We didn't talk much after the fight.
Didn't bury the bodies. Didn't burn them either.
Just left them behind—strung like broken marionettes between the trees, cooling fast in the dirt.
No time. No energy. No point.
Tiger drove, both hands on the wheel, jaw tight. Kol sat next to him with his weapon still across his lap, his injured side braced against the door. Mick was in the back, staring at his hands like he didn't know whether they still belonged to him.
I sat by the rear doors, my head leaned back against cold metal, blood dried beneath my nails. My muscles still ached from the shift. My skin still felt like it hadn't fully settled back into place.
But my mind—
It wasn't here.
It was back in a white room with soft lights and wide, violet eyes. Eyes that had blinked up at me like I was the entire world. Eyes that didn't understand pain or anger or betrayal. Not really.
Nine.
My Nine.
And I had left him behind.
Nyx lay low in my chest, curled and alert. Not silent. Never silent. But quieter now, after the blood.
She wanted to go back, too.
We all did.
But the job wasn't over.
We arrived at the safe stop just before dawn—an abandoned freight yard half swallowed by rust and creeping moss. Old steel containers lined the fenced edge, silent and still, like skeletal ribs laid out for inspection.
Tiger rolled the van through the access gate and parked beside a worn-down loading dock. No cameras. No drones. No satellite coverage. Off-grid. Off-record. Exactly what the organization liked.
"Unload and reload," he said, killing the engine. "We want to be gone before full daylight."
No one responded.
We didn't need to.
The new transport container was already prepped—standard white-on-gray van, crates stacked in the back, cooling units humming gently. A hired courier leaned against the driver's side door, arms folded, clipboard in hand. He didn't speak as we approached. Didn't look at any of us longer than a second.
That was part of the job, too.
We started moving fast.
The first few crates—weapons, credits, designer drug kits—were easy. Standard stuff. I barely noticed them. Just another day in hell.
The white crate came last.
The monster inside hadn't moved. The hum of the cryo-field still pulsed evenly. No sign of a breach. No sign of consciousness.
And still, it felt like it was watching.
Kol glanced at me before we lifted it. "We sure about this?"
No.
"Yeah," I lied.
Four of us moved it together. It was heavy—not just in mass, but in the way it pulled on the air around it. Like gravity leaned a little harder where it lay.
We loaded it into the center of the new van, reinforced it with a lock bracket, checked the cooling feed.
Then I turned away before I did something stupid.
Like open it again.
Like set it on fire.
Tiger slammed the doors shut and triple-locked them.
"Done," he said.
The courier signed a digital slip and nodded. "You're clear. No records. No pings. This disappears after ten miles."
And just like that, it was gone.
The van rolled out.
Vanished into the early fog.
And so did the last chance we had to stop whatever slept in that crate.