Chapter 25: Interception Point
The abandoned gas station hunched against the flat, pre-dawn Ohio sky, a carcass picked clean by time. The neon “OPEN” sign fizzed and popped, a dying nerve firing uselessly. Levi stood beside a skeletal pump, the cold leaching through his boots. In his hand, his phone displayed Armin’s last message: ETA 4 mins.Vehicle secured. Package intact.
“Package.” The word tasted like ash. He crushed the phone back into his pocket.
Down the road, a single set of headlights approached, too fast. It wasn’t the van. It was a boxy, white ambulance, its red and blue lights dark behind the grille. It swung off the two-lane highway, tires spitting gravel, and lurched to a halt in the derelict forecourt. The headlights pinned Levi, bleaching the color from his world.
The driver’s door opened. Armin jumped out, his face pale under the sickly neon. He gave a sharp nod. The rear doors burst open from the inside.
Eren stood in the doorway, backlit, his expression savage. Behind him, in the sterile interior glow, lay Aria.
Levi was moving before he consciously decided to, his boots eating up the cracked concrete. He hauled himself up into the ambulance. The smell hit him first: antiseptic, plastic, and underneath, the sweet, wrong scent of chemical sedation.
She was strapped to a gurney, secured with more restraints than a prisoner. Thick leather cuffs at her wrists and ankles, a strap across her chest. An IV line snaked from a bag on a stand into the back of her hand, taped down brutally. She wore a hospital gown, thin and pale blue, stark against the dark vinyl of the gurney. Her head lolled to the side, facing him.
Her eyes were open. Glassy, unfocused, pupils dilated into vast black pools that swallowed the familiar honey-brown. They stared without seeing. A thin line of drool tracked from the corner of her slack mouth onto the sheet.
“They had her loaded in a medical transport van in the sub-basement,” Eren growled, his voice trembling with barely-contained violence. He was already sawing at the ankle restraint with a tactical knife. “Said they were ‘transferring to a specialized facility.’ Two guys in fake paramedic uniforms. They’re… detained in their own van.”
Levi didn’t care about them. His entire being narrowed to the point where his calloused palm cupped her cheek. Her skin was cool, clammy.
“Aria.”
Her eyes drifted toward the sound, but they didn’t settle. They swam, lost in a thick, chemical fog. A low sound escaped her throat—not a word, but a whimper. Animal.Terrified.
“Hey,” Levi said, his voice dropping into a register he didn’t recognize, soft and fractured. “Look at me. Come on.”
Eren cut the last ankle strap with a final snick. Mikasa, who had appeared silently at the other side of the gurney, worked on the chest buckle. As the pressure released, Aria jerked. A full-body flinch, weak and uncoordinated. Her arms, now free, didn’t move to embrace him. They twitched, her fingers curling into loose, helpless claws against the sheet.
“Lee…?” The word was a sloppy exhale, more breath than voice. It cracked something open in his chest.“Yeah. It’s me.” His thumb stroked her cheekbone. “We’re getting you out of here.”
“S’dark,” she slurred, her gaze drifting past him to the ambulance ceiling. “The music’s… too loud. Turn it down.”
There was no music. Only the hum of the dying sign and the wind through the corn.
Mikasa exchanged a look with Levi over the gurney. “Dissociative effect. The propofol drip is still active.” She pointed to the IV line, where a slow, mechanical pump was still engaged. Mikasa reached over and flipped the pump’s switch off, then carefully peeled the tape from Aria’s hand. She removed the catheter with a practiced, gentle pull, pressing a gauze pad to the tiny wound. Aria didn’t seem to notice.
“We need to move her to the van,” Armin said from the doorway, his eyes scanning the empty highway. “This vehicle is too conspicuous. We have maybe a fifteen-minute window before they realize the intercept failed.”
“Can she walk?” Eren asked, stuffing the cut restraints into a medical waste bag.
In answer, Levi slid one arm under Aria’s knees, the other behind her shoulders. He lifted her. She was weightless, a bundle of sticks in cheap cotton. Her head lolled against his chest, a whimper catching in her throat at the movement. She felt like a stranger, this brittle, vacant thing.
“It’s okay,” he murmured into her hair, which smelled of hospital shampoo and sweat. “I got you.”
He carried her out of the ambulance into the cold dawn air. She squinted against the gray light, burying her face into his neck. “Cold. ‘S cold, Lee.”
“I know. Almost there.”
The van’s side door was open. Jean and Connie were inside, their faces grim in the ambient light. They had stripped out the middle seats and laid down a nest of blankets and sleeping bags. Levi climbed in, awkward in the confined space, and knelt to lay her down as gently as he could.
The moment her back touched the blankets, the whimpering intensified. Her hands came up, pushing weakly at his chest.“No. No, don’t… don’t put me back. Please.” Tears, sudden and copious, welled in her huge, drugged eyes and streaked down her temples into her hair. “Not the room. Not the dark room.”
“You’re not in the room,” Levi said, catching her flailing hands.They were ice-cold. “You’re in the van. You’re with me. Look at me.”
She tried. Her eyes bounced around his face, unable to anchor. The panic was a live wire in her, short-circuiting the sedation. Her breath hitched, turning into ragged, shallow gasps. “Can’t… can’t see right.Spinning. Make it stop.”
Connie, his usual humor utterly absent, handed Levi a bottle of water. Levi unscrewed it and held it to her lips. “Small sip.”
She choked, water dribbling down her chin. She coughed, a weak, pathetic sound that shook her whole frame. The coughing fit subsided into a low, continuous moan. She curled onto her side, knees to her chest, arms wrapped around herself, shaking. A scared child hiding from a monster.
Eren watched from outside the door, his jaw a hard line. “What did they give her?”
“A cocktail,” Mikasa said, climbing into the van with a small medical kit she’d taken from the ambulance. She knelt beside Aria, her movements efficient but not unkind. She pulled out a penlight and gently lifted Aria’s eyelid. The pupil reacted sluggishly. “Propofol, midazolam likely. Heavy-duty dissociatives. They weren’t taking chances on her being coherent.”
Aria flinched at the light, her moan rising in pitch. “Stop… shining… It hurts.”
“Sorry,” Mikasa whispered. She put the light away and checked Aria’s pulse at her wrist. “Heartbeat’s tachycardic. She’s fighting the drugs and the panic at the same time. She needs a safe, dark, quiet place to metabolize this. We can’t do it here.”
Armin’s voice came from the driver’s seat of the van. He’d already moved over from the ambulance. “I’ve routed us to a safe-house. An old hunting cabin Connie’s cousin uses. It’s off-grid, thirty minutes from here. No digital footprint.”
“Do it,” Levi said. He never took his eyes off Aria. He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her, then lay down on the blankets beside her, facing her curled form. He pulled her back gently against his chest, wrapping an arm around her. She stiffened for a second, then melted into the warmth with another broken whimper. The shaking didn’t stop.
The van rumbled to life. As it pulled onto the highway, Levi put his lips close to her ear, speaking in a low, steady rhythm against the jumble of her hair.
“You’re in the van. You’re safe. Jean’s driving. Connie’s up front with him. Mikasa’s right here. Eren and Armin are behind us in the Challenger. You’re with me. You’re not in the dark room. You’re in the van. We’re going to a cabin. You’re safe.”
He repeated it like a mantra. A lifeline thrown into the churning, chemical sea she was drowning in.
After miles, her trembling began to lessen, infinitesimally. Her hand, trapped between her chest and his arm, unclenched slightly. Her fingers, weak and searching, brushed against his wrist.
“Lee?” she whispered, the word slightly clearer.
“Right here.”
“I had… a dream. A bad dream.” Her speech was thick, childlike.
“It’s over now.”
“They… asked me questions. My voice… it didn’t work right.”
“That wasn’t you. That was the drugs.”
She was silent for a long moment. The van swayed. “My head is… fuzzy. Everything’s pink noise. Where’s… where’s my cup? My pink cup.”
It was such an absurd, normal, Aria question that Levi felt a physical ache in his throat.“At the shop. It’s safe. I’ll get it for you.”
“‘Kay.” She snuggled back harder against him, her breath starting to even out into something closer to sleep. “Don’t like the van blankets. They’re scratchy.”
“I know.”
“You smell like garage. And… bad guys.”
A choked sound that might have been a laugh escaped him. “Sorry.”
“‘S okay.” Her words were fading, the drugs pulling her under once more, but this time it seemed like a quieter tide. “Just… don’t let go.”
He tightened his arm around her. “Never.”
Her breathing deepened. The terrible, frantic whimpering had ceased. In its place was the soft, ragged sound of exhausted sleep. Levi kept his chin resting on the top of her head, his eyes fixed on the metal ribbing of the van’s interior, watching the gray dawn light slowly strengthen through the windows.
In the rearview mirror, Jean’s eyes met his for a fractured second. There was no relief in them. Only a shared, grim understanding.
They had her body back. But the fight for everything else was just beginning.
The van’s tires crunched over a gravel road that seemed to vanish into the wilderness. Trees closed in, skeletal branches scraping the roof. Levi kept his arms locked around Aria, feeling each tremble subside into the deeper, heavier rhythm of true sleep. The chemical stink in her hair was starting to fade, replaced by the familiar scent of her scalp beneath, and that small detail felt like a victory.
Jean killed the engine in a small clearing before a rundown wooden cabin. Silence rushed in, profound and heavy. “Cousin’s place,” Connie whispered, as if the trees themselves might be listening. “No power. But there’s a wood stove and a well.”
Eren and Armin pulled up behind them, the Challenger’s engine dying with a final cough. Doors opened and closed with muted thuds. Levi didn’t move immediately. He waited until the others had reconnoitered the perimeter, until Mikasa gave a sharp nod from the cabin’s porch. Only then did he slowly, carefully, extricate himself from Aria’s sleeping form.
Her face scrunched in protest, a soft noise escaping her lips. “Don’t…”
“Just for a second,” he murmured, smoothing her hair back. “I’m right here.”
He slid out of the van, his muscles protesting the prolonged stillness. The cold air was a slap. Eren was already hauling supplies from the Challenger’s trunk—blankets, a medical kit, gallon jugs of water. His movements were jerky, fueled by a rage with no immediate outlet.
“Clear,” Mikasa stated, emerging from the cabin. “Dusty. But secure.”
Together, they managed to lift Aria, blanket and all, carrying her into the single main room. It was gloomy, smelling of damp wood and old ashes. A worn sofa sat before a cold iron stove. They laid her down there as gently as they could. She whimpered, curling into the cushions, but didn’t wake.
Armin was already at the small table, his laptop open, its screen casting a blue pallor on his face. “I’m into the hospital’s network again. The NICU feed is still live.” He didn’t look up, his fingers flying. “No new alerts on his monitor. Status is unchanged.”
Levi stood over the sofa, watching the shallow rise and fall of Aria’s chest. The hospital gown had ridden up, revealing the stark, white bandage that cinched her lower abdomen. It was a brutal line against her skin. He reached down and tugged the blanket over it, covering the evidence.
“We need to get her warm,” Mikasa said, kneeling to inspect the wood stove. She began laying kindling with methodical precision. “Her core temperature is too low. Shock risk.”
Eren slammed a jug of water on the table. “And then what? We hide here while they send another team? They know we have her. They’ll come.”
“Let them,” Levi said, his voice flat. He finally turned from Aria, his eyes finding the harsh light of Armin’s screen. “The lists. Did we get everything?”
“Everything from the plant,” Armin confirmed. “Client lists, delivery routes, payment records from three shell corporations. It’s a map. But it’s a big map.” He finally looked up, his blue eyes shadowed. “The audio file they made… it was a specific verification for a specific buyer. That transaction is now void. But the buyer will be notified. They will be angry.”
“Good.” Levi walked to the dusty window, looking out at the barren trees. “I want them angry. I want them to make a mistake.”
A log shifted in the stove with a soft thump. Mikasa struck a match. The dry kindling caught with a hungry crackle, orange light flaring in the dim room, chasing shadows up the log walls. The new heat began to seep into the space, carrying the scent of pine smoke.
Aria stirred on the sofa.
It wasn’t the drugged flailing from before. It was a more conscious motion, a slow uncurling. A hand came up, rubbing clumsily at her eyes. She blinked, her gaze swimming around the room, passing over the flames in the stove, over Mikasa’s crouched form, over Armin’s lit profile. It landed on Levi’s back by the window.
Her voice was a dry croak, but the words were clear. “Lee?”
He was beside her in three strides, lowering himself to the floor by the sofa. “I’m here.”
Her eyes, still too wide but finally focusing, scanned his face. She seemed to be checking each feature, reassembling him from memory. Her brow furrowed in confusion. She tried to push herself up on her elbows, a sharp gasp cutting the air. Her free hand slid down from her chest, over the blanket, patting her flat stomach through the fabric.
Her movements stilled. Her breath hitched.
She looked down at her own hand, then back up at Levi, her expression dissolving into pure, unfiltered horror. The color drained from her face.
“Where…” Her voice broke. She swallowed, tried again, the words crumbling out of her. “Where’d my tummy go?”
The room froze. Mikasa stopped feeding the fire. Armin’s typing ceased. Eren stood statue-still by the door, his anger momentarily eclipsed by a different, colder dread.
Levi didn’t look away from her. He reached out and took the hand that was pressed against her abdomen, holding it firmly between both of his. He leaned in close, so his words were for her alone, a secret in the firelight.
“You had an emergency C-section after you were shot.” His voice was a low, steady whisper, barely audible over the pop of the fire. “I know you don’t remember. I was there with you the entire time.”
Her eyes searched his, desperate, disbelieving. A tremor ran through her.
He brought her captured hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles, and kept it there, his breath warm against her skin as he delivered the only truth that mattered. “He’s okay. He’s in the NICU.”
A single, ragged sob ripped from her throat. It wasn’t loud, but it filled the silent cabin. Her other hand flew to her mouth, stifling the next one. Tears welled and spilled over, tracing clean paths through the grime on her cheeks. She didn’t look at her stomach again. She stared at Levi, her whole world narrowing to his face, to the words he had just spoken.
“A baby?” she whispered, the sound shredded. “My… my baby?”
“Yeah,” he said, his own voice thick. “Your baby. Ours.”
She collapsed back onto the cushions, the fight bleeding out of her, replaced by a tidal wave of shock and delayed, horrific understanding. The tears came silently now, a steady stream. She turned her face into the rough fabric of the sofa, her shoulders shaking.
Levi just held her hand, anchoring her. He didn’t tell her it would be alright. He didn’t offer empty platitudes. He just stayed there, on his knees on the cold floor, a fixed point in her crumbling world.
After a long while, her crying softened to hiccups. She turned her head back, her face blotchy and exhausted. “They took him,” she stated, not asked. The fog was clearing, burned away by a new, lucid fury.
“No,” Levi said. “He’s safe. In the hospital. He’s fighting, just like you.”
She absorbed this, her mind visibly working, piecing together the nightmare. Her gaze drifted to the others—Mikasa, Armin, Eren. A flicker of recognition, of profound relief, then back to grim calculation. “The voice… the questions. They wanted me to say yes so they could take him, too.”
“Yes.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. The fear was still there, swimming in her eyes, but it was now ringed with a hard, sharp edge. “Okay.” She wiped her cheeks with the heel of her free hand. “Okay. What’s the plan?”
From the table, Armin cleared his throat. “The plan… just changed.” He turned his laptop screen toward them. On it was a live video feed, grainy but unmistakable. A NICU incubator, wires, a tiny form. And standing next to it, his back to the camera, was a man in a dark suit. He was speaking to a nurse in scrubs, pointing at the infant.
The nurse was nodding.
“He’s there,” Armin said, his voice tight. “The buyer is at the hospital. Right now.”
The image on the screen wasn’t just a threat. It was a countdown. The man in the suit leaned over the incubator, a vulture in tailored wool. Aria made a sound, a punched-out gasp that had nothing to do with physical pain.
Levi was already moving. He pressed the gun into her hand, folding her trembling fingers around the grip. “Safety’s on. It’s just for noise. Anyone comes through that door who isn’t us, you make a noise.”
She stared at the weapon, her brow furrowed, then back at the screen. Her jaw tightened. The drugged passivity shattered, incinerated by a maternal fury so sharp it seemed to physically straighten her spine against the pain. “Go.”
He was already at the door, snatching his jacket from the floor. Eren fell in beside him, a mirror of coiled violence.
“Mikasa, you’re on her,” Levi said, his voice clipped. “Armin, you’re our eyes. Tell Connie and Jean to ready the van. We take the Challenger. Faster.”
Armin’s gaze never left his laptop, his fingers a blur across a second keyboard. “I’m locking the hospital’s internal security system on a loop. It’ll give you a three-minute window of blind spots. You’ll have to navigate the actual halls yourselves.” He pulled an earpiece from his bag and tossed it to Levi. “Channel two. I’ll talk you through.”
Levi caught it, jamming it into his ear. The static crackle was immediate. He paused at the threshold, one last look back.
Aria was pushing herself up on the sofa, her face pale but set, the gun held awkwardly but determinably in her lap. Her eyes met his. In them was no plea, no fear. Just a hard, glittering demand.
Levi crossed the room in three strides. He knelt, ignoring the others, and cupped her face. His thumb brushed the damp track of a tear. He spoke low, fast, the words just for her.
“I’ve got to go but I’ll be back. I promise. And he’ll be safe. You sit here, you heal. Sasha is on her way with disgusting food and your pink Stanley. You can sit here and think about names for him. Okay, sweet girl?”
Aria nodded.
It was a small, sharp dip of her chin. A contract sealed. She didn’t say a word. Her hand came up and gripped his wrist, her nails biting into his skin for one fierce, silent second before letting go.
Levi stood, the ghost of her grip already cooling on his arm. He turned, and the moment of tenderness was gone, stripped away like a mask. What looked back at Eren was pure, utilitarian ferocity.
“Move.”
They were a blur of motion. Eren was already at the Challenger, firing the engine into a rumbling roar. Levi slammed into the passenger seat, the door not fully closed before Eren reversed in a spray of gravel.
The cabin vanished behind the trees. Inside, Mikasa bolted the door, her movements methodical. She turned to see Aria still upright, her spine rigid, her eyes fixed on the silent laptop screen. The gun had not wavered in her lap.
“He’ll bring him back,” Mikasa stated, her voice softer than usual.
Aria blinked once, slowly. “I know.” She finally leaned back, a wince betraying the movement. Her free hand went back to her abdomen, pressing over the bandage as if to hold herself together. “He has to.”
The Challenger ate the back roads, its speed a physical pressure. Levi’s gaze was locked on the hypnotic dashes of the center line. Armin’s voice was a calm, alien presence in his ear.
“The buyer is designated ‘Veritas’ on the internal ledger. No other ID. He’s currently arguing with the head neonatologist. The doctor is refusing discharge, citing instability. Your window is closing.”
“How many with him?” Levi asked.
“Two visible. Large. Blocking the NICU entrance. Civilian clothes, but postures are military or private security. Armed, likely concealed.”
Eren grunted, his hands tight on the wheel. “We go through them.”
“You go around them,” Armin corrected. “I’m disabling the magnetic lock on the staff elevator in the east stairwell. It opens directly into a supply corridor adjacent to the NICU. You will have approximately twelve seconds of confusion from the security loop blackout.”
“Twelve seconds,” Levi repeated, his mind mapping the hospital’s layout from memory. “Then all hell breaks loose.”
“Then all hell breaks loose,” Armin confirmed. “The van is positioned at the ambulance bay, rear doors open. Jean is ready. Connie is creating a diversion at the main lobby. A big one.”
Levi glanced at Eren. “You take point. I’ve got the package.”
Eren’s smile was all teeth, reflected in the windshield. “Just like old times.”
“Nothing like old times,” Levi muttered, checking the magazine in his pistol before re-holstering it under his jacket. This wasn’t a battlefield of titans and honor. It was a sterile hallway, a cash transaction, a child in a plastic box.
The city outskirts blurred into the grim uniformity of the hospital district. The massive complex loomed ahead, a fortress of glass and grief.
“Thirty seconds,” Armin said. “Loop is initiated. Cameras are now showing empty hallways. Go in through the lower parking entrance. Stairwell C.”
Eren swung the car into the dark maw of the parking garage, tires squealing against concrete. He didn’t bother to park, just halted at the entrance to a dimly lit stairwell. They were out, doors left open, moving up the cold, echoey stairs with a speed that spoke of a different kind of conditioning.
Levi’s lungs burned, a familiar, angry fire. Each flight was a memory of other climbs, other desperate races. Eren was a step ahead, a shadow fueled by a rage that had finally found a worthy target.
“Floor three,” Armin guided. “Door on your left. It should be unlocked… now.”
Levi hit the bar. The door clicked open onto a silent, empty hallway. The lights were too bright, the floor too clean. The smell of lemon disinfectant and despair was overwhelming. From the lobby far below, they heard the sudden, muffled crash of what sounded like a very large plant stand hitting a very expensive tile floor, followed by Connie’s voice, loud and panicked. “Oh, man! I’m so sorry! My balance, it’s a medical thing!”
“Distraction active,” Armin said, a hint of strain in his voice. “NICU guards are distracted, looking toward the comms. Go. Now. Straight ahead, left at the nurses’ station, second door.”
They moved. Not a run, but a swift, rolling walk that ate distance. A nurse looked up from a chart, her eyes widening. Levi fixed her with a flat, warning stare, and she quickly looked back down at her paperwork, pretending to be blind.
The NICU entrance was ahead. Two broad-shouldered men in dark polo shirts stood sentry, their attention tilted toward the distant ruckus in the lobby. One was speaking into a cuff mic.
Eren didn’t break stride. He veered right, directly toward a door marked ‘AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL - LINEN & SUPPLIES.’ Levi followed, his shoulder brushing the frame. Inside was a cluttered, narrow corridor of shelves stacked with boxes and folded blankets.
“Ten seconds,” Armin breathed.
At the end of the supply corridor was another door, this one with a keypad that was now dark and inert. Levi pushed it. It swung open silently.
They were in the NICU.
The world shrank to a hushed, beeping landscape. Rows of clear bassinets, tiny lives outlined in wire and tape. The air was warm, humming. To their immediate left was the isolation room. Through the glass, they saw him.
The man in the suit—Veritas—stood with his back to them. He was leaning close to the doctor, his voice a low, threatening murmur. “…liability is not my concern. The paperwork is in order. The mother consented.”
Behind him, in the incubator, was a small, purplish-red form. Wires like spider silk trailed from his limbs to silent, blinking monitors. His chest hitched with rapid, shallow breaths.
Levi’s vision tunneled. Everything else—the other babies, the beeping, the smell of antiseptic—fell away. There was only the door, the man, and the child.
Eren saw it too. His body went still, a predator locking on. Levi placed a hand on his arm, feeling the tremble of contained force beneath the skin. He shook his head once. Not here. Not in this room of glass and fragile hearts.
He pointed to Veritas, then to Eren, then jerked his thumb toward the main hallway. Eren’s eyes flashed with understanding, then a dark approval. He melted back into the supply corridor.
Levi took a deep, silent breath. He smoothed his jacket, stepped around the doorframe, and walked into the isolation room as if he belonged there.
The doctor looked up, startled. Veritas turned slowly. He was older than Levi expected, with a carefully curated look of money and patience that didn’t reach his cold, assessing eyes. Those eyes flicked over Levi, instantly dismissing the grease-stained jeans, the worn boots.
“This is a restricted area,” Veritas said, his voice smooth as oil. “You need to leave.”
Levi ignored him. He walked to the incubator and looked down. Up close, the baby was impossibly small, his skin nearly translucent. A tiny knit cap was perched on his head. He was real. He was alive. A fury, white and absolute, crystallized in Levi’s chest.
“He’s not going with you,” Levi said, his voice conversational.
Veritas smiled, a thin, unpleasant stretch of lips. “And who are you? The concerned uncle? The paperwork is legal. The mother signed the transfer.”
“The mother,” Levi said, finally turning to face him, “was pumped full of drugs and coerced. She’s also currently holding a gun. She’d like her son to stay.”
The man’s smile didn’t falter, but his eyes flickered toward the door, calculating. His hand moved slightly toward his inner jacket pocket.
From the main NICU entrance, there was a sudden, sharp shout of alarm. A crash. One of the guards’ raised voices was cut off by a wet, choking sound.
Veritas’s composure cracked for a single second. It was all Levi needed.
His hand shot out, not for the man’s gun, but for his throat. He slammed him back against the monitoring console, sending a screen swaying. The doctor gasped, scrambling backward.
“You look at me,” Levi hissed, his face inches from the man’s. The polished calm was gone, stripped bare to reveal the brutal, ancient thing beneath. “You look at this face. You remember it. You come near either of them again, and I will take apart your world bolt by bolt. I will find every single thing you care about and I will erase it.”
He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper that was more terrifying than any shout. “I don’t care about your money or your paperwork. I am not the law. I am the consequence.”
From the doorway, Eren appeared. The knuckles of his right hand were split and bleeding. He gave a sharp nod. The path was clear.
Levi released Veritas, who slumped against the console, clutching his throat, his face mottled with rage and fear.
Without another word, Levi turned. He moved to the incubator. His hands, which could dismantle an engine or break a neck, hesitated over the latches. He looked at the doctor, a silent question.
The doctor, pale and shaking, just nodded hurriedly.
Levi undid the latches. He carefully disconnected the sensor pads from the tiny chest and foot, the monitors immediately chiming a flat, urgent alarm that seemed to scream through the room. He ignored it. He reached in, sliding his hands under the tiny, wire-tangled body. He was so light, a warmth barely there.
Levi cradled him against his own chest, using his jacket to shield him from the light, the chaos. The baby made a tiny, mewling sound, a protest at the sudden movement.
“I know,” Levi murmured into the tiny knit cap. “Almost done.”
He turned and walked out, past Eren, who fell in behind him as a rear guard. They moved back through the supply corridor, the alarms wailing behind them, a chorus of outrage.
“Van. Now,” Levi said into his mic, his entire world reduced to the fragile weight in his arms.
They hit the stairwell, descending fast but carefully, Levi’s body a shield against the jolting steps. The garage door burst open. The van was idling, rear doors wide. Jean’s anxious face peered out.
Levi climbed in, never jostling the bundle. Eren piled in after, pulling the doors shut.
“Go!” Eren yelled.
The van peeled out. In the sudden, rocking dimness, Levi looked down. The baby’s face was scrunched, his mouth working silently. One impossibly small hand, free of its wires, waved in the air.
Levi caught it. His finger was engulfed by the tiny, perfect grip.
He held his son all the way back to the cabin in the silent woods.