"Move," I said, "or I put you through it."
Milo didn't move. His back stayed flat against the scrubber grate, both hands spread wide over the vents like he could hold a door shut with his palms. My override clip hung from his fist, the LED still blinking amber where it shouldn't blink at all.
"You don't get to look in here, Captain." His voice had gone low, rough at the edges, like something scraped it raw on the way out. "Not tonight."
"That's my lock. My wing. My clip." I stepped in close enough to smell the copper on his split lip. "Give it back before I take it off your throat."
"Try."
So I did.
I came in low, shoulder first, and caught him under the ribs. He grunted, twisted, and slammed an elbow down into my collarbone hard enough that I heard it more than felt it — a flat crack of bone on bone that lit up my whole left side. I didn't let go. I drove him back into the grate and the metal boomed like a drum, and whatever was behind it went dead silent.
"You hear that?" I said against his ear, both hands locked on his wrists, pinning them to the mesh over his head. "Something in there just heard us fighting and shut up."
"It's rats," Milo said. "Big ones. This is a container ship, genius."
"Rats don't go quiet on cue."
"Neither do captains who talk instead of hit."
He drove his knee up. I twisted my hip and took it on the thigh instead of where he meant it, and the pain still buckled my leg for half a second — enough for him to flip the pin. My back hit the grate this time, hard, the metal ridges biting through my shirt into my spine. Milo's forearm came across my throat, not choking, just there, a bar of heat and pressure holding me still while his whole body pressed flush against mine, chest to chest, hip to hip.
That's when it hit me. Not the pain. The other thing.
His scent came up off his skin like heat off asphalt — cedar and gun oil and something underneath that, something that made my mouth go dry and my pulse drop straight into my groin. My suppressant patch was supposed to flatten all of that into nothing. It flattened nothing. It felt like it had been peeled off an hour ago and left me raw.
"You smell that?" Milo said, and his voice had changed too — rougher, closer, his breath sliding hot along my jaw. "That's you, Captain. Not me."
"Bullshit."
"Your patch is dead. I can smell it dying on you." He leaned in, and for one long second neither of us moved, chest rising and falling against chest, his breath slamming into mine on every exhale like we were sharing one set of lungs between two men who hated each other. "You want to know what's worse? I like it."
"Get off me."
"Say it again like you mean it."
I didn't say it again. I got my knee between his and drove up, and he grunted and lost an inch of the pin, and I used it — flipped my wrist free, grabbed a fistful of his collar, and hauled him sideways into the wall instead of the grate. His skull cracked the container siding. He laughed. Actual laugh, blood on his teeth.
"There he is," he said. "Knew you had it in you."
"Give me the clip."
"Come get it."
I went for his fist. He twisted, brought his forearm up under my chin, and for one dizzy second the whole lock spun amber-red-amber around us, the warning lights stuttering like the system couldn't decide what state we were in either. My hand closed over his wrist. His other hand came up and grabbed the front of my shirt, and we ended up chest to chest again, both of us breathing like we'd run six flights, both of us not letting go.
"You're not walking away from that grate," I said, low. "Whatever's in there — "
"Nothing's in there."
"Then why are your hands shaking?"
He went still. That got him more than the pin did. I watched something crack open behind his eyes, quick, there and gone, and his jaw locked so hard I heard his teeth grind.
"Back off, Rourke."
"Say what's behind the grate and I will."
"I don't answer to badges."
"You're holding my override. That makes you answer to me right now."
His grip on my shirt tightened, knuckles white, and for a second I thought he'd hit me again, harder this time, the kind of hit that ends things. Instead he leaned in, so close his mouth nearly grazed my ear, so close I felt the words more than heard them.
"You really want to know what I'm protecting in there," he said, "you're going to have to go through me first. And I promise you, Captain" — his hand slid up, flat against my chest, right over the hammer of my own pulse, like he wanted me to feel exactly how hard it was slamming — "I don't go down easy."
Behind him, low and wet, something inside the grate scraped metal again. Not a rat. Rats don't breathe that slow.
Milo's whole body locked rigid against mine. For one heartbeat his mask dropped clean off — real fear, raw and ugly, no cover on it at all — and then he shoved it back down and grabbed the front of my collar with both fists, dragging me in until our foreheads nearly touched, until his blood-and-cedar breath was the only air I had left to take.
"Not one more word," he said. "Not one."
"Milo — "
"I mean it, Cade."
And behind that grate, the scraping stopped — and something exhaled.