Chapter 24: The Scent of a Mate
The crack of Aris’s jaw was a sickening, percussive sound that seemed to silence the very hum of the machinery. The man folded, crumpling to the stained concrete without a cry. Rowan didn’t watch him fall. His eyes were already on Lily.
She hadn’t moved. Her eyes were wide, glassy, fixed on a point somewhere beyond the physical world. The whine had died in her throat. She was gone, floating in that numb gray space.
“Lily.” His voice was a low, graveled command, stripped of its usual abrasion. He didn’t touch her face, not yet. He closed the distance and his arm went around her shoulders, hauling her against the solid wall of his chest. She was cold. Limp. “Look at me. Right the fuck now.”
His growl vibrated through her, a tangible frequency meant to reach her where words couldn’t. He gave her a slight, deliberate shake, his other hand coming up to cup the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair. “Come back. You’re with me. I’ve got you.”
Her breath hitched. A blink. The gray receded at the edges, pushed back by the overwhelming sensory input of him: the hard press of his tactical vest against her cheek, the heat radiating through his shirt, the faint, almost imaginary hint of pine breaking through the chemical haze—not a scent, but a memory of one, pulled from the depths of her recognition.
A shudder ran through her, violent and whole-body. She gasped, the sound ragged and real.
“That’s it,” he muttered, his lips against her hair. He scanned the room, his eyes sharp, predatory, checking the shadows. “Kael. Door.”
“On it, boss.” Kael materialized from the hallway, sliding past the shattered doorway with his rifle raised. He glanced at the unconscious form of Aris, his mouth a flat line. “He breathing?”
“Unfortunately,” Rowan said, the word dripping with venom. He kept Lily anchored to his side. “Sloane?”
“Rear cleared.” Sloane entered from the other side, her movements efficient, her gaze sweeping the lab’s grotesque details without a flinch. Her eyes landed on Lily, and a flicker of relief passed through her stoic expression. “Neutralizer’s still pumping. Comms are sketchy but we have a green light on Eva’s beacon. She’s clear.”
Lily’s fingers twitched, then clawed into the fabric of Rowan’s shirt. A anchor point. She was trying to speak.
“Shhh,” Rowan said, but it wasn’t a request for silence. It was a sound of grounding. “Just breathe. In and out. Match me.” He took an exaggerated, deep breath, his chest expanding against her, and let it out slowly. She mimicked it, the air catching on a sob.
“He… he knew my name,” she whispered, the words fractured.
“He knows nothing,” Rowan corrected, his voice absolute. “He’s a ghost now. Less than.” He looked over her head at his team. “Exfil route?”
Kael was already at a terminal, splicing wires. “Original path is hot. They’re scrambling all to the server wing. But the old boiler conduit—the one from the initial schematics. It’s a straight shot up to the north loading dock. Tight fit.”
“How tight?” Sloane asked, replacing a magazine.
“You’ll hate it. I’ll hate it. Rowan will definitely fucking hate it.”
“Do it,” Rowan said. He shifted, easing Lily back just enough to look into her eyes. The glassiness was gone, replaced by a storm of terror and dawning awareness. “Can you run?”
She nodded, a quick, jerky movement.
“Good.” He stripped off his armored vest in one fluid motion. “Put this on.”
“Rowan, you can’t—” Sloane started.
“I’m harder to kill than I look,” he cut her off, helping Lily thread her trembling arms through the heavy vest. It swamped her, the weight seeming to press her back into her own body. He tightened the straps with swift, practiced tugs. “The conduit. Is it clear?”
“Scans show minimal life signs. Mostly rats. And water. Lots of stagnant water,” Kael said, pulling his leads from the terminal. “It’s a sewer pipe, boss. A big one.”
“Fantastic.” Rowan took Lily’s hand, his grip engulfing hers, warm and unyielding. “We move. Fast and quiet. Sloane, point. Kael, rear. Any hostiles, you drop them. No calls for surrender. They made their choice when they turned the air to poison.”
He didn’t look back at Aris. The man was already part of the rot of this place. But as they moved toward a rusted, low archway Kael had pried open, Lily glanced back.
Aris’s hand was moving, creeping toward the tablet that had skittered across the floor.
She froze, a new ice flooding her veins. “Rowan.”
He followed her gaze. In a single motion, he raised his sidearm and fired twice. The first shot obliterated the tablet in a spark of plastic and circuitry. The second slammed into Aris’s reaching hand. A wet, crunching sound echoed, followed by a first, choked scream of pain.
Rowan didn’t holster the gun. He kept it aimed, his expression carved from stone. “The next one’s between your eyes, Doctor. You so much as twitch, and I donate your skull to science. Understood?”
The only answer was a pained whimper.
Rowan nodded, satisfied. He turned Lily gently away from the sight. “Conduit. Now.”
The archway led to a brick tunnel that sloped sharply downward. The smell hit them instantly—damp decay, mildew, and the thick, organic scent of stagnation. Water dripped from a cracked pipe overhead, landing in black, shallow pools that glittered in the beams of their lights. The ceiling was a tangle of corroded pipes and ancient wiring.
Sloane led, her light cutting a path. “Mind your step. Floor’s crumbling.”
They moved in a single-file nightmare. The vest weighed Lily down, but its pressure was a comfort. Rowan’s hand was on her back, a constant guide. The sounds of pursuit from the lab faded, swallowed by the dense silence of the conduit and the squelch of their boots in the muck.
“So, the good news,” Kael whispered from behind, his voice echoing slightly. “The neutralizer thins out down here. Bad news is, now we can smell this place.”
“Quiet,” Rowan grumbled, but there was no real heat in it. He was listening, his head tilted, every sense straining against the gloom.
They navigated a sharp turn. Sloane held up a clenched fist. They stopped. A distant, metallic clanging echoed from somewhere far ahead, followed by the murmur of voices. Not in the conduit, but near it.
“Maintenance access junction,” Sloane breathed. “Probably a patrol checking the perimeter seals.”
Rowan’s jaw tightened. The junction was their only way up. He looked at the murky water flowing sluggishly at their feet, then at a grated overflow channel to the left. It was smaller, utterly dark.
“New plan,” he said, his voice barely audible. He pointed to the channel. “In there. It’ll bypass the junction. Kael, how far to the dock from there?”
Kael consulted his wrist-mounted scanner, its glow painting his face an eerie green. “Thirty meters of sheer fucking awful, then a vertical climb of about five. Grate at the top.”
Lily stared into the black maw of the overflow channel. It was barely wider than her shoulders. The water flowing into it looked viscous, opaque.
Rowan saw her hesitation. He moved in front of her, blocking her view of the junction ahead, filling her vision with only him. “Listen to me. It’s thirty meters. Less than ten seconds of crawling for me. Fifteen for you. I’ll be right behind you. There is nothing in that pipe but water and fear, and fear is just a feeling. It can’t stop you. You understand?”
She nodded, swallowing hard.
“Sloane. Go. Get the grate ready. Kael, after her. Then Lily. Move.”
Sloane didn’t hesitate. She dropped to her hands and knees and slid into the channel with a soft splash, disappearing into the darkness. Kael followed with a grimace and a muttered, “I did not sign up for spelunking in shit creek.”
Lily took a deep breath of the foul air and got down. The water was icy, soaking through her pants instantly. The vest scraped the top of the conduit. She looked back once, and Rowan’s eyes were there, a steady, burning amber in the beam of her light.
“Go, Lily. Now.”
She went. The world became a tight, crushing tube of brick, freezing water, and echoing, ragged breaths. Her light bounced ahead, showing only a few feet of swirling, filthy stream. She could hear Sloane ahead, the splash of her movement, and Kael’s grumbling behind her. Then the heavier, steady splash of Rowan entering the pipe, blocking the way back entirely.
There was only forward. The walls pressed in. Her lungs tightened. The memory of the lab, of straps and cold tables, threatened to surface. She focused on the rhythm of her own movement. Hand, knee, pull. Hand, knee, pull.
Ahead, Sloane’s voice echoed, hollow and hopeful. “Grate. I see it. It’s rusty as hell.”
“Great,” Kael gasped. “My favorite kind.”
Lily crawled, her muscles screaming. The light from the end of the pipe grew, a dull gray rectangle. She emerged into a slightly larger cylindrical chamber, where Sloane and Kael were already standing in waist-deep water, looking up at a circular, heavy-looking grate. Faint, fresh air seeped through its holes. The sound of rain pattered above.
Rowan hauled himself out behind her, rising to his full height, water streaming from him. He didn’t pause. “Boost Sloane. Then you get Lily. I’ll take rear.”
Kael linked his hands. Sloane stepped into them, was propelled upward, and grabbed the grate. Her grunt of effort filled the chamber. Rust flaked down like brown snow. With a sharp, metallic screech, the grate gave way. Cool, rainy night air flooded in, sweet and shocking.
“Clear!” Sloane hissed, and vanished through the opening.
Kael turned to Lily. “Your turn, kid.”
Rowan moved in. “I’ve got her.” He didn’t ask. He simply bent, wrapped his hands around her waist under the heavy vest, and lifted her as if she weighed nothing. “Grab the edge. Pull.”
She reached up, her fingers finding cold, wet concrete. She pulled, he pushed, and she was scrambling up and out into a deluge of rain and freedom. She rolled onto slick asphalt, the vest clanking, and sucked in a ragged gulp of clean, wet air.
Kael came up next, then Rowan, who immediately pulled the broken grate mostly back into place.
They were in a shadowed loading bay, surrounded by dumpsters and derelict machinery. The rain was a curtain, isolating them. Across the bay, hidden behind a rusted container, the faint outline of their extraction van was visible, its engine off, lights dark.
Sloane was already at the container, gesturing the all-clear.
Rowan pulled Lily to her feet, his hand not leaving her arm. They were almost there. Twenty yards of open, rain-swept asphalt.
He met her eyes, gave a single, hard nod.
And a spotlight, blindingly white, ignited from the factory roof above, pinning them to the ground like insects.
A voice, amplified and distorted by a loudspeaker, crackled through the drumming rain. “Remain where you are. Place your weapons on the ground.”
From the shadows around the van, black-clad figures emerged, rifles raised. Not their team. More of them. A lot more.
Rowan stepped in front of Lily, pushing her back toward the open conduit behind them, his body a shield between her and the blinding light. His face, washed in the harsh glare, showed no fear. Only a cold, furious calculation.
“Well,” he said, his voice a low growl meant only for her. “This just got interesting.”