.
“Right. Black casings first.”
That was all it took.
Afreen grabbed tape from a half-crushed drawer and a marker from the floor, peeling grit off the cap with her thumb before labeling the first housing. Patterson slid drives toward her without looking, adjusting her pace when Afreen slowed, speeding up when she caught on.
Across the room, Rich stood in front of what had once been his desk. It looked like a crime scene and a toy store had collided. Sheetrock dust coated everything. A Nerf dart stuck out of a cracked monitor at an angle that felt accusatory.
Rich stared at it for a long moment.
Then he sighed, long and theatrical, and waded in.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay. Essentials.”
He pulled his laptop free first, brushing grit off the keyboard with the edge of his sleeve. The screen flickered when he opened it, then settled.
“Thank you,” he murmured, sliding it into his bag like it might hear him.
A notebook came next — bent, pages dog-eared and dusty. He flipped it open, scanning quickly, jaw tightening as he read, then tucked it away with deliberate care.
Something crunched under his knee.
He looked down.
A bag of gummy bears had split open, its contents scattered through dust and insulation like brightly colored evidence markers.
Rich hesitated.
Then, very carefully, he picked up what he could salvage and dumped them into a side pocket of his pack.
“For morale,” he muttered.
Along the far wall, Weller forced open the weapons cabinet. The lock snapped with a sharp crack that echoed too loudly in the ruined space. He winced, waited for the building to answer, then started pulling weapons free, laying them out on the floor.
Jane joined him without comment, kneeling beside the case. Her movements were precise but unhurried, eyes flicking up every few seconds to track the ceiling, the walls, the shifting lines of stress.
A deeper groan rolled through the structure.
Jane paused.
“We don’t have long,” she said.
That was it.
No orders followed.
The work just sped up.
Somewhere above them, footsteps thudded once, then again. Tasha was moving fast on the upper level. A moment later, something heavy hit the floor overhead, followed by a muttered curse that carried faintly through the damage.
Patterson stacked the last drive into a padded case and snapped it shut. Her hands shook when she finally stopped moving.
“Where do we land?” Jane asked, still working.
“Our place?” Weller said automatically.
Patterson snorted, sharp and humorless.
“Pass,” she said. She looked up and met Weller’s eyes. “You still have the router password taped to the bottom.”
“It’s laminated,” he said.
“I need power,” Patterson said, hoisting the case with a grunt. “Real power. Redundant. I can’t rebuild on coffee-shop Wi-Fi.”
“What about mine?” Rich offered, glancing up from his bag. “Boston loves a crisis.”
“No,” Patterson said instantly.
Rich blinked.
“Wow. That was decisive.”
“He hovers,” she added, already moving again. “And explains things I already know.”
“That tracks,” Rich conceded.
Jane looked toward Patterson. “Your place.”
Patterson hesitated.
“It’s small,” she said. “But I can work there.”
“And it’s quiet,” Jane said.
Another vibration cut through the floor, sharper this time. Dust shook loose in a thin curtain from the ceiling seam.
“Stopgap,” Jane added. “Not home.”
“Nothing is,” Tasha said, appearing at the stairwell with her bag slung over one shoulder, sweatshirt half-zipped, face set.
Sirens wailed again — closer now. Real.
Weller closed the weapons case and grabbed it. “Ready?”
“That’s everything we can take,” Jane said.
Rich slung his bag over his shoulder, gummy bears rustling.
“Worst moving day ever,” he muttered.
Patterson took one last look at what was left of her lab — the racks she’d built, the space she’d made safe.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “Let’s go.”
***
The alley looked worse than it should have.
Concrete littered the pavement in uneven arcs, chunks scattered far beyond where gravity alone should have dropped them. Dust coated the brick walls in a pale film, softening graffiti into blurred shapes. A streetlight flickered overhead, its glow stuttering, casting the debris in brief, uneven pulses.
Tasha pushed through the emergency exit first and stopped short.
“Well,” she said flatly. “That’s new.”
Sirens cut through the air from multiple directions now, overlapping and urgent. Somewhere nearby, someone was shouting into a phone. A car horn blared and didn’t stop.
Jane stepped out behind her and took in the alley in one slow sweep. “Vehicles?”
Weller was already moving, dragging a tarp back from the SUV. Dust slid off the hood in a dirty cascade. He ran a hand along the side panel, checking instinctively, then nodded once.
“Clear.”
Tasha crossed to the Tahoe and yanked its tarp free. The truck looked exactly like it always did — battered, practical, and utterly unremarkable. She patted the hood once, like it could hear her.
“Don’t start being dramatic now,” she muttered, then climbed in and turned the key.
The engine caught immediately.
Behind her, the alley filled with motion.
Hard cases appeared from the doorway and disappeared into open trunks. Foam-lined lids snapped shut. Weapon cases were stacked and secured. Jackets and loose gear were shoved in wherever they fit.
Rich skidded to a stop at the SUV, bag slung over one shoulder, and popped the hatch. He hesitated for half a second, staring into the chaos inside the case at his feet, then reached down and rescued a crumpled bag of candy from a spill of dust and broken ceiling tile.
“Still edible,” he announced, brushing it off before tossing it into the back seat.
Patterson hovered at the Tahoe, clutching a hard case tight against her chest, eyes flicking between the building and the street beyond the mouth of the alley. Weller took the case from her carefully and settled it into the trunk, wedging it between larger equipment.
“That one stays upright,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I’ve seen you yell at a server rack.”
A deep crack rolled through the building behind them close enough to make everyone freeze. Dust puffed outward from the doorway like a breath forced out.
“That’s our window,” Jane said.
Afreen stood near the alley entrance, phone half-raised, eyes fixed on the approaching lights reflecting off nearby buildings.
“They’ll be here in under two minutes,” she said quietly.
“Then we’re done,” Jane said.
Tasha slid into the front seat of the Tahoe. She craned her head out of the open window to watch debris skitter down the outside of the building.
“Time to go,” she said.
Patterson followed her gaze and hurriedly climbed into the passenger seat.
Rich squeezed into the back seat behind her, bag thumping against his knee.
“Just so we’re clear,” he said, “this is officially my least favorite Tuesday.”
Chapter Text
The apartment door shut behind them with a sound that felt too normal for what had just happened.
The hallway outside was still, but inside, the air smelled like old coffee and laundry detergent and whatever candle Patterson had burned the last time she tried to convince herself she was a person who owned candles.
Tasha didn’t let herself stop moving. If she stopped, she’d feel everything. If she stopped, she’d see Mick again. If she stopped, her ribs would remind her they were still cracked or bruised or whatever the hell they were now, and her burns would start pulling like the skin had opinions.
So she moved.
She got them in, got the door shut, got the deadbolt turned with a sharp twist that made her shoulder sting. Then she stepped aside to make room, because there wasn’t enough room for all of them to exist without shuffling.
Patterson didn’t hesitate. She never did when her brain had something concrete to grab.
“Phones,” she said, and it came out like an order even though she wasn’t trying to sound like Weller. “On the table. All of them.”
Rich blinked at her like he’d been personally betrayed.
“Excuse me, I just survived being pancaked by the internet and you’re taking away my emotional support rectangle?”
“Rich.”
He fumbled it out of his pocket anyway, screen spiderwebbed from whatever it had slammed into at HQ. He held it up for a second like evidence.
“Look at this,” he complained. “Boston is going to say this is my fault. He’s going to say it’s because I’m reckless and I don’t take care of my possessions, and he’s going to be right, but I still don’t want to hear it.”
He dropped it on the table with a little more force than necessary.
Jane added hers without commentary. Weller followed, jaw tight, eyes scanning the apartment like he expected the ceiling to come down on principle. Afreen’s phone landed last, careful and precise, as if the table itself might be compromised.
Tasha hesitated.
Her phone hadn’t been on. It hadn’t been part of anything. It had sat in her pocket like a useless, innocent weight.
She set it down anyway.
Patterson was already moving.
She crossed to the small desk wedged against the wall, cleared the corner with two fast sweeps of her arm, and opened the drawer like she’d rehearsed it. A black pouch came out, then another. Velcro. Foil-lined. The kind of thing she had started keeping around long before anyone else thought they’d ever need it.
Faraday bags.
“Power down,” she said, and it wasn’t panic. It was procedure. “Off. Not silent. Off.”
Rich made a sound like he was about to protest on principle, then thought better of it and started stabbing at his cracked screen.
Afreen was already ahead of her, fingers moving quickly, efficient. She slid her phone into the pouch and sealed it, then reached for Patterson’s without being asked. Patterson didn’t flinch. She just let it happen, kept moving.
That was the first thing that felt familiar since the explosion.
Not the apartment. Not the table. Not the smell of detergent.
The two of them falling into motion beside each other, not looking up, not needing to.
Patterson yanked the router plug from the wall.
The little lights died instantly. The sudden silence that followed was ridiculous, like the apartment itself had stopped breathing.
“Okay,” Rich said, watching it go dark. “So now we’re just… raw-dogging reality?”
Patterson didn’t give him a glance. She went for the television next, hand firm as she pulled the power cord free. Then the smart speaker on the shelf by the couch, because yes, she owned one, because yes, she’d convinced herself it was fine because she’d “hardened it,” and she was going to spend the rest of her life regretting every moment of that arrogance.
She tossed it into a kitchen drawer like it was a grenade.
“Tash,” Weller said quietly. “Windows.”
Tasha hadn’t even noticed she was drifting that way until her hand found the curtain.
She yanked it closed.
One, two, three. Every window in the small living room. The bedroom door down the hall was already shut, but the blinds were open and she could see the faint shape of the streetlight through them. She crossed the hall and pulled those closed too, then stood there for a second with her palm still pressed against the cheap vinyl slats, breathing through pain that didn’t care about timing.
When she turned back, the apartment looked different.
Not safer. Not really.
But smaller. Darker. Sealed.
Like a place that had chosen to keep its secrets.
Patterson was crouched by the wall outlet nearest the couch, tracing the cord run with her fingers like she could hear electricity with her skin.
Afreen knelt beside her without asking. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a small tool roll, the kind that came from habit, not planning. Patterson’s eyes flicked to it for half a second, then she grabbed the screwdriver and started opening the faceplate.
Jane leaned against the counter by the kitchenette, still as a statue. Her gaze tracked the doorway, the hall, the windows, the locks. She looked like she was waiting for the next hit.
Weller hovered near the living room entrance like a sentry, one hand on his belt out of instinct, finding nothing there except fabric because they’d left half their world in two vehicles and the other half in a wrecked building.
Rich paced the small strip of floor between the couch and the table, stopping every few steps like his brain was buffering.
“I just want to point out,” he said, too loud in a space this small, “that this is the least romantic apartment invasion I have ever experienced.”
No one laughed.
His mouth tightened. He tried again, softer. “What are we doing?”
Patterson didn’t answer right away. She finished tightening the faceplate back onto the wall, then stood, wiping dust and grime onto her jeans without noticing. She looked around the room like she was seeing it for the first time as a workspace instead of a home.
“We’re making sure,” she said. “We’re making sure we’re not carrying them in with us.”
Afreen’s gaze lifted.
“Your neighbor has a baby monitor,” she said. It wasn’t a question. It was a fact she’d just remembered with quiet horror.
Patterson’s jaw tightened.
“And Mrs. DiLuca has a ring camera pointed directly at our front door.”
Tasha’s stomach dropped. She hadn’t thought about any of that. She hadn’t wanted to.
Jane finally moved. She stepped closer to the table, eyes on Patterson.
“How clean can you get it?” she asked.
Patterson exhaled slowly through her nose.
“I can’t make it invisible,” she said. “Not here. Not like this. But I can cut the easy routes. I can isolate. I can slow anything that’s passively listening.”
Weller’s eyes narrowed.
“And if it’s not passive?”
Patterson didn’t answer him at first. She looked at the closed curtains, the dead router, the pile of phones sealed in foil like they were contaminated.
Then she looked down the hall.
Her voice came out quieter.
“Then we’re still in Brooklyn,” she said. “And we’re still us.”
That landed hard.
Because it meant no amount of unplugging was going to change the fact that this place had a lease agreement and a mailbox and a delivery driver who knew which buzzer to press.
Rich shifted his weight, suddenly serious.
“So,” he said, “this is… an overnight situation.”
Patterson’s eyes flicked to him.
“This is a right-now situation,” she corrected. “We needed walls. We needed a table. We needed power that wasn’t coming from a building Echo could turn into a circuit.”
Tasha flinched at the word Echo like it had teeth.
Afreen’s mouth tightened.
“We should assume—”
“No,” Tasha cut in, and her own voice surprised her with how sharp it sounded. Everyone looked at her.
She swallowed, ribs protesting.
“No assumptions,” she said again, slower. “Just save it for later. Not tonight.”
Patterson’s gaze stayed on her a beat too long.
Then she nodded once, like she’d heard the thing underneath the words.
Jane broke the moment by leaning forward, palms flat on the edge of the table.
“Okay,” she said. “Then this is the line. We’re here. We’re breathing. We’re contained. For the moment.”
Weller’s eyes flicked to the curtained windows again.
“For the moment,” he echoed, and it sounded like a warning.
Tasha looked around the room and realized, for the first time, that there weren’t enough chairs. There weren’t enough places for everyone to sit without touching. There wasn’t enough anything.
The apartment held them anyway, packed tight with dust and exhaustion and all the things they hadn’t said yet.
Patterson straightened and wiped her hands on her jeans again.
“Okay,” she said, almost to herself. Then louder: “Okay. For now, this is clean enough.”
Her eyes met Jane’s. Met Weller’s. Flicked to Rich. To Afreen.
Then landed on Tasha, steady and intent, like she was anchoring a line in the middle of a storm.
“For now,” Patterson repeated.
And for the first time since Yonkers, the room let itself be quiet.
***
The first aid kit hit the table with a dull thud.
It wasn’t dramatic. No one announced it. Jane just reached into the cabinet above the sink, pulled it down, and set it between the phones and the Faraday bags like this was a thing that happened in apartments all the time.
Which, lately, it kind of was.
“Sit,” Jane said, not sharply, not gently. Just… factually.
Rich looked at the couch like it had personally offended him. “I don’t want to sit. Sitting implies we’re done.”
“No,” Jane said. “Sitting implies you’re bleeding.”
He glanced down at his sleeve, now stiff with something dark and flaky. “Okay, when you put it like that.”
He collapsed onto the far end of the couch with exaggerated care, legs stretched out awkwardly because there wasn’t enough room for dignity. When he leaned back, the cushions gave a sad little sigh.
“Wow,” he muttered. “This couch is aggressively judgmental.”
Weller ignored him and dropped into one of the kitchen chairs, forearms braced on his thighs. Jane crouched in front of him without asking, already peeling back the sleeve of his jacket.
“You’re concussed,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“You hit your head.”
“I always hit my head.”
Jane tilted her head, eyes narrowing just enough. “You blacked out.”
He hesitated.
“…briefly.”
She gave him a look that said they were absolutely having this conversation later and reached for gauze.
Weller caught her wrist gently before she could move on.
“Hey.”
Jane paused, just long enough to register the contact. “I’m fine.”
“You hit your head,” he said. Not accusing. Just factual.
She exhaled through her nose, annoyed more at being caught than at the check itself, and leaned back enough to let him look. He brushed dust out of her hair, fingers careful as he checked for blood she might have missed.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“Uh-huh.”
He tipped her chin slightly, met her eyes, waited for the focus to lock in properly. When it did, he nodded once.
“Later,” he said quietly.
Jane’s mouth curved, just barely.
“Later.”
Afreen hovered at the edge of the table for a moment, then moved closer to Patterson without comment. She picked up a packet of burn cream, read the label, and slid it across the table instead of handing it over. Patterson nodded once, took it, and immediately forgot to thank her.
Tasha stood near the hallway, one shoulder braced against the wall, arms folded tight across her ribs like she could hold herself together if she just applied enough pressure. Every small movement sent sparks of pain down her side. She catalogued them distantly and shoved them aside.
She was fine.
She’d been worse.
Patterson noticed anyway.
“Sit,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. Not a command. A concern.
“I’m fine,” Tasha said automatically.
Patterson turned fully this time, burn cream forgotten in her hand. She looked Tasha up and down in a way that had nothing to do with assessment and everything to do with knowing her body almost as well as her own.
“You’re shaking.”
“It’s adrenaline.”
“You were pinned.”
“So were a lot of things.”
Patterson didn’t argue. She stepped closer instead and reached out, fingers gentle as they pressed just below Tasha’s ribs.
Tasha sucked in a breath so sharp it made Rich flinch from across the room.
“Okay,” Patterson said quietly. “So not fine.”
Jane glanced over. “Ribs?”
“Bruised at least,” Patterson said. “Maybe cracked. Again.”
Tasha laughed once, short and humorless.
“I’m collecting them.”
Patterson’s mouth tightened. She shifted her grip, careful now, and guided Tasha toward the kitchen chair opposite Weller.
“Sit,” she said again.
This time, Tasha didn’t fight it.
The chair was hard and unforgiving, and lowering herself into it made her vision blur at the edges. She gripped the seat until it passed, breathing shallow, refusing to give the pain any more space than it already had.
Beside her, Jane worked methodically. Gauze. Tape. A quick check of Weller’s pupils that he tolerated with visible annoyance.
Across the room, Rich peeled his jacket off and immediately regretted it.
“Oh no. That’s… that’s not great.”
Jane didn’t look up.
“You’re fine.”
“I am bleeding through my shirt.”
“You’re alive,” Tasha pointed out as Patterson pasted a band aid over a cut over her eyebrow.
He considered that.
“Fair.”
Afreen opened another packet and slid it toward him.
“Hold this here,” she said, indicating a cut on his forearm.
He stared at her for a beat, then obeyed.
“You’re very calm. It’s suspicious.”
She glanced at him. “So are you.”
“Me?” Rich asked, feigning surprise. “I’m in shock.”
“I think we all are,” Afreen replied as she finished patching up his injuries.
Patterson finished wrapping the last of Tasha’s injuries and straightened back up. Her gaze swept the room, counting automatically.
Jane. Weller. Rich. Afreen. Tasha.
Their injuries outnumbered them but at least they were alive.
Alive.
The word sat heavy and fragile in her chest.
Jane’s voice cut through her thoughts.
“No one’s sleeping on the floor,” she said. “We’ll figure something out.”
Rich raised a finger.
“I volunteer the couch. I think I’ve already emotionally bonded with it.”
“It’s a pullout,” Patterson said.
“And uncomfortable,” Tasha added, remembering the one night a few years earlier when she’d spent the weekend at Patterson’s while the heat was out in her own building.
Weller grinned at Rich.
“You’re sharing,” Weller said.
Patterson barely noticed when Afreen stepped in front of her with a pile of gauze. She’d been watching the interaction between Weller and Rich when she noticed Tasha quietly pad off toward the bedroom without saying a word.
“Hold still,” Afreen said, already taking Patterson’s hand.
Patterson blinked.
“I’m fine.”
Afreen didn’t look up. She cleaned the scrape with quick, practiced motions, and wrapped it before Patterson could pull away. While she worked, Patterson’s eyes stayed on the doorway, half expecting Tasha to return at any moment.
“You didn’t notice this bleeding?” Afreen asked.
“I noticed,” Patterson replied automatically.
Afreen gave her a look that said she didn’t believe her, finished the wrap, and moved on without comment.
Patterson stared at the bedroom door for a few moments. She waited, counting in her head without meaning to.
When the door didn’t open again, she exhaled slowly and straightened from the counter.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, already moving.
***
Tasha didn’t mean to go to the bedroom.
She just… drifted that way. Past the couch, past the kitchen, past the low hum of voices that suddenly felt too loud. The door clicked shut behind her before she realized she’d closed it.
The bedroom was dimmer. Quieter. Familiar in the way that only came from being there every day.
She stood there for a second, hands on her hips, breathing like she’d just finished running even though she hadn’t gone anywhere.
Then she reached for the dresser.
The photo was still crooked.
She stared at it longer than she meant to — her and Patterson, caught mid-laugh, both of them leaning slightly toward each other without even realizing it. She turned it face-down, then immediately turned it back again like she couldn’t quite commit to not seeing it.
“Idiot,” she muttered, though she wasn’t sure who she meant.
She pulled an old NYPD hoodie out of the drawer instead. It was two sizes too big and soft from too many washes. She pressed it to her face without thinking and inhaled.
The sound of the door opening and the closing softly made her pause.
“Tash,” Patterson said quietly.
Tasha didn’t look at her.
“I’m fine.”
Patterson hummed, unconvinced, and moved closer anyway. She leaned back against the dresser, close enough that Tasha could feel her there without being touched.
“You’ve been ‘fine’ for like… fifteen minutes straight,” Patterson said. “I’m almost starting to believe it.”
That got a huff of a laugh out of her.
Tasha dropped onto the edge of the bed instead, elbows braced on her knees, hoodie bunched in her hands.
“He came because he thought I needed him,” she said suddenly.
Patterson didn’t interrupt.
“I didn’t,” Tasha went on. “I didn’t call. I didn’t text. I didn’t—” She stopped, shook her head. “I didn’t need him. And he came anyway.”
Her voice started speeding up, words tripping over each other now.
“And I keep thinking about Andy, which I haven’t done in years, like really thinking about him, not just… you know….brain background noise. And then Ricky. And now Mick. And it’s like…” She laughed once, sharp and humorless. “It’s like I’m cursed or something.”
Patterson slid down beside her without a word.
Tasha leaned into her immediately, shoulder pressing into Patterson’s chest like it had always belonged there.
“I keep outliving them. Everyone,” she said. “And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.”
Patterson wrapped an arm around her, warm and solid, hand rubbing slow circles against her back.
“I found you on the floor,” Tasha said, quieter now. “And my brain just—” She exhaled hard. “It didn’t even consider another option. I just thought, okay. This is it. This is how it happens. This is how I lose her. Because of course I’m going to lose you like that. That’s just how the world works, right? That’s how it happens for us. For me.”
Patterson’s hand stilled.
“I can’t do that, P, ” Tasha said. “I can’t lose you. I can’t— I don’t want a world where you’re not in it.”
She tipped her head back just enough to look at Patterson, eyes wet and earnest and terrifyingly sure.
“I don’t want anyone else,” she said. “Ever. I don’t care how dramatic that sounds.”
Patterson stared at her for a long second.
Then she smiled — soft, crooked, completely undone — and pressed her forehead to Tasha’s.
“Good,” she said, smiling faintly. “Because you’re kinda it for me, too.”
Tasha laughed, shaky and breathless, and finally let herself melt all the way into her.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They stayed like that for a moment, breathing each other in, the room holding them like it always did.
Eventually, Tasha sniffed and wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of the hoodie.
“We should probably go back out there,” she said. “Before Rich decides to reorganize my entire kitchen.”
Patterson snorted. “Too late. He’s absolutely touching things.”
Tasha leaned in and kissed her — slow, grounding, familiar.
Then she rested her forehead against Patterson’s one last time.
“I love you,” she said.
“I know,” Patterson replied easily. “I love you more.”
Chapter Text
Cables ran over nearly every available and unavailable surface – floor included. Patterson had tried to secure them out of the way, but Jane had tripped twice already, and Rich refused to leave the safety of his couch cushions. Hard cases took over the narrow strip of floor between the couch and the wall, their edges jutting out at angles that made navigating the room a careful, sideways exercise. At some point, Weller had shoved a bookcase out of the way in an effort to make more space, but he’d only succeeded in toppling a collection of figurines and comic books, receiving a dirty look from Patterson from across the room. The dining table was half-buried under laptops, drives, and power strips, chairs shoved back until they hit the wall or each other.
Patterson stood at the kitchen counter, watching the power monitor on her tablet with a faint crease between her brows. The numbers weren’t alarming — not yet — but they weren’t comfortable either. She shifted one device to battery without saying anything, then another.
Across the room, Rich crouched near his salvaged gear, reorganizing for the third time. He stopped, looked at the pile, then looked at the remaining floor space.
“…We’re officially at the ‘this violates several fire codes’ stage,” he said.
Jane glanced around. Her shoulder brushed the back of the couch when she turned, closer than it should have been, and when she turned back again, she had to grab a nearby table lamp to keep it from toppling over.
“This place was not designed for six adults and a mobile command center,” she said.
“It’s barely big enough for the two of them,” Rich muttered. “How did you and Agent Grumpy over there manage to merge two full apartments into one? And why did you think it was a good idea?”
Afreen huffed a small laugh from where she was carefully labeling a recovered drive. They’d all been thinking it, but no one had wanted to be the first to say it. Somehow Tasha and Patterson hadn’t downsized anything when they’d made the decision to move in together, and the apartment was overfilled with mismatched furniture.
Tasha moved through the space on instinct, adjusting without pausing — nudging a case back with her foot, shifting a chair so someone could pass, closing a cabinet door that kept getting caught on a cable. She checked the front door lock again, then the chain, then stopped herself and stepped back before winding her way through the maze leading to the kitchen.
Weller opened the refrigerator and stared into it for a second longer than necessary.
“…Okay,” he said finally. “So this is a problem.”
Tasha leaned against the counter beside him and looked in too. A half carton of eggs. A questionable container of leftovers. Condiments. Nothing that resembled feeding an entire team.
“No one was supposed to be here tonight,” Patterson said, not defensively. Just factually.
“That’s becoming a theme,” Rich muttered. “So, just to confirm, dinner is… vibes?”
Weller huffed a quiet laugh.
“We’ve got protein bars.”
“Do we?” Rich asked, skeptical, “Or do we have one protein bar that’s been living in the bottom of someone’s go bag since Yonkers?”
Afreen checked the counter, then the cabinets. She opened one, then another, then closed them again with a soft click.
“There is cereal,” she said. “But no milk.”
“Tasha has almond milk,” Patterson said automatically.
Afreen glanced at the carton.
“Expired last week.”
Tasha pushed off the counter.
“I’ll go,” she said decisively. “There’s dozens of takeout places and bodegas around here. I’ll just run out and grab some stuff.”
Patterson’s head came up immediately. Not sharp. Just fast.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know,” Tasha said. She was already reaching for her jacket. “It’s no big deal. I’ll grab some supplies and—”
“Food!” Rich interjected.
“Yeah, dinner, and be back,” Tasha finished. She leaned in and kissed Patterson on the cheek. “I’ll be quick. Promise.”
Jane studied her for a second, then nodded once. No argument. No warnings.
“Just be careful.”
Tasha paused at the door, hand on the lock. She looked back at Patterson, something unspoken passing between them in the small space.
“I won’t be long,” she said again, softer this time.
“I know,” Patterson replied.
Jane stared after the closed door for a moment before she turned back to face Patterson.
“She okay?”
Patterson’s mouth twitched, just barely.
“She will be,” she said. Then, after a beat, “She’s been carrying a lot. You know Tasha.”
Jane gave a single nod and then turned back to the mess of cables that had somehow trapped her in a corner of the room.
Weller leaned near the window, arms folded. He’d pushed aside a curtain slightly and watched as Tasha made her way quickly down the block. After a beat, he shifted and let the curtain fall back into place.
“Devlin,” he said. “The call. He said Tasha called him.”
Patterson’s hands paused, fingers still resting on the black plastic casing of an external drive.
“She didn’t. Her phone has been off since…” she trailed off, not quite sure she knew what to say. “It’s been off.”
“You sure?” Weller pressed.
“It was off,” Patterson repeated. “I believe Tasha. She wouldn’t have called him.”
Rich flopped backward onto the couch again, foot kicking the bag he’d been rummaging through.
“Well, if whatshername didn’t call him and you didn’t call him, and I know I, I didn’t call him, who did? Because he seemed pretty sure that Tasha had called him.”
“Echo,” Afreen said. She let the word hang for a moment before continuing. “We know Echo can mimic and spoof call data. We’ve seen it. It’s in Patterson’s notes from months ago—”
Patterson snapped her head around to face Afreen.
“You read my notes?”
Afreen colored slightly.
“They were on your desk when I was looking at the local data,” she explained quickly. “I’m just saying, I think we need to consider that Echo called him, pretending to be Tasha.”
Jane considered this for a moment.
“Which means someone wanted him there.”
Weller exhaled slowly.
“So this wasn’t escalation.”
“No,” Patterson said. “It was execution.”
That room went silent and the sound of keys turning in the lock was louder than anyone expected.
Tasha came in with grocery bags hanging from both hands and a paper sack tucked under her arm.
“Good news,” she said. “No one followed me. Bad news, half the block is out of power so the Thai place we like was closed, so you’re all eating like raccoons.”
Rich brightened instantly.
“Do the raccoons get carbs?”
“Yes,” Tasha said. “And cheese.”
The food bought them maybe ten minutes of grace before reality began settling back in.
While they ate, the coffee table was shoved to the far end of the room, and an end table was relocated into the bedroom. Afreen attempted clear a corner of the living room to lay out blankets, folding them in half, then thirds, then giving up and letting them spill where they landed. Couch cushions were rearranged, then rearranged again when it became clear they didn’t actually help. A dining chair got dragged closer to an outlet so a charger could reach, legs scraping softly against the floor.
Patterson watched the power strip first, then the wall socket above it. She unplugged one device without comment and shifted another to battery. The lights dimmed for half a second anyway.
“That’s… not great,” Rich said, following her gaze.
“It’s fine,” she said automatically, then corrected herself. “It’s manageable. For now.”
Jane leaned against the counter, arms crossed.
“How long is for now?”
Patterson didn’t answer right away. She opened a closet, pulled out an extra blanket, then paused when she saw what was already in there: stacked bins, labeled cables, a portable battery she’d forgotten she owned because it had been years since she’d needed it.
“This isn’t sustainable,” she said finally. “Not with all of us. Not with the gear.”
Weller nodded once as he took a large bit of jerky.
“We knew that.”
Tasha shifted beside her, shoulder brushing Patterson’s.
“It’s okay for tonight, P. It’s just a stopgap.”
“I know.” Patterson glanced at her, brief and fond. “I just need everyone else to know that like I wasn’t planning to host some insane sleepover. We can stay here. That’s not a problem for me but… we might need a better plan.”
Across the room, Rich had claimed a patch of floor and was spreading out chargers and adapters like offerings.
“For the record,” he said, “I am extremely grateful to be indoors and alive. But if anyone suggests we do this for more than a night, I will fake my own kidnapping.”
Afreen smiled faintly at that, then sobered. She sat on the arm of the couch, knees tucked in, watching the way people moved around one another.
The truth of it settled in layers. Too many people. Too much noise. Too much draw. Neighbors upstairs. Neighbors next door. Lives brushing too close to theirs.
“We can’t stay here,” Jane said finally.
Patterson didn’t look up from where she was seated on the floor, back against the couch, laptop balanced on her knees. “Power alone is going to be a problem,” she said. “I can throttle things, but that only buys us time. And neighbors notice when breakers keep tripping.”
“And storage,” Rich added, gesturing vaguely at the growing pile of cases. “Unless the plan is to turn your bedroom into a very sad, very illegal RadioShack. And hey, how come we haven’t voted on who gets the bed?”
Tasha threw a throw pillow at his head in response.
Weller leaned back against the wall, arms crossed.
“We’ve got options.”
“Do we?” Rich asked. He didn’t sound flippant. Just tired. “Because it feels like we keep picking places that eventually explode.”
“That’s not fair,” Tasha said, though there wasn’t much heat in it.
“It’s a little fair,” Rich replied. “Statistically.”
Jane inhaled slowly through her nose. Exhaled. Her jaw tightened in a way that had nothing to do with logistics.
“There are places we could rent,” she said. “Industrial spaces. Warehouses. Something like Yonkers.”
“And get noticed,” Weller said quietly.
Jane nodded once.
“Yeah.”
“Motel rooms?” Rich offered. “Very noir. Very bad for morale.”
Patterson shook her head immediately.
“I can’t work like that,” she said. “Not with what we’re dealing with now. The power and internet alone is an obstacle.”
The room stalled again, ideas circling but never quite landing.
Jane pushed off the counter.
“I didn’t want to bring this up,” she said.
She took a step toward the window, stopped short of it, then turned back, hands flexing once at her sides like she was grounding herself.
“When Sandstorm… fell,” she said carefully, “the government catalogued everything they could find. Safe houses. Bunkers. Facilities.”
No one interrupted her. No one needed clarification. They remembered. Vividly.
“Dozens of them were raided. Stripped. Shut down.” She paused. “But not all of them.”
“What do you mean?” Tasha asked, furrowing her brow. “I thought…”
Jane sighed and dropped onto the arm of the couch.
“Yeah, well, there are one or two I don’t think anyone ever located. Shepherd didn’t put them on the maps. I remember them from… before,” Jane continued. Her voice was steady, but quieter now. “I don’t know what condition they’re in. I don’t know what’s left.”
She hesitated.
“But if Shepherd built them…” She trailed off, then finished anyway. “…they were stocked for a war.”
Patterson’s gaze sharpened, already running the math. Power. Redundancy. Shielding. Space. If it was really a Sandstorm hideout or bunker, there would be generators and solar panels, network hardening, and probably dozens of countermeasures against attacks.
Rich let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh in another life.
“Of course the answer is secret apocalypse bunkers,” he said. “I’m in.”
Tasha stayed where she was, eyes on Jane, reading everything she wasn’t saying. The part where this wasn’t just history. Where it wasn’t neutral.
“You don’t like this option,” Tasha said quietly.
Jane met her eyes.
“I… I just don’t know what to expect if we go there,” she said. “It’s been abandoned for years. I don’t think the government ever found it, but that doesn’t mean other people haven’t found it.”
“But it works,” Tasha said.
Jane didn’t answer right away. When she did, it wasn’t defensive.
“It could. I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not suggesting we go. I’m just saying it exists.”
Weller shifted slightly.
“So if we go there, we go carefully and with a back up plan,” he said.
Patterson huffed a frustrated sigh.
“Do we really have a back up plan or is relocating to an old Sandstorm bunker the back up plan?” she asked.
No one spoke for a minute. There was no back up plan. They’d run out of contingencies, and everyone knew it.
Rich sat cross-legged on the floor near one of the open cases, sorting cables he’d already sorted once. He cleared his throat slightly.
“So,” he said lightly, not looking up, “just to put this out there… I do technically still exist in the civilian world.”
Jane glanced over.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Rich said, holding up his phone, “there is at least one person who will absolutely notice if I vanish for… an undefined amount of time. And he is not subtle.”
Jane nodded once. “Okay...?”
“I’m just saying that Boston knows… some stuff. I may or may not have — with good intentions — told him a little bit about what we’ve been doing at our little shop of horrors in Yonkers. If I just run off to some former secret paramilitary clubhouse, he’s gonna have questions.”
That caught Patterson’s attention. She frowned.
“No way, dude. No. Absolutely no. You are not bringing Boston with us,” she said sharply, falling silent only when Tasha’s hand landed gently on her shoulder.
Rich shrugged and held his hands out in surrender.
“I’m just saying I happen to know a guy who’s a world class hacker and he also just so happens to have a big mouth,” he said. “I can’t control what he will or won’t do if Rich doesn’t come home soon.”
Afreen shifted nervously.
“I… I have a job,” she said. “If I just stop showing up, someone is going to ask questions.”
“Have they already?” Weller asked.
“Not yet,” Afreen said. “I don’t think so, anyway. But they will. And Echo is using Bureau servers.”
Silence spun out until Patterson finally closed her laptop and set it aside.
“There’s something we haven’t said yet,” she said. “Mick didn’t get unlucky. Neither did Cross.”
Jane’s brow furrowed.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Patterson said, choosing her words with care, “Echo didn’t just react tonight. It orchestrated.”
Afreen’s gaze sharpened.
“You mean the call.”
“Yeah,” Patterson said. “The timing. The specificity. Tasha’s number. Her voice. We know Echo spoofed it.”
She didn’t look at Tasha as she said it, which somehow made it worse and better at the same time.
“That’s not emergent behavior,” Patterson continued. “That’s targeted manipulation.”
Rich frowned.
“Someone used Grumpy McGee over there as bait?”
“I’m saying,” Patterson replied, “someone used Echo to bait him. And whoever it was has been using Echo all along to gather info about us. How we move, how we talk, how we respond. And whoever that was used it.”
The distinction landed hard.
Jane leaned forward slightly.
“You’re sure.”
Patterson nodded.
“Echo doesn’t benefit from killing Devlin. Or Cross. Or us,” she said. “At least not directly.”
“But people do,” Weller said.
“Yes,” Patterson said. “People do.”
“So this isn’t about stopping the Terminator,” Rich said slowly. “It’s about finding who’s holding the leash.”
Afreen exhaled.
“Which means this isn’t random. And it isn’t inevitable.”
“No,” Jane said. “It’s a system.”
“And systems,” Tasha said quietly, “can be broken.”
Chapter Text
He never stayed in one place long enough to get comfortable.
That was the rule. Had been for a while now.
The apartment wasn’t much — a narrow, prewar walk-up with uneven floors and a radiator that hissed like it resented being alive. The windows faced an alley that smelled faintly of garbage and rain, the kind of place people passed without looking twice. He’d chosen it for that reason alone.
Anton Devereaux set the grocery bag down on the counter and locked the door behind him. Then he locked it again. Chain. Deadbolt. A third lock he’d installed himself.
The radio was on because it always was. He kept it tuned low, just loud enough to follow without needing to focus. Local stations. Traffic updates. Weather. The kind of background noise that blended into the shape of a day instead of interrupting it.
“…responded earlier today to a partial structural collapse in Yonkers,” the reporter said. “Emergency crews remain on scene. Officials say there is no indication of—”
Anton stopped unpacking his grocery bag and listened.
“…initial reports suggest an electrical fault. The building has been evacuated. Two individuals were transported to area hospitals. One fatality has been confirmed.”
He set the carton of eggs in his hand in the refrigerator and shut the door carefully. The apartment was small. It wasn’t empty, but it was sparse in a way that suggested intention rather than neglect. The furniture was all secondhand, salvaged from dumpsters and purchased cheap from thrift shops. Nothing was mounted permanently, and there was absolutely nothing that couldn’t be left behind.
He crossed to a small table near a threadbare couch and picked up a small notebook he kept there. Once upon a time, he would have reached for his laptop or even a tablet, but now, there was nothing digital in the apartment. Even the constant radio was nothing more than a battery-operated transistor. He didn’t dare keep anything that would need to be plugged into an outlet.
He flipped to the last page he’d written on and added a line.
Yonkers — infrastructure failure (official)
He paused, then wrote beneath it:
Casualties confirmed. Response rapid.
Anton capped the pen and stood still for a moment, eyes unfocused.
Then he went to the wall.
It wasn’t a board so much as a collection. Newspaper clippings, transit notices, a printed still from a local broadcast. None of them were much of anything on their own. Together, they formed a loose map of things that hadn’t quite made sense at the time. But anyone who saw the wall probably would think he was crazy. Thankfully, no one else had ever been inside the small apartment.
He made a mental note to look for something about the failure in Yonkers the next time he went to the library. He could print the story out there and then bring it back to add to his collection. For now, he simply stared at the clippings. He didn’t connect it to anything else yet. Patterns took time. Guessing got people killed. He was done guessing.
On the table behind him sat a neat stack of identification: a driver’s license with his real name, face worn slightly older than the photo; several others he rarely touched. Employee badges. Access cards. Things that let him move through the world without being memorable.
He picked up the real ID and stared at his picture for a minute before turning it face down again and setting it back on the table. Anton Devereaux still existed here. Out there, he was someone else. Or no one at all.
The radio shifted topics. A sports update. A commercial. The day continuing.
Anton returned to the table and opened a different notebook — this one filled with dates, locations, short notes written in a tight, disciplined hand.
Some entries were crossed out.
Some had a single word written beside them.
Cleared.
Dormant.
Still active.
He scanned the list once, pausing at the last entry for just a beat. He wondered who was out there that had caught the system’s attention. For a brief moment, he felt a flicker of camaraderie and then he closed the notebook and slid it back into the drawer beneath the table, beneath a map and a folded list of payphones that still worked.
Anton went to the window and checked the street below. People moving. Traffic. Normal.
Good.
He switched off the light over the sink and left the room exactly as it had been before the news came through.
Whoever had caused what happened in Yonkers hadn’t stopped.
But they also hadn’t found him. Anton cast a sidelong glance at a worn duffle bag that sat beside the apartment’s front door. If he had to, he could be gone in a minute. He hoped he wouldn’t have to.