Reed

From the gloom of my cell, I heard the shuffling of someone moving around and then the creak of wood. Max was clearly still awake, which was more than could be said about last night's guard. Dane had been pretending to sleep while he sat out of sight of my cell. I'd tried to get him to talk, to explain that I didn't mind that he'd been part of Mona's posse. We might be freer here at the ranch, but we were still prisoners in the end, and Mona held power over him that he couldn't help.

Max, at least, had proven better company. Which was pretty ironic, considering he wasn't usually much of a talker. Maybe talking to me was his way of alleviating his sense of guilt, perhaps because, unlike Dane, he wasn't beholden to Mona as much.

"I can practically hear you thinking," he muttered from where he sat, again unlike Dane, beside the cell rather than out of sight. I suspected it was his way of giving me privacy, or maybe he just didn't want to watch me sleep, not that I was getting much of that lately.

"That's all I have time for here," I told him, staring at the ceiling. "I think and think until finally I get too tired and fall asleep."

"Sounds more like passing out."

"A little bit of both, I guess. It works."

"I used to do the same thing."

"Think until you passed out?"

"Eh, more like I would drink until I passed out after one too many hours spent screwing my brains out and filling myself up with God knows how much coke."

"I…how long did it go on for?"

"Why do you wanna know, Doc?"

That pulled the first laugh out of me in days. "Alright, you caught me. All I could think about was the state of your liver and then about the inner lining of your nose."

"My nose is fine, though Riley says I snore pretty heavily some nights. And last I checked, all my organs made it through my self-destruction phase without noticeable problems. I got off lucky."

"You were young. That helps a lot."

"That's what I was told."

I lay there in the silence that followed, realizing that silence with Max reminded me of Leon. It wasn't uncomfortable, and I was confident Max was sitting just out of view, silently judging me and not worrying that he had to fill the silence. That only made my heart ache as I wished Leon was with me.

"No offense," I said, staring at the ceiling still. "You're great company when I could be thinking heavily, but you're not the one I want to talk to right now."

He snorted, leaning into view and giving me a knowing look. "I'm not your boyfriend."

"Nope, and that's the problem," I said, giving him a small smile.

He opened his mouth and paused when his phone began to jingle softly in his pocket. I raised a brow when I realized what song it was. "Is that Natasha Bedingfield?"

"Our age is showing," he snorted, picking up his phone. "Wanna guess who insisted that be his ringtone?"

I smiled, glad he was going to get to talk to Riley. "Tell him I said hi. And that I'm glad his face is no longer messed up from an angry ass."

"Cute," he said, answering his phone. "Hey. I'm…well, I'll explain in a minute. I know you…yes, I'm aware, thank you. And no…Jesus, how many drinks did you have? Uh-huh, and how big were those two drinks?"

I chuckled, amused by how annoyed he sounded, but it was the kind of annoyed I knew all too well. It wasn't dripping with affection, but that was at the core of his exasperation. Riley was probably incredibly drunk, and while I'd never witnessed it, I would bet that Riley drunk was probably just an enhanced version of himself, goofy, silly, playful, and all-around happy.

"Right," Max said, rolling his eyes. "Give me a second, alright? No, I am not alone, so don't start."

I laughed again. "You can use the bathroom if you need alone time with your horny drunk."

Max shot me a dirty look, hitting a button before turning to me. "I have a better idea. I'm going to deal with this. You try not to have a jailbreak while I'm gone."

"I…okay," I said, raising a brow but shrugging as he went for the door, disappearing into the night. It wasn't like I was going anywhere. He was really only here to make sure I didn't have a stroke or try to hang myself. Neither were particularly pleasant options, so I was content to stare at the ceiling and wonder when sleep would come and if Leon had managed to sleep or was fitfully tossing in his bed, agonizing over what he could do.

My thoughts were interrupted by the door opening again, and I looked up, a little amazed that Max's private conversation hadn't taken more than a few minutes. That was until I saw who entered the building, and I realized Leon was not, in fact, sleeping peacefully or tossing and turning. He was standing right there.

"What the fuck?" I asked dumbly, though if I'm honest, appropriately. "What are you doing?"

"Seeing you, obviously," he said with a chuckle, coming down the stairs. I watched as he weaved out of sight for a moment and then came back into view, my eyes widening when I saw what was in his hand.

"What the fuck?" I repeated as he jammed the key into the lock and opened the cell. "No! Jesus, Max is going to be back any minute now, and if he sees you?—"

My protests were interrupted as he crossed the three feet to the bed and grabbed me, pulling me into a kiss. If I had once thought the first kiss we'd had in years was mind-blowing, it was nothing compared to this one. The past few days of loneliness, heartache, and despair disappeared as I felt the hands of the man I loved more than anyone wrap around me and hold tight like I might disappear at any moment.

"Shit, I missed you," he said when the kiss finally broke, leaving me breathless and wondering what was going on.

And then I remembered. "Leon, I love you, but you can't be in here. Jesus, if you're seen."

"Really? You think I showed up with perfect timing after Max left and that the key to your cell would just be lying around when he went to talk to Riley?"

I stared, mouth agape, as I put the pieces together. "You did not ask him to?—"

"I didn't," he said, giving me a small smile. "That was all him."

"Jesus, if you get caught by anyone else."

"Then I'll get in serious trouble, and Max will only be guilty of wandering off when he was supposed to be on duty. How was he supposed to know I was lurking around, hoping he might wander off after I knew he was going to talk to Riley? Wrong on my part, stupid on his, he'll get chewed out."

"You're so…" I began, but I didn't have words to encompass just how he was the stupid one, how mad I was at him for this, and how this was the bright spot in the darkness I'd been stuck in, and how much I loved him. "I hate you."

"No, you don't," he said, pulling me in, filling my nose with the smell of dirt and hay and just a tinge of clean-smelling soap, reminding me of the showers we'd spent together or his skin when we lay together at night, silently loving each other.

It was the crappy cot I pulled him to as I held onto him, both of us facing one another. I lay there with my eyes closed, facing him as our arms and legs tangled, and I basked in his presence. I didn't know how much time we had, but considering this little plan had been cooked up by Max and Leon, I could trust that he would know when he needed to go.

Then I realized he was talking to me, and I had to bring myself back to reality. "And I really want to find out who the potential buyers were."

"We already figured one of them was Dom," I said, a little distracted as I tried to keep up with his sudden energy.

"You suspect, but how many guys did you treat every week?"

"Shit, I don't know. It varied."

"And this whole smuggling thing has been going on for months now."

"Probably, yes."

"Then would you really be able to keep track of who was showing symptoms and who wasn't? God, I wish we'd known about this sooner or been tipped off. Then we could have done something, put the pieces together, talked to these guys."

"It's a little late for that milk to go back into the udder," I told him gently. "There's not much we can do. I will probably be gone in a few days, and I won't be leaving this building until they come to get me."

A strange light flooded his eyes as he grew quiet, and I felt a twinge of unease when I realized what he was thinking. "You know?—"

God, he wasn't. "Leon?—"

"We have time."

"Leon, that is stupid beyond belief. That is exactly the kind of impulsive, blind behavior that always gets people into trouble."

"It's the middle of the night. Everyone's asleep."

"Yeah, except for whoever's working the clinic tonight."

"Why, it's your favorite sleepy, lazy, technologically incoherent doctor."

I stared at him, letting out a growl of frustration. "This isn't a spur-of-the-moment plan, is it? You've been thinking about it for a while. Otherwise, you wouldn't have bothered to check who was working the clinic."

"Hey, less impulsive than you originally accused me of," he said with a shrug.

"Still blind and stupid."

"Sweetheart, I cannot stand around and let this happen without trying something. I'm only roping you into this because I was going to do it anyway. Even if you don't tell me the login information, I will find a way to get it and go digging."

"Great, so your plan is to root around the clinic, hoping no one but Dr. Gideon is in there so you can snoop for legally protected login information, to find the smallest clue. Then, to interrogate people in the hopes they'll give you another clue so you can solve a mystery that not even Mona managed with all her resources without making the wrong conclusion?"

"Huh, when you put it like that, it sounds like one hell of a desperate and stupid plan."

"One you're still going to go through with."

"With or without you."

I sighed, closing my eyes and pushing my face into the thin pillow they'd provided. It was a desperate plan, doomed to end in miserable failure, probably with him in a cell next to mine. I couldn't even count the number of laws he'd be breaking or how much trouble he'd be in. That would go double if he dragged me along for the ride.

I was already doomed, so breaking out of jail, even short term, wasn't going to do much to me. Him, however? That would result in a lot of trouble, which he didn't need when he was so close to the finish line. He had his whole life ahead of him, and here he was, bound and determined to risk blowing it up for me.

I remembered how much he could burn himself with his strange little impulses and how much I told myself I needed to trust his instincts. "Is this desperation? Just desperation?"

"I don't think so. I think something in me is telling me this is right, and not just because I want it to be."

"Fucking hell."

"That sums things up nicely, I think."

"I hate myself."

"Mmm, normally that's concerning, but that tells me you're on board."

"How long do we have?"

"Ninety minutes."

I looked down at him. "Well, that's enough for us to get there and get in, and that's if there's no one there but Gideon. Anyone else, we dip out, and you abandon this plan for good. Deal?"

It was not the deal he wanted, but I wasn't going to back down anymore than he was. There were dozens if not hundreds of ways the plan could backfire, and the chances of it somehow working in our favor were…well, they weren't zero, but I doubted they were even one percent. It wasn't necessarily doomed to fail either, but despite all my misgivings, if he was going to do this, I would prefer he do it with someone who could make it faster.

"Fine," he said, and I could hear the begrudging in his voice. "But we need to get moving now if we're going to go."

"Alright," I said, getting to my feet. "But I'll be honest. After I saw you and calmed down, I almost hoped you'd brought lube instead of this insane plan."

"If this goes right, we'll have all the time in the world to need lube."

While that was a tantalizing idea, I wasn't going to hold my breath. I was going because I wanted to make this as easy and quick as possible, not because I believed there was any real chance of success. If I let him go without me, I'd hate myself, especially if he ended up in trouble.

I stepped out of the cell, feeling that creeping sense of dread grow, but I pushed it down. "Where's Max?"

"He went strolling off in that direction," he said, pointing toward the right, which led toward the edge of the property. "Probably trying to get as far from us as possible. Probably had the same idea you did when he thought I was coming to spend time with you."

"That or he wanted privacy while he had fun with Riley on the phone," I muttered. "God, if we get caught, Max?—"

"Then it's probably a good idea we don't get caught, huh?"

"I'm not a fan of this cavalier attitude you've got going on right now."

"It's that, or I start thinking too hard about what we're doing and spiral out of control. Which is something I do not need to be doing while I'm trying to play super spy."

I groaned softly at his choice of words, but I let that be my only sound. Grabbing his arm, I pulled him in the opposite direction to Max and toward the nearest buildings. Although I'd never been to the part of the property the jail sat on, I had been on the ranch long enough to know where we were and needed to go.

Generally, wandering around the ranch at night was a bad idea. Not because you'd get in trouble, there weren't any guards to keep an eye on people, it wasn't necessary when there was nothing for people to get into, and trying to escape was a terrible idea. It was usually extremely dark, and unless you knew the layout, you could easily get lost and wander around until you found trouble or your cabin.

Considering I had been here a few years and worked night shifts, I'd learned the layout pretty well. There was also enough moonlight to keep an eye on our path. The same moonlight that could have exposed us if there was anyone around, but I tried to keep to the shadows as we moved quietly. I tried not to linger because I didn't want to waste precious time being too cautious.

It probably only took ten minutes to loop around the Big House and come to the plaza at the front. The lights inside the clinic were bright, though partially obscured by the blinds.

"Let me look to see if there's anyone in there," Leon said in a low voice. "At the front, that is."

"And if someone is and they see you?" I hissed, grabbing his arm before he could dart off.

"I'm a patient who's not locked up, and I can cover it by going in there and getting some meds for the screaming migraine I'm known to have that's keeping me from sleeping."

"Oh…that's a good idea."

"I did think about this more than just a little, Reed, Christ, give me some credit."

It was hard to give to a man who had devised this harebrained plan, but I let him go with a grunt of approval. He walked out from behind the building, strolling toward the front of the clinic as casually as you please. I could have been worried that he was technically walking from the wrong angle if he was supposedly coming from his cabin. Considering it was Dr. Gideon working the clinic tonight, though, the chances of him being up front were low, and the chance of him knowing which direction Leon or anyone at the ranch was coming from was zero.

I watched, my heart thumping heavily as I saw him approach the front and look around. In all fairness, this was the part of the plan with the least chance of failing miserably, but my nerves were on edge. He stood there for a moment, peering in at the front windows before turning and walking back toward me with that same steady, patient gait he'd approached with.

"There's no one up front," he whispered once he was back behind the building.

"No surprise there," I said with a roll of my eyes. "Dr. Gideon is probably snoozing in the back office. Relying on the buzzer to let him know he needs to do his job."

"Uh…buzzer?"

"Yeah. Someone should always be upfront. But a buzzer in the doctor's office lets any doctor on staff know there's someone there, just in case they're doing paperwork…or napping."

"Oh," he said, and I could see him frowning heavily. "Well, that's a problem, isn't it?"

"Not really," I said. "If he's the one on staff, we can go in the back door."

"Wouldn't that also be rigged to make a sound?"

"Usually, but if he's working, he's got that stupid brick in the back door, so the alarm doesn't keep going off when he interrupts his napping with the occasional smoke break."

"Your grudge against him is coming in handy."

"Who knew bitterness was good for attempted espionage."

"Alright, back door it is. Ha, not the first time we've thought that."

"Seriously?" I asked, looking at him more closely. "How much caffeine have you had today?"

"Are you kidding me? With my nerves the past few days, I haven't touched anything with caffeine, which wasn't great that first morning. Gave me a migraine flair-up. I'm not tweaking out on caffeine or anything else. I'm just…tweaked out on this."

"Well, try to keep it under control. The last thing we need is you so tense you jump at every little thing and cause trouble."

"Yeah, yeah, let's go."

I led him toward the back of the building, stopping under one of the windows. Like the jail cell, it had a thick, wide steel mesh. Unlike the cell, it was the only mesh, and the window was much larger. The windows for the back break room were much the same, while there was no window in the storage room, only the solid door that required a code…which I happened to know.

I peered into the office and rolled my eyes when I saw Dr. Gideon slumped over his desk, forehead pressed against his forearm. I was more amazed that I couldn't hear the chainsaw snoring he was so good at. Sometimes, the man got so loud you could hear him in the lobby. Sometimes, it was so unbearably loud I'd trip the front door so the buzzer startled him awake.

Crouching down, I motioned for Leon to follow me. "He's dead asleep, just like I figured, c'mon."

"Does that guy ever work?"

"Only when he's forced to."

"What quality people Mona decided to bring on board to take care of us."

"He's actually a decent doctor when he's doing what he's supposed to do. I think he took this job because he felt it would be easier than wherever he came from before. Probably thought he could pass the work on to other people for the most part."

"Which, according to you, he does all the time."

"That he does."

My complaints about Dr. Gideon aside, I got to my feet as we reached the back door. Sure enough, a shaft of light spilled out into the night, with the familiar brick at the bottom. The funny part was, Dr. Gideon didn't even smoke that often, but those few times a night were enough for him to put the brick down so he didn't have to hear the buzzer that went off for five seconds each time he opened it.

Opening the door, I motioned for Leon to step in, carefully closing it behind us and leaving the brick untouched as I followed him. The break room was quiet and hadn't changed since the last time I'd been in there. I would bet my leftovers from lunch were still sitting in the fridge.

"C'mon," I said in a low whisper that felt like the loudest sound I'd ever heard in the clinic. Then again, I had never been in the clinic when I wasn't supposed to be. "God, this is weird."

"What?" he asked, and somehow, his whisper didn't seem as bad as mine.

"Just, c'mon," I said, peering into the hallway to ensure no one else lurked around that Leon might not have seen earlier. I wasn't surprised to find it empty or the office doors closed, which they shouldn't have been. I was never more thankful that Dr. Gideon was a work-avoiding napper than I was right now.

"Kind of a shame we can't get in the office," Leon said in a low voice. "To have better access."

"Doesn't matter which computer," I said with a shrug. "I set it up a while ago, so everything was on secured, shared drives. You only need the login to access anything from approved devices."

"God, no wonder Mona loved having you in the clinic. From what I heard, the clinic used to be disorganized, which drove her crazy."

"Helps when I didn't bother checking if he was alright with it. I just did it with Mona's permission, and he had to deal with it," I said as we reached the front desk. Without hesitation, I moved to close the blinds completely, which might look weird, but I hoped this would prove to be one of those quiet nights where no one showed up, at least for another hour or so. "Also helps when I set everything up so it just…did things automatically. He didn't notice half the shit I did."

"Probably for the best, considering how that guy can be," he muttered as I sat behind the desk.

"Right," I agreed as I booted up the computer, rolling my eyes that it wasn't even logged into our basic software. "God, did he do anything today?"

"Can't say if he did or not. I wasn't exactly watching the place like a hawk. I just came in earlier for something for my ‘aching back' and overheard that he was the night shift doc."

"God, this is going to take a minute," I said, booting the software up. "I'm not a programmer, and this takes forever to boot up. It takes in all the indexes and checks all the files. Even if it doesn't give immediate access to the locked files, it still needs to check to ensure they're…why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because you're sitting there, nerding out like we're just casually doing things we're not supposed to be doing," he said with a snort. "If you weren't so calm, I'd say you were feeling a little cavalier yourself."

"Not even remotely close," I muttered as the program's loading bar shifted along the screen at a glacial pace. "Talking about something inconsequential and normal makes me feel better. Makes me feel…I don't know. Ever since we got here, I've felt like a stranger in the clinic. I've never felt like that here, and it's just…unnerving."

From the first moment I stepped into the clinic, after being informed they would test-run letting me work there, I felt immediately at home. Of course, it wasn't the hustle and bustle of the ER, but there was something about it that I immediately grew to love. I had settled in at a remarkable pace, and I had just…stayed there.

"What's wrong?" Leon asked, leaning in close to look me in the eyes. "You look…I don't know, talk to me."

"I don't know, I just…I realized I've spent so much of my time here, and I'd always wondered what I was going to do with myself when I got out of the program."

"I mean, that's pretty normal. I constantly wondered the same thing. Still didn't have any idea until recently."

I knew what he was talking about and smiled. "You'd be a good candidate for sticking around to help future mentors and expand their existing programs. I mean that. That's what Mona believes too."

"Considering what she believes about you right now, I'm not exactly putting stock in her beliefs," he muttered.

I smiled. "She's a woman who believes when she sees it. Which means she believes in you because she's seen you in action; she sees what you're capable of. And we're here right now, hoping to find something to help her see that this wasn't me."

"I know, but I'm allowed to hold a bit of a grudge, right?" he asked.

"I suppose," I said, realizing that I didn't. She was just doing her job and following her nature to the very end. "But it's kind of sad how it's taken this shit for me to realize how much I enjoyed it here. And maybe…maybe I should have realized I didn't want to leave."

"What, like stay on the staff here, full-time as a doctor?"

"I mean, the thought definitely entered my head a few times, I won't lie. But I never really considered it," I admitted, watching the bar on the screen slowly move toward the right side. "Even when I was miserable and guilt-ridden, something was fulfilling about being here, working for this place, and helping the guys."

"I'll be honest, I always figured you'd end up back at some emergency clinic or try to see if some ER would let you work again," he said. "You seemed bored sometimes."

"When it was slow and plodding for long periods, I found myself missing my old job," I admitted with a shrug. "But most of the time, it was pretty nice to see the same faces repeatedly. To know the people I cared for when I was here, to know their problems, good days, bad days, I just?—"

Routine could breed boredom. Precisely why I'd always been glad to work in the ER. Even when I became numb to pain and catastrophe, the flow of patients and the variety of problems always kept me involved and dedicated. Now I had come to learn the opposite side of things: its drawbacks and positives.

Sure, I got bored sometimes and yearned for something more interesting and different to happen. Yet, the handful of times that had happened, while I had always risen to the occasion without hesitation, I always felt sick to my stomach with worry after the chaos died down and the worst had passed. I had come to care about these people, and seeing them in serious trouble, while something I could professionally handle, wrecked my nerves in the aftermath.

If I stayed here for the rest of my career, I would see new faces and add them to the list of familiar ones. I would think of these men as my family even more and be there to help take care of them and, if necessary, push them in the right direction so they didn't end up veering off track and causing themselves trouble.

This place could have been home if I had just given it that chance. Now though? Now, I realized what I was set to lose, and I didn't know if I could ever get it back. Despite Leon's desperate hope for this endeavor, there was no indication it would work out.

It was depressing to realize what you had only when you'd lost it.

"Ah, here," I said, pulling myself out of my thoughts as the program finally loaded. The program was shut down near the end of every shift, and then, on the new one, it was loaded back up again. Mostly so the computers could be restarted, the damn thing tended to eat up cache and, after a few hours, would inevitably drag the computer down to?—

"Uh, Reed?"

"Sorry, thinking to myself."

"Less thinking, more typing."

There was a certain irony to the fact that I was using Dr. Gideon's login when I had supposedly been doing that to commit my crimes. It would be just my luck that his account had been used to cover ‘my' crimes in the first place. If that were true, it was bad luck that made me look even more guilty in Mona's eyes, or it was someone who knew I disliked the older man and had used it. Which narrowed the list even further…or indicated the man himself.

Nah, that would require way too much effort, so I was pretty sure he was in the clear as a suspect.

"Alright, let's see here," I said, feeling a sense of trepidation while I typed his information into the system correctly. I could have used Alice's or another doctor's, but Dr. Gideon was on-site today. The last thing I needed was to leave behind evidence that someone else was in the clinic tonight. "Let me do some digging."

"Looking up the symptoms that would match addiction?"

"Not really addiction, but overuse of them specifically."

"Is there a difference?"

"The difference between someone who would obviously be going through serious withdrawal and those who are just abusing the pills."

"That…you know what? I leave that up to you."

"Good man."

Thankfully, as clunky as the damn program was when it came to navigating basic things, there were some advantages to its bloated demands. I could run multiple searches in different windows to compare. Thankfully, since the system was recently rebooted, it was fresh and ready to run searches without taking as much time as it took to get it up and running.

"Okay, I've got things pulled up to show me those who repeatedly showed the symptoms over the past year."

"A year?"

"I don't know how long this has been going on. I think Mona would have taken action if it had been sooner than that."

"Or whoever did this finally screwed up badly enough to raise the alarm."

"Also possible, but going too far back would make it more confusing."

"Again, I"m just going to trust whatever you say."

"Good, now let's see here."

I began sorting through the names, trying to move quickly without risking missing something. The clock was ticking, and I knew we needed to head back soon. Max might have been willing to let Leon have some private time with me, but that didn't mean he would be content to allow us to roam around. I didn't know if he'd end up reporting us if he found us out, but at the very least, we could prevent him from needing to make that choice.

"There are a handful of patients, but…mmm, I can take some of them out of the mix because they aren't chronic, but…damn."

"What?"

"It's not a very large list."

"No?"

"Looks like I was right about Dom. He's right there on the list, but man, Dane too."

"What? No way!"

"Would probably explain why Mona chose him for the role of goon number two."

"Jesus, poor Dane."

"Yeah, I tried talking to him the other day when Mona put him on guard duty instead of Max, but he just…ugh. Promise me that when you try talking to him, he understands we're not mad at him, okay? And especially if this goes south for me, okay?"

"Reed—"

"Just…don't, okay? We both know the chances of anything coming of this. And I don't want anyone suffering from unnecessary guilt when it's no one's fault."

"Except for whoever did this."

"Yeah, except for them."

I took a deep breath. "So, I think the best bet is for you to talk to either Dane or Dom. It's probably best that you're in charge of talking to them, not me."

"You're good with people too."

I ignored that because there was a vast distinction between being good with people and knowing them as much as he did. "Just try not to scare the shit out of Dane while you're pissed off, alright?"

"Yes, dear."

"Very good."

"Wait, what's that?"

I turned and bopped him on the forehead. "Stop looking at what's on the screen."

"But—"

"What we're doing is bad enough without violating the living shit out of HIPPA even further, alright? Don't worry about who's taking what medication."

"Fine, fine," he said with a small laugh, holding his hands up.

"Good," I smirked, turning back to the screen and closing everything down so it was back where it had been left when we came in. "Do you know what you're going to say?"

"I have a few ideas," he admitted as I stood up. "By the way, we still have some time to spare. We could go through the records too."

"We just did."

"No, the shipping and inventory records. Those would point toward who it could be. I'm sure you already have a list of who it could be in your head."

"True," I said, thinking it could be one of two people, but that was an uncomfortable thought. I stepped away from the desk as he stared at the computer thoughtfully. "But the inventory records aren't in the shared drive. We'd have to access the storage room"s computer system, and that's easier said than done."

"You know the code?"

"Of course, but, Leon?—"

"We're already this deep in," he said with a shrug, glancing toward the blind-covered windows with a thoughtful expression.

I mulled it over for a moment before sighing. "Alright, but we have to be quick. And if anything goes wrong, we bail immediately, got it?"

"Okay," he said, sounding a little brighter as I turned to walk back down the hallway. "Oh shit!"

I stopped short as I found Alice standing half a foot from me. Her face had a strange smile as she peered up at me. "Hello, Reed, let me save you a trip."

Something was in her hand, but the mystery was solved the instant it jabbed forward. My body froze, a scream locked inside me as fire raced through my limbs. I swung from agony to a horrifying numbness, cycling back and forth at a speed my fried brain couldn't comprehend. I felt suspended in time, locked in that horrifying cycle before mercy came, and I dropped to the ground, darkness surrounding my eyes and closing over my thoughts.