Chapter 58: Jailbreak
The infection wasn’t a fever. It was a tenant. It moved into his side, paying rent in pulses of heat that radiated outwards, turning his skin taut and slick. By the second day after the shower beating, the world had taken on a fuzzy, liquid quality. Sounds from the corridor echoed as if heard through water. The throbbing in his leg and arm became a distant, rhythmic ache, a baseline beneath the sharper, more insistent fire consuming his torso.
Standing was a debate he kept losing. The one time he made it to the toilet, the room tilted on its axis, the concrete floor rushing up to meet him. He cracked his chin on the rim on the way down. The new pain was almost refreshing in its clarity. He lay there for a long time, the chill of the floor a counterpoint to the burn in his side, before he could crawl back to his bunk.
Meals were impossible. The walk to the hall was a continental journey he lacked the supplies for. He missed his silent arrangement with Croc. The absence felt like a failure deeper than the broken bones. He drifted, listening to the sounds of the block—the shouts, the clanging doors, the constant, low hum of misery. He dreamt of the clocktower, of Roman’s hands, cold and sure, on his burning skin. The memory was a sanctuary and a torture.
He was floating in that grey, pain-soaked haze when the world broke apart.
It wasn’t a sound so much as a fundamental shift in pressure. A whump that he felt in his teeth and in the weeping wound at his side, followed a half-second later by a roar that swallowed every other noise in existence. The concrete walls of his cell vibrated. Dust and chips of paint rained from the ceiling. The light flickered, died, then came back on as a dim, emergency red.
Sirens began, not the regular alert, but a panicked, screaming wail that climbed and fell.
Another whump, this one from a different direction. Closer. The red light shook. From the corridor, chaos erupted—running boots, shouts choked with alarm, the metallic shriek of security doors slamming down out of sequence.
Reese turned his head on the thin pillow. The ceiling swam. He knew, intellectually, that this was big. This was an event. But the heat in his body had melted the connection between knowing and caring. This was a problem for people who could stand up. He closed his eyes. Maybe the roof would cave in. It would be quicker.
He heard his cell door shudder. Not the normal electronic buzz, but the violent, mechanical clank of a manual override. It slid open with a grinding shriek.
Figures blurred in the red-lit doorway. Not guard shapes. Dark, agile, purposefully hunched. One surged in. Hands grabbed him.
“Time to go, handsome.”
The voice was familiar. Jelks. The world tilted violently as he was hauled upright. A white-hot lance of agony shot from his side through his entire nervous system. He cried out, a raw, animal sound he didn’t recognize as his own.
“Easy, easy. He’s boiling up,” Jelks grunted, supporting most of his dead weight.
Another figure appeared at his other side, smaller, efficient. The chemist. She slapped a pre-loaded injector against his neck. A cold flood spread through his veins, blunt and merciful. The sharpest edges of the pain receded, leaving the heavy, overwhelming bulk of it. He could think in sludgy, slow-moving thoughts.
“Roman…” he mumbled.
“No shit,” Jelks said, dragging him into the corridor. It was a scene from a hellish painting. The red strobe light cut through smoke. An alarm blared a continuous, mindless tone. Guards were running, but not towards them—towards the distant, raging sound of what could only be a riot. Through a shattered security gate at the end of the hall, he could see flames licking the walls of a connecting block.
They moved. His broken leg trailed, the cast scraping the floor. Every jostle was a fresh insult. They passed an intersection. A group of inmates, freed from a compromised cell block, were swarming a lone guard. The sound was wet and final. Jelks didn’t pause, just changed his grip on Reese and moved faster, down a narrower, darker service corridor.
Reese’s head lolled. The drug made everything soft at the edges, but a single, coherent thought drilled through. The moat. The shared space. The temporary, efficient peace.
“Stop,” he slurred.
“Not a chance,” Jelks hissed, not breaking stride.
“Stop.” Reese put what little strength he had into digging his heels in. It was pathetic, but it staggered them. “That way. Cell block C. Need to…”
“Are you out of your feverish mind? We have a route. We have seconds.”
Reese looked at him. The clarity in his eyes was unnerving, born of delirium and a bizarre, steadfast logic. “Now.”
Jelks stared, then looked desperately at the chemist. She just shrugged, her eyes wide on the chaos unfolding behind them. A fresh explosion rocked the facility, farther away this time. Dust rained down.
“Goddamn it,” Jelks spat. He shoved Reese more firmly against the chemist. “Hold him. One minute. If we die, this is your fault.”
He melted down a side passage. Reese leaned into the smaller woman, his breath coming in ragged hitches. The sounds of the prison were changing. The initial explosions had given way to a deeper, more chaotic symphony—crashing metal, roaring voices that didn’t sound entirely human, and the sporadic, flat cracks of gunfire.
Jelks reappeared, moving backwards. He wasn’t alone. A massive shape filled the corridor behind him, moving with a surprising, predatory grace. Waylon Jones emerged into the dim light. He looked at Reese, his yellow eyes taking in the cast, the sweat-soaked uniform, the obvious, shivering wreck of him.
“Told you it was infected,” Croc rumbled.
“The drought’s over,” Reese managed, his voice a thin whisper. “Poacher’s here. River’s yours if you want it.”
Croc held his gaze for a long second. Then he gave a single, slow nod. He looked past them, down the corridor toward the heart of the chaos, toward the breached meta-wing. A roar of unadulterated fury echoed from that direction, followed by the sound of bending steel.
“Go,” Croc said. He turned and moved toward the sound, a force of nature joining the flood.
Jelks didn’t need telling twice. He grabbed Reese again and they were moving, a three-legged race through a crumbling maze. They burst through a ruined exterior door—not onto a yard, but onto a shattered stretch of perimeter wall. The cold night air hit Reese’s face like a physical slap. It was laced with smoke and the tang of explosives. The wall was gone, collapsed into a scree of rubble that sloped down to the pitch-black waters of the Gotham River.
The foundry twins were there, their forms shimmering with heat, standing sentry over a black, rigid-hulled inflatable boat. Hands grabbed him, lowered him into the bottom of the boat like a sack of meat. The engine growled to life, a deep, throaty sound. As they pulled away, Reese lifted his head.
Blackgate was a constellation of fire against the night. Two massive, smoldering breaches glowed orange. Figures, tiny and ant-like, swarmed in the courtyards and spilled out of the gaps. The sirens were being drowned out by other sounds now—triumphant shouts, bestial roars, the crump of secondary detonations. It wasn’t a prison break. It was a systemic collapse.
The boat bounced on the choppy water, sending fresh jolts of agony through him. The city lights on the far shore grew, blurring into streaks through his fever-haze. He passed out.
He came to in lurches. The vibration of a van. The smell of new leather and air freshener, grotesquely clean after the stench of infection and prison. Then being hauled out again, the cold night air replaced by the hushed, temperature-controlled silence of a vast space.
His good eye cracked open. Polished marble floor, stretching away under soft, recessed lighting. Expensive, abstract art on stark white walls. The air smelled of lemon polish and money. He was being dragged by Jelks and one of the twins, his cast scraping a faint trail on the immaculate surface.
Through double doors of dark, heavy wood. A different air here. Older. Cigar smoke, aged paper, a faint undercurrent of expensive cologne. A library. A fireplace with low-burning logs. And a desk, vast and empty, behind which Roman Sionis stood.
He was still dressed in tactical gear, black matte, a smear of soot on his cheek. He was utterly still, watching as they hauled the broken thing into the center of the room.
“Here,” Jelks grunted. They let go.
Reese hit the Persian rug with a soft thud, a gasp punched from his lungs. He lay there, his cheek against the impossibly soft wool, breathing in dust and grandeur. The firelight danced over the spines of thousand-dollar books.
He heard Roman’s footsteps, slow and deliberate, circle the desk. They stopped beside him.
For a long moment, there was only the crackle of the fire and Reese’s ragged, wet breathing.
With a shuddering effort, Reese pushed himself up onto his elbows. The room tilted, swam, then settled. He looked up, squinting through the sweat-matted strands of his blonde-black hair.
Roman looked down at him. His expression was unreadable, a mask of polished stone. But his eyes moved, tracing the map of ruin: the stained and filthy prison scrubs, the heavy cast on his arm, the other on his leg, the visible swelling and purple bruising that covered every exposed inch of skin, the way he favored his bleeding, infected side.
Reese’s lips were cracked, dry. He worked some moisture into his mouth. It tasted of blood and fever.
A slow, shaky smile spread across his face. It was a terrible smile, full of pain and a giddy, unfiltered relief.
“Hey, boss,” he whispered, his voice a ruin. “Miss me?”
The silence that followed was absolute, thicker than the smoke still clinging to Roman’s clothes.
It stretched, pulled taut by the crackle of the fireplace. Roman’s eyes didn’t leave him, drinking in every detail of the damage like a sommelier tasting a spoiled vintage. His jaw was a hard line.
“Miss you,” Roman repeated, his voice a low, controlled thing. It wasn’t a question. It was an indictment.
He took one step closer. Then another. Reese’s smile wavered, the effort to hold it becoming a physical strain. He tried to shift, to get his good leg under him, but his body was a traitorous heap of broken commands.
“I was conducting business,” Roman said, his tone conversational, deadly soft. “I had plans. Charts. Timetables.” He circled Reese slowly, a predator assessing a crippled prey. “And then I get a report. My enforcer. My tool. Caught in a two-bit dockside sweep. Processed. Caged.”
Reese managed a one-shouldered shrug, wincing at the movement. “Paperwork mix-up. Could happen to anybody.”
“It happened to you!” Roman’s voice cracked through the room like a whip, finally shedding its calm. He stopped his circling, looming directly over Reese. “You got sloppy. You got caught.” He bent at the waist, his face coming within inches of Reese’s. Reese could smell the gunpowder and night air on his skin. “And then I have to look at the intake photos. The medical reports.”
Roman’s hand shot out, not to hit, but to grab the front of the filthy prison scrubs. He didn’t pull Reese up, just held the fabric tight in his fist, twisting it. “Broken arm. Broken leg. Contusions. Lacerations.” Each word was a bullet. “And this.”
His other hand pressed, flat and hard, against the swollen, fever-hot wound on Reese’s side.
Agony, white and absolute, obliterated thought. Reese cried out, a short, sharp sound he couldn’t choke back. His vision tunneled, swimming with black spots. He instinctively grabbed at Roman’s wrist, his fingers lacking all strength.
“Infected,” Roman hissed, leaning into the pressure for a second longer before snatching his hand away as if burned. “You’re rotting from the inside out in some infirmary cot because you couldn’t stay out of a cage.”
Reese panted, sucking in ragged breaths, the room tilting. “Needed… a vacation. Health spa… wasn’t great.”
“This isn’t a joke!” Roman roared. He straightened up, dragging Reese halfway off the floor by his grip on the scrubs before letting him drop back onto the rug. Reese landed with a groan, seeing stars. “Look at you! You’re a ghost. You’re rubble. I put time into you. I polished you. And you let them break my property!”
Through the haze of pain, Reese focused on the deep burgundy of the couch a few feet away. It looked like heaven. Like salvation. He started moving, an agonizing crawl, using his one good elbow to drag his broken body across the rug. The cast on his leg scraped a pathetic sound against the wool.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Roman demanded, watching the slow, torturous progress.
“Couch looks… comfy,” Reese grunted, sweat dripping from his brow onto the rug. Every inch was a marathon. “Just gonna… crash here. Don’t mind me.”
“I mind!” Roman stalked over, his boots stopping in front of Reese’s face. “I mind the insolence. I mind the carelessness. I mind the sheer, staggering weakness on display right now!”
Reese reached the couch. He used its side to try and pull himself up. His arms trembled violently, shaking apart. He fell back to his knees with a sharp gasp.
That was it. Roman moved. He grabbed a fistful of Reese’s hair and the back of his scrubs and hauled him upright like a doll. He slammed him back against the bookcase next to the fireplace, holding him there, their faces level. Leather-bound volumes dug into Reese’s spine.
“You are not fine,” Roman snarled, his breath hot on Reese’s face. His eyes were incandescent with a fury that went beyond concern, into the territory of a profound, personal insult. “You are broken. You are bleeding out your value onto my rug. You diminished yourself. You diminished what is mine.”
Reese hung in his grip, his feet barely touching the floor. The world was a nauseating swirl of firelight and Roman’s rage. He couldn’t breathe properly. His hands came up, not to fight, but to settle on Roman’s forearms. His fingers were trembling, barely able to grip the black tactical fabric.
He waited. He let the storm of words wash over him, feeling the vibration of Roman’s anger in the arms that held him.
When Roman paused, chest heaving, Reese wet his cracked lips. He looked directly into the wildfire of Roman’s gaze, his own eyes glassy with fever but unnervingly clear.
“I’m fine,” he whispered, the words shaky but distinct. He squeezed the forearms beneath his hands, a weak, grounding pressure. “I’m here. You got me out.” A faint, battered approximation of his smile returned. “Thanks for that, by the way. The explosion was a nice touch. Really… dramatic.”
Roman’s grip on his scrubs tightened. The faux-casual gratitude was the final spark. “Dramatic,” he echoed, the word a venomous whisper. He didn’t throw Reese; he used his own weight as a pivot, spinning them both from the bookcase and shoving Reese forward into a stumbling, helpless lurch.
Reese’s broken leg buckled instantly. He collided with the doorjamb, a sharp cry tearing from his throat as the impact rattled his entire skeleton. Roman didn’t let him fall. He just caught him by the back of the neck and the waistband, his hold impersonal and rough, and propelled him out of the office and down a wide, dimly lit hallway.
“Roman, for fuck’s sake—” Reese gritted out, his toes scraping the polished floor.
“Silence.” The command left no room for argument. A door was kicked open. It wasn’t a guest room. It was Roman’s. Reese knew the scale of it, the smell of his cologne on the air. He was marched straight through the sitting area, past the undisturbed bed, and into the vast, marble-tiled bathroom. Roman released him near the glass shower enclosure.
Reese grabbed the counter, his head swimming. He looked at the pristine shower, then down at his own filth—the grime, the blood, the stench of prison and sick sweat. It was a visceral need. “Let me clean up first. Five minutes.”
“No.” Roman’s voice was flat. He pulled out a phone, thumbed a contact, and held it to his ear. His eyes never left Reese, who was trembling just to stay upright. “The east wing. Now.” He ended the call. “You don’t get to dictate the terms of your repair.”
He walked back into the bedroom, leaving Reese clinging to the sink. The fluorescents were too bright, highlighting every purple-yellow stain on his skin, every track of dirt. He heard Roman pacing outside, a relentless, predatory rhythm on the hardwood.
The doctor arrived in under ten minutes—a compact, older man with a grim, unsurprised face and a heavy leather bag. He took one look at Reese in the bathroom and shook his head. “Not in here. On the bed.”
Getting there was a fresh humiliation. Roman watched, arms crossed, as Reese hobbled and hopped the short distance before collapsing onto the duvet. The fabric was cool and impossibly soft against his grimed skin, a stark, mocking contrast.
The doctor worked with a brutal, silent efficiency. He cut away the prison scrubs with shears. The air in the room thickened with the smell of unwashed body and the sweet-rot odor of the infected wound. Roman’s pacing stopped. He stood statue-still by the window, his back to the bed, but the tension in his shoulders was a visible line.
The casts came off with a small, whirring saw. The sight of his own forearm, a collage of violent purples and swollen flesh, made Reese look away. His leg was worse. The doctor prodded the old stitches from the shiv wounds, his mouth a tight line. “Several are necrotic. Hold still.”
There was no warning, no local. The doctor simply irrigated the side wound with a cold, stinging solution, then deftly ripped out the bad stitches with a tweezers. Reese arched off the bed, a choked gasp strangled in his throat, his good hand fisting in the duvet. Tears of pure, shocked reflex blurred his vision.
He heard the rustle of paper, the snap of a fresh suture kit. The needle went in, a sharp, precise pull and tug. He focused on a crack in the ceiling plaster, counting the tugs. Seventeen. The doctor smeared ointment, taped a fresh dressing, then moved to his leg and arm, wrapping them in sleek, black polymer casts that were lighter and tighter than the prison plaster.
Finally, the doctor prepared an IV. The needle slid into the back of Reese’s good hand. A cold thread of saline and antibiotics seeped into his vein. The doctor hung the bag from a tall lamp he dragged beside the bed. “The fever should break within twelve hours if the antibiotics match the strain. No weight on the leg. No use of the arm. Rest. Hydrate. Change the dressings tomorrow.”
He packed his bag, nodded once to Roman’s back, and let himself out. The click of the door was deafening.
The silence was a living thing. Reese lay in the wreckage of himself on the expensive duvet, connected to a clear plastic bag of salvation, shivering. He listened to Roman’s breathing from across the room. It was a slow, measured tempo of barely-contained fury.
Finally, the pacing resumed. Slow, heavy steps approached the bed. The mattress dipped sharply as Roman planted a knee on the edge, leaning his weight into it. He loomed over Reese, one hand pressing into the mattress beside Reese’s injured ribs, caging him.
He didn’t shout. His voice was low, granular, each word carved from stone. “Look at me.”
Reese turned his head. Roman’s face was shadowed, his eyes black pits reflecting the low bedside light. The soot stain was still on his cheek.
“This,” Roman said, his gaze sweeping over the IV line, the new casts, the dressings. “This spectacle of damage. This will never happen again. You will never be this weak. You will never let yourself be put in a position where you can be taken from me and broken into pieces.” He leaned closer, the intensity of his presence suffocating. “Do you understand the liberty I just took to reclaim you? I didn’t retrieve an asset. I performed archaeology on a ruin.”
Reese swallowed. His throat was dry. The drugs were beginning to take the edge off, leaving him floaty but painfully clear-headed. He lifted his good hand, the one without the IV, and slowly placed it over Roman’s where it gripped the duvet. His fingers were cold. Roman’s were like iron cables.
“I’m not a ruin,” Reese said, his voice quiet but steady. He rubbed his thumb slowly over Roman’s knuckles. “I’m a fixer-upper. Bad plumbing, shaky foundation. You knew that when you bought the place.” He managed a tired ghost of his smile. “And you still blew up a prison for it. That’s… that’s something.”
Roman stared at their hands. Some of the terrible rigidity in his posture eased, just a fraction. The anger was still there, but it was cooling, solidifying into something harder and more permanent. A promise.
“I can’t just lie here,” Reese said after a moment, looking toward the dark office visible through the open door. “The ceiling’s boring. I’ll start counting cracks and go insane. Then you’ll have a crazy ruin. Worse investment.”
Roman let out a slow breath, almost a sigh. He looked from Reese’s face to the IV bag, then back. The conflict was plain: possession versus pragmatism. Possession won, but it was a grudge.
“Fine.” The word was gritted out. He straightened up, his movement abrupt. He disconnected the IV bag from the lamp, handing the saline pole to Reese. “Carry this. If you drop it, I’m not hooking you back up.”
Reese took the pole, using it as a makeshift crutch to awkwardly pivot his legs off the bed. He stood, swaying. The world did a slow, nauseating roll. Before he could topple, Roman stepped in, sliding a solid arm around his waist and hauling Reese’s good arm over his own shoulders.
He half-carried, half-dragged him back the way they’d come, down the hall. The support was impersonal, efficient, but it was total. Reese leaned into it, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other.
In the office, Roman guided him to the long, burgundy couch. He didn’t lower him gently. He let him go, letting Reese collapse onto the soft cushions with a groan. He arranged the IV pole beside the couch with a dismissive click of his tongue.
Without another word, Roman turned and walked back to his massive, empty desk. He sat down, the high-backed leather chair sighing under his weight. He didn’t look at Reese. He pulled a file from a drawer, flipped it open, and began to read, the picture of focus.
Reese lay on the couch, staring at the cathedral ceiling. The fire had died to embers. The pain was now a distant, manageable thunder. The antibiotic chill was in his veins. He was clean in all the ways that mattered, patched and tethered to a bag of medicine that proved he was worth repairing.
He watched Roman work, the sharp angle of his jaw, the absolute concentration. He was here. He was out. The silent, furious man at the desk had moved heaven and earth and burned a hole in the world to get him back.
Reese closed his eyes. For the first time since the cuff had snapped closed on his wrist at the docks, he slept without dreaming.