Chapter 5 · No Safe Ward

"Don't you fucking move," Mira snapped, her forearm slamming Reid against the clinic wall. "You twitch, I put you down."

The gun wasn't shaking. She was.

Reid had one hand half-raised, the other clamped over Leo's shoulder, pinning the kid behind him. The Current hummed under his skin, hot and pissed, begging to be let out. He didn't let it. Not yet.

"Mira," Leo whispered. "Don't."

"Shut up," she said, but she didn't look at him. Her eyes stayed locked on Reid. Blue, furious, and way too close. Her breath hit his jaw. "You think this is a game? This whole ward is flagged. My team is two blocks out. You don't walk out of here."

"And you don't shoot in a room full of oxygen tanks," Reid said, quiet. "So lower it. Or commit."

She pressed harder. The barrel kissed his chest. Her jacket smelled like rain and cheap corporate disinfectant. Her hand was cold. His chest was not.

"You took a blast for him last night," she said. "Why?"

"Because someone had to."

"Wrong answer. Nobody does that for a street kid unless they want something. What do you want from him?"

Reid looked down at her. Just looked. "Same thing you want. To keep him breathing. Difference is, I don't get a bonus if he doesn't."

That hit. Her jaw tightened. She didn't lower the gun, but her finger eased off the trigger by a fraction.

Behind them, the clinic door rattled. Someone pounded on it.

"Ashport Med Ward 9! Open for compliance scan!" A man's voice, amplified. Corporate security.

Leo flinched hard. "They found us."

"No shit," Mira muttered. She spun, dragging a gurney with one hand and slamming it against the door. "Help me. Now."

Reid stared at her. "You're barricading us in? With them?"

"I'm barricading *them* out, asshole. Move."

He moved. He shoved a rusted cabinet against the gurney. The Current flickered in his palms without permission — a faint white-blue light — and he shoved it down. Mira saw it. Of course she saw it.

"What the hell was that?" she said.

"Static," Reid said.

"Bullshit. That's not a cape gift. Cape gifts don't look like that."

"You gonna log it in your report?"

"I should." She was breathing fast, too close again as they both pushed against the cabinet. Her shoulder brushed his. She didn't pull away. "Why aren't you running? You could've left the kid and ghosted."

"You could've shot me when you had the angle," he shot back. "Why didn't you?"

She had no answer for that. Her eyes dropped to his mouth for half a second, then snapped away.

Leo was crouched by the cracked med-screen, clutching that dirty shard they'd pulled from the under-ward. The thing pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. "They're scanning heat," he said, voice thin. "They'll see three bodies. They'll breach."

"Then we give them two," Mira said.

Reid turned. "What?"

"Listen to me." She grabbed Reid's sleeve, fingers tight. Her nails dug in. "They want *you*. The anomaly. The kid is just collateral to them. If I walk out with you cuffed, they leave the ward alone. Leo stays hidden."

"No," Leo said instantly. "No way."

"It's the only math that works," Mira said. Her voice was flat, corporate, but her hand wouldn't let go of Reid. "You want him alive? That's the price."

Reid leaned in, crowding her space until she had to tilt her head up. "You think I'm gonna let you march me out like a dog so you get a promotion?"

"I think you're gonna let me save the kid's life," she hissed. "Don't make this about your pride."

"It's not pride. It's you lying." He stared at her, and the air between them went tight and hot. "You said last night you didn't choose the hit order. Now you're volunteering me. Which is it, Quinn?"

The pounding got louder. The door buckled.

"Breach in thirty!" the voice outside shouted.

Leo scrambled up, shard clutched to his chest. "Reid, don't—"

The door exploded inward. Not all the way — the gurney held — but a gap ripped open and a rifle barrel shoved through. It didn't aim at Reid.

It aimed at Leo.

Mira moved without thinking.

She threw herself sideways, right in front of Leo, and the burst caught her. Not clean — it grazed her shoulder, ripped through the corporate cape-weave and spun her hard into the wall. She gasped, but she didn't go down.

"Mira!" Leo screamed.

Reid was already there. He caught her before she hit the floor, one hand around her waist, the other slamming the rifle barrel up. The Current surged — he let it this time — and the metal screamed and bent like paper.

The guy outside yelled.

Reid kicked the door shut with his boot and held it.

Mira was pressed against him, breathing hard against his neck. Blood warm through her sleeve. Her eyes were wide, shocked at what she'd just done.

"You took it," Reid said, low, furious. "For him."

"I had to," she choked out. "I had to."

"Why?" He didn't let go. He couldn't. Her weight was on him, her hand fisted in his shirt. "Talk. Now."

Tears cut through the grime on her face. She wasn't the cold enforcer anymore. "Because I did it before and I didn't stop it. Jace. His name was Jace."

Leo froze. "What did you say?"

Mira looked at him, guilt cracking her whole face open. "Jace Park. Your brother. I was on the hunt team. We flagged him as an unregistered carrier. We were supposed to bring him in. I— I called it in. I gave them his location."

Leo's face went white. "You?"

"I didn't know they'd kill him!" she shouted, and her voice broke. "They said containment. They said safe ward. I swear I thought— and then they put him in a bag and told me to log it as a compliance failure. I let it happen. I'm not letting it happen again. Not to you."

The silence after was brutal. Leo stared at her like she'd gutted him.

"You killed my brother," he whispered.

"I didn't pull the trigger," she whispered back. "But I loaded the gun. Yeah."

Reid's hand tightened on her waist, not to comfort, to hold her upright. To keep her from falling apart completely. Their faces were inches apart. He could feel her shaking.

"You should hate me," she said to Leo, but she was looking at Reid. "Both of you should."

"I don't do hate on a timer," Reid said, rough. "We deal with the door first."

Leo didn't answer. He was looking down at the shard in his hands. It was pulsing faster now, reacting to something — to the Current still crackling faintly around Reid's hand, to Mira's blood, to Leo's own shaking.

"Leo, don't," Mira said, seeing it.

"I have to know," Leo said. His voice was dead flat. "If you knew Jace, then what is this? He had one too. He said it was a map."

He pressed his palm flat against the shard.

The shard lit up.

Not a glow. An explosion of light that threw all three of them into shadow. Stars burst across the cracked ceiling, across the walls, a whole dead sky unfolding in the tiny clinic ward. Constellations Reid had never seen in Ashport's smog-choked night — but he *had* seen them. On another world. Under another sun, as a war-monk watching the Veil burn.

A star map. Rotating, humming, ancient.

And at its far edge, at the end of a burning line of light, a single name pulsed in script that shouldn't exist here.

REID CROSS.

Mira gasped. "What the hell—"

Leo's hand started to bleed where it touched the shard, light crawling up his veins. "Reid, why is your name—"