Before Milo learned hospitals by ceiling tile, he believed his sister could find anything.
Lost keys. Missing homework. The last clean cup in a kitchen full of dishes neither of them wanted to wash. Once, after he left his favorite toy beneath a restaurant table three neighborhoods away, Jinx went back for it in the rain and returned after midnight with the little plastic astronaut tucked inside her jacket.
Milo never asked how she had found it.
At that age, the answer was obvious.
Jinx found things because she was Jinx.
The summer the power failed across their block, she found him sitting beside the apartment window with his face pressed to the screen, searching the dark for some surviving patch of light.
The building had gone black twenty minutes earlier. Their neighbors crowded the hallway with complaints and phone flashlights, opening doors to ask one another questions no one could answer. Without the old air conditioner rattling beneath the window, the apartment had already turned warm.
Jinx stood behind Milo with two paper bags tucked beneath one arm.
“You’re going to leave your face printed on that screen.”
He did not move. “The whole city’s off.”
“Not the whole city.”
“All the parts I can see.”
She looked past him. Below, the street had disappeared except for scattered headlights and candles burning in windows. Farther away, towers rose black against the clouds. Without their signs and office lights, they looked unfinished.
Jinx nudged the back of his head. “Shoes.”
He turned. “Why?”
“Because I said so.”
Milo narrowed his eyes, but he put them on.
She led him up the stairwell, past the fourth floor where someone had propped open a door to let in air, past the fifth where an old woman handed out candles from a grocery bag, and onto the roof.
The metal door groaned when Jinx shoved it open. Warm wind met them on the other side.
The rooftop stretched beneath the clouded night, crowded only by vents, old pipes, and a rusted water tower that had not held water in years. Without the building lights, the sky seemed larger than Milo remembered. Clouds drifted overhead, leaving thin breaks where stars showed in uneven clusters.
He wandered toward the edge.
Jinx caught the back of his shirt. “Not that close.”
“I wasn’t going to fall.”
“People usually aren’t.”
She steered him toward the center and handed him one of the paper bags. The smell of fries rose from inside.
Milo looked at her. “You bought food during a blackout?”
“I bought food before the blackout.”
“You didn’t give me any.”
“You said you weren’t hungry.”
“That was before I smelled them.”
Jinx sat beside a vent and stretched her legs across the tar paper. Milo dropped next to her, already digging through the bag. The fries had gone soft during the walk home. He ate them anyway.
For a while, they listened to the city adjust to the dark. People called to one another from fire escapes. Somewhere below, a car alarm wailed until its battery lost the argument. Tinny music floated from an open window across the alley.
Milo tipped the bag toward her. Jinx took one fry.
Something small moved above them.
A bat circled the water tower, dipped toward the roof, then vanished into the dark. Another followed. Then three more.
Milo leaned back on his hands. “Did you call them?”
“No.”
“You did.”
“They live here.”
“They don’t usually fly this close.”
Jinx ate the fry and said nothing.
One swept low over Milo’s head. He ducked, laughing as it climbed again.
“You made it do that.”
“I did not.”
“It almost hit me.”
“It knew where you were.”
“So you did.”
Jinx looked toward the sky. The bats moved above the rooftop in wide, quiet circles, each carrying a different fragment of the night to the edge of her mind: a chimney across the street, a woman lighting candles in a fourth-floor kitchen, two teenagers climbing through a window because they had forgotten their keys, red warning lights blinking atop a distant tower.
Milo waved another fry above his head. Jinx slapped his hand down.
“Don’t feed them.”
“Why?”
“They don’t want that.”
“How do you know?”
“They told me.”
Milo stared from the bats to her. “They can talk?”
“No.”
“You just said—”
“I know what I said.”
He studied her face, trying to decide whether she was making fun of him. Jinx kept her expression flat until he gave up and ate the fry himself.
One of the bats landed on a pipe several feet away. Its wings folded close to its body, ears twitching toward them.
Milo shifted nearer. “Can you see through that one?”
He had known about the bats for months by then. Not everything. Jinx had kept the Department out of the explanation, along with how much they expected her to do with the ability. Milo understood only that sometimes she saw things that were nowhere near her own eyes.
“Sometimes,” she said.
“What does it see?”
“You.”
“What do I look like?”
“Greasy.”
He wiped his hand on his shorts.
Jinx caught his wrist. “Not there.”
“You said greasy like it was already ruined.”
“I was describing you, not granting permission.”
She handed him a napkin from the bottom of the bag. Milo cleaned his fingers, still watching the bat.
“Can it see in the dark?”
“Better than you.”
“Can all of them see me?”
“When they’re close.”
“How close?”
Jinx pointed toward the roof door. “Go hide.”
His eyes widened. “Up here?”
“Unless you think you can reach another building.”
He was moving before she finished.
Jinx watched him disappear behind the water tower. His shoes scraped over the roof, a pipe rattled, and then everything went still.
One bat dipped behind the tower. Through its eyes, she found Milo crouched between the supports with both hands clamped over his mouth, trying not to laugh. The white edge of his shirt glowed faintly in the dark.
“Found you,” she called.
Milo emerged, offended. “That was too fast.”
“You’re bad at hiding.”
“I didn’t get enough time.”
“You were loud enough to frighten the building.”
“Again.”
This time he pressed himself behind a wide ventilation unit on the far side of the roof. Jinx sent two bats around it from opposite directions. One caught the top of his head. The other found the loose end of his shoelace sticking into the open.
“Found you.”
Milo stood. “You’re cheating.”
“That is the game.”
“No, you’re supposed to look.”
“I am looking.”
“With bats.”
“You never said I couldn’t.”
“That’s because I didn’t know you would cheat with animals.”
“They’re assisting.”
“That’s worse.”
A smile tugged at Jinx’s mouth. “Go again.”
Now determined, Milo crossed the roof slowly, pretending to consider one hiding place before choosing another. Jinx looked away to give him the illusion of privacy. His footsteps faded. A metal pipe clicked softly.
Then silence.
She sent the bats outward.
Behind the water tower. Beside the stairwell. Around the vents, the old satellite dish, and the low wall edging the roof.
Nothing.
Her smile faded. “Milo?”
No answer.
The bats circled lower, brushing over empty corners. Jinx checked the stairwell door and found it closed, then crossed to the far side of the roof herself.
“Milo.”
A soft laugh came from above.
She looked up.
He had climbed halfway onto the maintenance ladder fixed to the water tower. His shoes rested on the fourth rung, both arms wrapped around the rails.
Jinx’s stomach dropped. “Get down.”
His grin vanished. “I found a good place.”
“Down. Now.”
“I’m not even high.”
“Milo.”
Something in her voice reached him. He started down carefully, but his shoe slipped on the second rung.
Jinx caught him before he hit the roof and held him too tightly for one breath.
Milo went still against her. Then he pushed back enough to see her face.
“I was fine.”
“You slipped.”
“But you caught me.”
“That doesn’t make climbing it smart.”
He glanced toward the bats overhead. “You didn’t find me.”
Jinx set him down but kept one hand on his shoulder. “No.”
That bothered her more than it should have. The bats had searched the roof, but none had looked up. She had expected him to stay within rules she understood.
Milo read the answer on her face. His excitement thinned.
“Are you mad?”
“Yes.”
“At me?”
“At everything.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
He looked down at his untied shoe. Jinx crouched and retied it, pulling the knot tighter than necessary.
“You can’t climb things without telling me.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to know where you are.”
“You said the bats know.”
“They missed you.”
Milo considered that, then placed one hand on top of her head, copying something she sometimes did when he was upset.
“But you still found me.”
Jinx looked up. The game had left his face.
“Could you find me anywhere?” he asked.
She stood slowly. “Don’t start.”
“Anywhere in the city?”
“Yes.”
“What if I got on a train?”
“I’d find the train.”
“What if I went really far away?”
“I’d go really far away.”
“What if all the lights were off?”
Jinx glanced across the dark city. “Especially then.”
That satisfied him for only a moment.
“What if the bats couldn’t see me?”
She touched the back of his neck and guided him closer. “I’d find another way.”
“How?”
“I know you.”
“That isn’t a power.”
“It is when you’re as annoying as you are.”
Milo leaned against her side. The wind had cooled while they played, so Jinx took off her jacket and settled it around his shoulders. He slipped his arms into sleeves much too long for him.
“Promise?”
He was healthy then. Warm skin, clear eyes, fry salt caught at the corner of his mouth. No black-gold lines beneath his wrists. No oxygen tubing. No machines waiting to interpret every change in his breathing.
Jinx did not know there would come a day when finding him meant hospital rooms, locked records, and people who called him by a number instead of his name. She knew only that her little brother was looking at her as if promises remained true because she said them.
“Promise,” she told him.
Milo held out his smallest finger.
She stared at it. “Seriously?”
“You have to.”
“I already said it.”
“It doesn’t count without this.”
Jinx hooked her finger around his.
“Fine.”
Milo tightened the hold. “Say it again.”
“I will always find you.”
His smile returned. Above them, the bats scattered across the powerless city.
The lights came back fifteen minutes later. Windows brightened one building at a time. Streetlamps blinked awake below, and the old sign across the alley buzzed before washing the rooftop in weak red light.
Milo complained that the blackout had ended too soon. Jinx gathered the empty bags, reminded him he still had school in the morning, and raced him to the stairwell door.
He won because she let him.
Years later, wings cut through the darkness above Saint Mercy.
Not the same bats. Jinx knew that, though some part of her refused to believe it.
Through dozens of them, she watched rain silver the roofs of parked cars, a drone rise above an electrical substation, and two unmarked vehicles turn beneath the railway overpass. Men in dark coats entered the abandoned clinic through the rear. Another vehicle waited without headlights at the end of the only clear road.
Jinx opened her eyes.
The service tunnel returned around her: concrete walls, exposed pipes, emergency lights staining the ceiling red. Stellan stood beside an old maintenance cart, adjusting the portable monitor strapped near Milo’s legs.
Milo lay beneath two coats, pale and barely conscious, each breath shallow through the oxygen line.
For one terrible second, Jinx saw the boy from the rooftop instead. Salt at the corner of his mouth. Her jacket around his shoulders. His finger hooked around hers.
Always find me.
Stellan glanced up. “What did you see?”
She sent the bats farther east.
One route remained open. Too open.
The roads around it were closing in careful stages, while the maintenance tunnels beneath the eastern substation remained untouched. The Department was not searching blindly.
It was guiding them.
Jinx took hold of the cart’s rail. “They know which way we’re moving.”
Stellan’s hand paused above the monitor. “How close?”
“Close enough to leave us an exit.”
His expression hardened.
Milo shifted beneath the coats. His eyes opened halfway, black-gold light threading weakly through the whites.
“They’re listening,” he whispered.
Jinx bent over him. “Who is?”
His gaze moved past her, fixed on something beyond the tunnel wall. “All of them.”
The lights overhead flickered.
Far behind them, a metal door slammed open. Through the bats, Jinx felt the first Recovery Team enter the clinic.
She closed both hands around the cart.
Years ago, Milo had asked whether she could find him when all the lights went out. She had promised she could.
She had never considered what she would do when everyone else found him too.
“Move.”
Stellan released the brake, and together they pushed Milo deeper into the tunnel as boots struck the concrete behind them.
The cart had been built for equipment, not people. One wheel dragged left whenever they rounded a corner, and every vibration traveled through the frame into Milo’s narrow body. His oxygen line trembled against his cheek.
Jinx wanted to lift him from the cart and run until the Department disappeared behind them. Stellan had already warned her that jostling him could disrupt his breathing or tear loose the wires monitoring his heart. The cart was slower, but it kept him level.
Keeping Milo alive had become a series of choices that all felt wrong.
The passage narrowed ahead. Red emergency lights ran along one wall, leaving the other in shadow, while pipes crowded the ceiling. Some bore faded city-maintenance labels. Others were marked with identification numbers Jinx recognized from Department supply routes.
They had not built this place. They had simply swallowed it.
Stellan pushed from the rear, one hand on the cart and the other near the monitor.
“Left at the junction,” Jinx said.
“You said east.”
“The eastern route is being watched.”
“All of them are being watched.”
“This one is pretending it isn’t.”
She sent three bats through a broken ventilation shaft. Their wings scraped metal before they slipped into the passage beyond, dividing the world inside her head.
One emerged behind the clinic and found two agents descending through a loading entrance. Another crossed the railway overpass, where a black vehicle had stopped sideways across the road. The third circled the eastern substation.
No agents near the service gate. No drones overhead. No lights inside.
The emptiness had been arranged too carefully.
“They want us to take the substation,” Jinx said.
Stellan glanced down at Milo. “It’s the only route large enough for a recovery transport.”
“Or the easiest one to seal behind us.”
The boots following them grew louder, but never hurried. The Recovery Team knew exactly how fast the cart could move.
Jinx turned at the junction and shoved it into the left passage. A security camera above the doorway rotated toward them.
Stellan lifted two fingers. Its lens shifted by less than an inch and continued tracking an empty strip of wall as they passed beneath it.
“You could have done that upstairs,” Jinx said.
“I did.”
“How many cameras?”
“Enough.”
The word came through clenched teeth. A faint tremor had begun in his hand.
Jinx had seen him use his ability before: a lock opening without a key, a screw loosening beneath his fingers, a machine failing in precisely the right place. Only now did she understand the concentration it demanded.
Stellan did not move objects. He found their smallest working pieces and persuaded them to stop cooperating.
The door at the end of the passage had no handle, only a magnetic panel set into the wall.
Through the bats, Jinx could see twenty empty feet beyond it. After that, the ventilation shaft ended and left her blind.
“Locked,” she said.
“I can see that.”
Boots entered the passage behind them.
Stellan stepped around the cart and pressed his palm beside the panel. His eyes closed.
A click sounded inside the wall, followed by another. Internal contacts shifted apart by fractions, forcing a mechanism built to recognize approved cards to forget what approval meant.
The panel flashed red. Stellan’s jaw tightened.
Green.
The door slid open.
Jinx pushed Milo through. Stellan followed, pressed two fingers to the exposed frame, and sent the door closing behind them.
A gloved hand appeared in the narrowing gap.
Stellan’s fingers jerked. The upper track shifted, and the door dropped several inches at once. The agent pulled back before it crushed his wrist. Metal slammed crookedly into the floor.
A fist struck the other side.
“For how long?” Jinx asked.
“Less if they have tools.”
“They have tools.”
“Then not long.”
The corridor sloped downward. Water streamed along its edges, reflecting the emergency lights, and the air grew colder as they descended toward the substation.
Milo stirred beneath the coats.
“Jinx.”
She leaned over him without slowing. “I’m here.”
His eyes stayed closed. Each inhale caught before it fully entered his lungs.
Stellan checked the monitor. “Slow breaths, Milo.”
“I can’t make them stop.”
“The voices?”
Milo nodded weakly.
Jinx touched his face. His skin felt cold and damp. “What are they saying?”
“Too much.”
The monitor jumped. Stellan adjusted the oxygen valve.
“Don’t listen to all of it,” he said.
“I’m not trying.”
“I know. Find one voice.”
Milo’s hand moved beneath the coats until Jinx caught it. The black-gold lines under his wrist had brightened, pulsing out of rhythm with his heart.
“Wisteria’s holding the hallway,” he whispered.
Jinx looked at Stellan. He kept his attention on the monitor, but tension settled across his shoulders.
“And Eli?” she asked.
“He’s awake.”
That should have been comforting. It wasn’t.
Milo’s fingers tightened faintly around hers. “They hurt him when he opens things.”
“Can he hear you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Tell him we’re coming.”
Milo shook his head. “He knows.”
The lights flickered.
He gasped and arched from the cart as far as the wires allowed. Static screamed from the monitor. Jinx caught his shoulders while Stellan reached for the regulator.
Black-gold light spread beneath Milo’s skin, climbing his throat and gathering under his jaw.
“Someone’s pulling it wider,” he said.
Jinx bent closer. “Pulling what?”
“Me.”
The word broke in his mouth.
Stellan silenced the alarm before it could echo through the tunnel. “Can you disconnect?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Then choose one voice. Choose Jinx.”
Milo’s eyes opened. Gold overwhelmed the black for a moment, lighting them from somewhere behind.
Jinx pressed his hand to her chest. “Right here.”
His breathing slowed by a fraction. The light beneath his throat dimmed, and Stellan watched the monitor until his heartbeat settled into something survivable.
“Who is widening it?” Jinx asked.
Milo stared toward the pipes overhead, following a sound neither of them could hear.
“I don’t know his name.”
A pulse moved through the tunnel lights, each one brightening and fading in sequence.
“He’s inside with them.”
“With Wisteria and Eli?”
Milo nodded.
“Another subject?”
A tear slipped into his hair. “He likes it.”
Jinx’s grip tightened. “Likes what?”
“When we can’t shut them out.”
Behind them, the damaged door shuddered. A mechanical saw started on the other side.
Jinx sent the bats lower over the substation. A drone rose from behind the railway overpass, camera pivoting beneath it. One of her bats dove. The drone adjusted immediately and followed.
“They’re tracking the bats now,” she said.
“Pull them back.”
“They already know where we’re going.”
The saw bit deeper.
Stellan pushed faster, and the tunnel opened into an old maintenance chamber filled with rusted electrical cabinets and decommissioned transformers. Coils of heavy cable covered one corner. Two steel doors faced them from opposite ends.
The first read EASTERN SUBSTATION ACCESS.
The second bore only a narrow silver ring crossed by a vertical line.
Asterion.
Jinx stopped the cart.
“Which one?” Stellan asked.
A bat slipped beneath a bent ventilation grille and entered the public access chamber. Rainwater ran beneath an exterior door. Old breaker panels lined the walls.
At first, nothing moved.
Then the bat’s hearing caught breath, fabric shifting, and the soft electrical hum of suppression weapons held ready in the dark.
Jinx pulled it away.
“The public side is occupied.”
Stellan looked toward the Asterion door. “And that?”
“No vent access.”
The saw behind them stopped. For a moment, the tunnel went silent.
Then the damaged door crashed open.
Jinx shoved the cart behind a transformer cabinet. Stellan pulled Milo into the narrow cover between two machines and checked every wire by touch.
Through the bats, Jinx watched the Recovery Team divide. Half entered the tunnel. The others closed around the eastern substation.
No matter which door they chose, someone was waiting.
She had driven for the Department long enough to recognize the pattern: leave one route visible, close the others gradually, and let panic convince the target the remaining road was its own idea.
“They’re herding us toward Asterion,” she said.
“Why?”
“They don’t want to carry Milo through the public side.”
Stellan glanced at the silver symbol. “Then there’s transport access behind it.”
“Or containment.”
“Likely both.”
Boots entered the chamber.
Jinx drew a short baton from beneath her coat. Stellan caught her wrist.
“Not yet.”
“They’re almost here.”
“I need six seconds.”
“For what?”
He nodded toward the wall of electrical cabinets separating them from the agents. Each one was held together by screws, latches, switches, and aging internal contacts.
Hundreds of small parts.
Stellan raised his trembling hand.
The first screw hit the floor with a metallic tap. Another followed. Across the room, cabinet doors began swinging open one by one, blocking the agents’ sightlines. Breaker switches snapped down. Emergency lights died in sections, spreading darkness toward the Recovery Team.
Jinx felt his hand shaking against her wrist.
“Stellan.”
“Wait.”
Inside the nearest weapon, something shifted. The agent aimed toward their hiding place and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
A second weapon failed. Then a third.
Confused commands filled the dark.
Stellan closed his fist.
Every remaining cabinet door slammed open at once. Metal crashed through the chamber. Agents scattered as panels struck shoulders and knocked weapons aside. Sparks burst from an exposed junction, filling the room with white light.
“Now.”
Jinx drove the cart from cover.
An agent stepped into their path. Her baton caught him beneath the jaw. Another appeared behind him and reached for Milo, but a bat dropped from the ceiling and struck his face.
Then another.
The chamber filled with wings. Through them, Jinx saw hands reaching, weapons lifting, Stellan limping behind the cart, and Milo’s pale face beneath the coats.
The Asterion panel remained dark.
“No reader.”
Stellan reached the door and pressed both palms to the metal. His breath caught.
This lock was denser than the city mechanisms: electronic seals layered over mechanical bolts, reinforced plates hiding more contacts than he could reach at once.
Boots closed behind them. Jinx turned with her baton raised.
“Can you open it?”
Blood appeared beneath Stellan’s nose. “One moment.”
“We don’t have one.”
“Then make one.”
Jinx called every bat within reach into the chamber. They poured through vents, broken panels, and the ruined tunnel entrance until black wings swallowed the remaining light. Agents shouted and covered their faces. Suppression rounds cracked through the swarm, each fallen bat sending a bright rupture through Jinx’s skull.
She held the connection.
One lock shifted beneath Stellan’s hands, then another. A heavy bolt withdrew inside the wall. The panel lit red.
He reached for something smaller.
The light flickered to white.
Milo cried out. The black-gold lines beneath his skin flared through the coats, and the sealed door answered with a low pulse.
From somewhere beyond it came the sound of a railway crossing bell.
Ding.
Jinx stared at the silver symbol.
The same bell Milo had heard through Wisteria. The same signal threaded through the old rail lines beneath Bellwether.
Stellan opened his eyes. Blood ran over his upper lip.
“This connects to Lower Recovery.”
The door unlocked.
Not because he had finished.
A narrow black seam appeared between the doors, and cold white light spilled across the floor.
Milo turned toward it, eyes widening.
“He found us.”
“Who?”
“Five.”
The doors began to separate.
Recovery agents broke through the bats behind them. Ahead, a white corridor waited.
Only then did Jinx understand.
They had not been driven toward extraction.
They had been brought close enough for someone inside to hear Milo clearly.
The Asterion doors opened onto a corridor too clean for the rusted substation around it. Pale tile. Seamless walls. No visible cameras or doors. At the far end, a thin red crossing signal blinked through the cold white light.
Milo stared into it as the markings beneath his skin brightened.
Jinx caught his face between both hands. “Look at me.”
His eyes found hers slowly, as if part of him had already entered the corridor.
“He wants me closer.”
“You’re not going.”
“The others are there. Eli can’t shut the doors.”
“Then we find another way to him.”
Behind them, the Recovery Team broke through the last of the swarm. Six agents spread through the chamber, weapons charging with a rising electrical whine. One held a compact launcher aimed directly at Milo’s cart.
Jinx saw him through a bat perched above the room.
“Stellan, can you close it?”
He kept both hands against the Asterion frame, blood running from his nose. “The locks are resisting me.”
“Break them.”
The launcher fired.
Jinx shoved the cart sideways. A white tether cut through the space where Milo’s chest had been and struck the open doorway instead.
The corridor flashed.
The line snapped rigid as something beyond the threshold caught it.
The agent stumbled forward. Then the tether pulled, throwing him across the floor and into the edge of the doorway hard enough to tear the launcher from his grip. The weapon vanished into the white corridor.
No one moved for one stunned second.
The door continued opening.
Milo cried out. His body lifted against the straps, monitor screaming as black-gold light climbed his throat.
Jinx grabbed him. “Stay with me.”
“He’s trying to use me.”
“For what?” Stellan asked.
“To hear outside.”
The crossing signal blinked again, red light reaching through the doorway to touch the cart.
Milo convulsed.
Stellan tore one hand from the frame and focused on the monitor’s regulator housing. A screw turned loose. The back panel dropped open. Three wires shivered, and one pulled free.
The alarm died.
Milo kept shaking.
“That wasn’t the machine,” Jinx said.
“No.”
Stellan returned his hand to the door. Inside the wall, bolts began moving against one another. The frame shuddered as its own mechanisms fought for control.
The corridor flickered.
For half a second, Jinx saw beyond it: a boy restrained beneath white lights, a girl in a torn green jacket turning toward them, and a young man standing behind observation glass with one hand against the window.
Calm. Smiling.
Then the image vanished.
“Five,” Milo said, voice breaking.
Jinx could no longer see him, but she knew the man behind the glass could see them.
“Close it.”
Another suppression round struck the cart. White current ran across the metal frame, and the portable oxygen unit failed with a sharp hiss.
Milo’s next breath did not come.
Stellan looked from the damaged valve to the door. The calculation crossed his face too plainly.
“Fix his air,” Jinx said.
“The door—”
“I’ll hold them.”
He met her eyes once, then dropped beside the cart.
Jinx stepped into the open.
The bats descended in a black wave, forcing the agents to cover their faces. Through every pair of eyes she could hold, Jinx tracked hands reaching, weapons rising, and one agent drawing a suppression baton.
Her first strike caught a wrist. The second hit the side of a knee. She drove her shoulder into the nearest body and sent him crashing against an open cabinet. An access card slipped from his coat.
A bat caught it before it hit the floor and carried it across the chamber.
Behind her, Stellan worked without touching the oxygen valve. Inside its housing, a fractured contact shifted back into place.
The unit coughed.
Air began flowing.
Milo dragged in a thin breath.
Stellan reached for the Asterion door with his other hand. The divided effort made his shoulders jerk. One hinge twisted, dragging the door out of alignment. The opening stopped widening.
He shifted the second.
Metal screamed.
The doors slammed together, trapping a blade of white light between them. The crossing signal vanished.
Milo collapsed against the cart, markings dimming beneath his skin.
Stellan dropped to one knee.
“Can he breathe?” Jinx asked, driving another agent back.
“Yes.”
“Can you move?”
He wiped the blood from his mouth and stood. “Yes.”
The lie was obvious, but there was no time to argue.
Across the chamber, the public access door led into the eastern substation. Three agents still waited beyond it—fewer than the six behind them.
“Public side,” Jinx said.
Stellan grabbed the cart, and they ran.
Jinx moved backward ahead of them, the bats filling the space between Milo and the Recovery Team. Suppression rounds tore through the swarm. Each loss struck behind her eyes, one after another, until her balance slipped.
Stellan caught the back of her coat and hauled her upright.
“Stay standing.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try better.”
Under any other circumstances, she might have resented him. Now she used his grip to steady herself and kept moving.
At the public door, the stolen card flashed red.
Denied.
Jinx swore.
Stellan pressed his palm to the panel. His fingers were shaking badly.
“I need time.”
“You ask for things we don't have.”
“Then stop spending it by talking.”
The agents behind them regrouped. One dragged a larger suppression rig through the ruined entrance—a broad emitter designed to fill the room rather than strike a single target.
Jinx recognized the low hum.
Neural dispersal.
The Department had used older versions during her training to sever her connection to the bats. It would do more than put Milo to sleep.
“Stellan.”
“I see it.”
The first lock clicked.
An agent raised his weapon. Stellan glanced toward it, and the firing pin shifted. The gun discharged inside its own chamber.
The man dropped it with a cry.
A second weapon’s safety locked in place. Screws began turning loose beneath the suppression rig’s emitter, forcing the agent operating it to catch the sagging barrel.
That gave Jinx three seconds.
She sent the remaining bats at him. They covered his helmet, clawed beneath his mask, and tore at the cables connecting the rig to its battery.
One gloved hand closed around a bat.
Jinx felt the small body crush.
Her vision flashed white, and she went to one knee.
“Jinx,” Milo whispered.
She looked back.
His eyes were barely open, but he was watching her from beneath the coats.
Jinx forced herself upright. “I’m here.”
The public door unlocked.
Stellan nearly fell as it opened. Jinx seized the cart and shoved it through the moment the gap was wide enough.
The eastern substation stretched beyond them, crowded with transformers, support columns, and fenced electrical bays. Rain hammered the metal roof. Amber emergency lamps cast long strips across the floor.
Three agents waited near the exterior gate.
They raised their weapons.
A dark playing card struck the nearest barrel and unfolded into a black band around the agent’s wrist, wrenching his aim toward the ceiling. His shot burst harmlessly against the roof.
The second agent’s weapon suddenly became too heavy to hold. Invisible pressure drove it toward the floor hard enough to crack the concrete beneath his boots.
Magnus Blackwell stepped from behind a transformer, one hand raised, purple light burning in his eyes.
Soraya appeared on the other side. Her damaged mechanical arm was braced against her chest, but her left hand caught the third agent by the collar and drove him into the fence. Metal links bent around his body.
Alex emerged behind her, cards circling both hands. Rowan and Levi followed. Hector remained near the service gate, watching every entrance and the machinery between them.
For one second, Jinx saw only strangers.
Too many people. Too many powers. Too many ways Milo could be taken.
She pulled the cart behind her and raised a baton. “Stay back.”
Soraya stopped at once. Her eyes went to Milo’s face—not the monitor, not the markings.
“We’re not with them,” she said.
“That’s what people say before explaining who they are with.”
“Alex called me.”
Alex stepped forward slowly, hands open despite the cards turning around her wrists.
“Jinx.”
Recognition came late. Jinx had seen her in Department corridors and Saint gatherings—places Jinx entered through loading bays while people like Alex used the front doors.
“You know her?” Stellan asked.
“Enough.”
“That does not reassure me.”
“It shouldn’t.”
Rowan moved closer.
Milo’s eyes found him, and the black-gold light under his skin stirred.
“Green jacket,” he whispered.
Rowan froze.
Jinx bent over her brother. “What?”
“Wisteria says he gets too loud when he’s scared.”
The words struck Rowan with visible force. He crossed half the distance before Jinx lifted her baton again.
“Stop.”
He obeyed, barely.
“My sister,” he said. “You can hear her?”
Milo’s lips moved without sound. Jinx leaned closer.
“She’s tired. She keeps the halls from moving when Eli wakes up.”
Rowan’s eyes closed for half a second. Levi stood behind him, pale and rigid.
“Is she hurt?” Rowan asked.
“Yes,” Milo said with the terrible plainness of a child too exhausted to soften anything. “She’s still fighting.”
Rowan lowered his head.
Magnus looked toward the door behind Jinx. “Five opened the pathway?”
“He wanted me inside,” Milo whispered.
“Why?”
“To make me hear everyone.”
Magnus’s expression darkened.
Hector left the gate. “This conversation needs a moving location.”
The damaged suppression rig crashed against the other side of the public door. Alex sent two cards into the frame, black ink spreading around the edges to hold it shut.
“It won’t last,” she said.
Stellan tightened his grip on the cart. “Where is your vehicle?”
“Beyond the west service road,” Magnus answered. “We split the exits.”
Jinx reached through her remaining bats. Recovery agents were entering from the tunnels. Vehicles moved along the north road. Drones circled lower, and a second unit approached the west fence.
The group had found them.
So had everyone else.
Soraya stepped toward the cart. Jinx blocked her.
“I said stay back.”
Soraya’s mechanical arm hung rigid beneath its brace, violet light flickering between exposed plates.
“They called him a function before they took him,” she said.
Jinx’s baton lowered by an inch. “Who?”
“Eli. The Key.”
Milo turned toward Soraya. “He knows you.”
Her face changed. “He can hear me?”
“Sometimes. He keeps thinking your arm is broken.”
Soraya glanced at the exposed machinery. Grief passed over her expression.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “So does everyone else.”
Jinx studied her again.
Not Department. Not ordinary either.
Someone else whose body had been turned into a file.
The public door shuddered beneath Alex’s hold. A crack split the ink around the frame.
Magnus looked toward a reinforced steel barrier beyond the transformer bays. “Can you open the west gate?”
Stellan followed his gaze: manual lock, electronic motor, emergency brake near the upper track.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Longer than you’ll like.”
Magnus turned toward the failing door. “I can buy some of it.”
“I’ll help,” Alex said.
Soraya met Jinx’s eyes. “Let me take the cart.”
“No.”
“You need both hands.”
“I have both.”
“And you’re losing bats every time they fire.”
Another one vanished above the roof. Pain sparked behind Jinx’s right eye, and Soraya saw the flinch.
“I’m not taking him from you,” she said. “I’m moving him ten feet while you keep them away.”
Jinx looked down at Milo. His breathing had worsened. Stellan would need both hands for the gate, and she needed what remained of the swarm before the Department closed every route.
She hated the choice.
Milo’s fingers found hers beneath the coats. “It’s okay.”
His eyes moved toward Soraya. “Eli trusts her.”
There was no time to ask how he knew.
Jinx released the rail.
Soraya took it carefully with her left hand, as if she understood exactly what had been placed in her care.
“If he stops breathing—”
“I tell the doctor.”
“If anyone touches the monitor—”
“I break their fingers.”
Soraya did not smile. Neither did Jinx.
She nodded once.
Stellan pointed to the oxygen valve. “If that gauge falls below twenty, turn it clockwise one quarter rotation. No farther.”
Soraya repeated the instruction before he left Milo.
The public door buckled.
Alex’s cards tore free one by one. Magnus raised both hands, gravity settling over the frame while agents rammed it from the other side.
Stellan reached the west gate and pressed his palms to the motor housing. Rowan stayed near Milo, fighting every question about Wisteria. Levi took position beside him.
Hector crossed to Jinx. “A second unit is approaching from the west.”
“I know.”
“Opening that gate leads straight toward them.”
“Every direction does.”
He glanced at the bats circling above the roof. “What are you planning?”
Jinx watched the west unit divide through their eyes. Half moved toward the gate. The others curved north to intercept anyone who escaped.
The Department had not come for the whole group.
Only Milo mattered. Everyone else was acceptable loss.
A low hum grew behind the public door. The neural rig had been repaired.
Jinx’s bats scattered across the roof, desperate to flee what they could not yet see.
“First lock,” Stellan called.
The public door split down the center. Magnus staggered, but held it.
Alex threw another card into the frame. “Whatever the plan is, it has reached the part where we do it.”
Jinx looked from the west gate to the door failing behind them.
There was enough time to get Milo through. Enough for the others if they moved quickly.
Not enough for everyone to cross before the rig fired.
The route settled around her with the same ugly clarity it had when she drove for the Department: a narrow opening, a closing line, and a target that had to believe it still had a choice.
She had spent years helping build these traps.
She knew where someone had to stand to break one.
The second lock released.
Stellan looked over his shoulder and saw the answer in her face.
“No.”
Behind Jinx, the public door tore from its upper hinge. White light poured through the gap as the suppression rig began to charge.
She raised both batons.
Above Saint Mercy, every bat still connected to her turned toward the Recovery Team.
Years ago, Milo had made her promise she would always find him.
She had kept it.
Now she had to make sure the Department lost him.
“Open the gate,” Jinx said.
Stellan kept both hands against the motor housing. Blood ran from his nose to his mouth, and he wiped it against his shoulder without breaking concentration.
Inside the steel frame, the second lock dragged free. The gate lurched upward several inches, stopped, then climbed again with a deep metallic groan.
Beyond it waited the west service road—and the Recovery unit closing from the other side.
Through the bats, Jinx watched two vehicles move along the fence while agents spread between the loading bays. A drone dropped beneath the railway overpass, camera searching the road.
They had less than a minute.
Behind her, the neural dispersal rig reached full charge. Its hum pressed through the chamber and vibrated in her teeth.
Magnus held the broken public door crooked in its frame with gravity. White light leaked around the edges as agents forced against him from the other side. His boots slid over concrete.
Alex sent another card into the widening crack. Black ink crawled over the hinges, buying them seconds.
The gate rose to waist height.
“Can the cart fit?” Soraya asked.
Stellan looked once. “Yes. Keep his head down.”
Soraya lowered the upper frame and tucked the coats around Milo’s shoulders. Rowan moved to the other side without being asked, and together they guided the cart toward the opening.
Milo’s hand emerged from beneath the blankets.
“Jinx.”
She almost kept her eyes forward. A missed turn, a late brake, one second spent looking behind instead of ahead—she had seen hesitation kill people.
But that was Milo.
Jinx crossed to the cart and caught his hand. His fingers were cold.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Nowhere yet.”
The lie hurt him before she finished saying it. He looked past her toward the public door. Maybe he could hear the choice taking shape in her. The markings at his throat flickered with every shallow breath.
“You’re not coming through.”
Jinx tightened her hold.
“No,” Stellan said.
His concentration broke. The gate stopped rising.
“You are coming through,” he told her.
“Open it.”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“Then Milo dies while we argue.”
“Do not use him to end the conversation.”
“I’m using the Recovery Team breaking through that door.”
The dispersal rig changed pitch.
Fear surged through every bat still linked to Jinx: frantic wings, tiny hearts hammering, instinct demanding distance from a weapon built to tear apart the nervous system.
She kept the network open.
Stellan looked toward the public entrance. “Magnus can hold it.”
“No,” Magnus said through clenched teeth. “I cannot.”
The floor cracked beneath his boots. One of Alex’s cards blackened and fell away. White-gloved fingers appeared through the opening.
Jinx released Milo’s hand and faced Stellan.
“You know his medication. You know when the monitor is lying, and how to keep him breathing when it does.”
“So do you.”
“Not from this side of the gate.”
Silence passed between them. She saw him understand and hated him for it.
“You’re his doctor,” she said. “Be that.”
His face tightened. “He needs his sister.”
“He needs to survive the next hour.”
Milo reached for her and caught the edge of her sleeve.
“Don’t.”
The word nearly vanished beneath the machinery.
Jinx bent over him.
During every hospital stay, every procedure, every night machines argued over his breathing, she had imagined the final emergency. In those private versions, she always won. She found the right doctor, stole the right medicine, broke the right door, and carried Milo into daylight.
She had never imagined saving him would mean letting someone else take the rail.
“You asked whether I could find you when the lights went out,” she said.
His face folded. “Please.”
“I found you.”
“You always find me.”
“Yes.”
“Then come with me.”
Jinx pressed her forehead to his. The black-gold light beneath his skin warmed the space between them.
“This is me keeping the promise,” she whispered. “I’m putting you somewhere they can’t reach.”
“That isn’t what you said.”
“No.” Her throat closed around the word. “It’s the part I didn’t know yet.”
The public door slammed inward.
Magnus dropped to one knee. Alex’s cards scattered through the chamber, striking weapons and exposed hands as agents forced their way through. Levi pulled Rowan aside before a suppression round crossed the space where his shoulder had been.
“Move!” Hector shouted.
The gate rose another foot.
Enough.
Soraya pushed the cart underneath. Rowan guided the front wheels over the raised track while Stellan held the damaged motor in place.
Jinx walked beside Milo until the gate came between them. His fingers clung to hers through the narrowing space.
For one second, neither let go.
Then Stellan grabbed the rear of the cart and pulled.
Milo’s hand slipped from hers.
“No!”
His voice tore through the substation.
Jinx stepped back before she could reach for him again.
Soraya pushed the cart onto the west road. Rowan stayed beside her, with Levi and Hector covering the loading bays. Alex backed through the gate while throwing cards toward the public entrance. Magnus retreated last from the broken door.
Stellan remained inside.
Jinx looked at him. “Go.”
He shook his head. “I can hold it open.”
“That isn’t what I need from you.”
“What you need is irrelevant.”
“Then consider it a medical order.”
“I am the physician.”
“And you’re wasting the time I bought.”
The first agent cleared the public door. Jinx struck him across the face before he could raise his weapon. A bat hit the second agent’s visor; another tangled in the suppression rig’s straps.
Stellan caught Jinx by the shoulder. “I can bring you through.”
“No.”
“You are not making a reasonable decision.”
“I’m making the one that keeps them following me instead of him.”
The rig entered its final firing cycle. White bands lit along its barrel, one after another.
Stellan saw them. His grip tightened.
“If that hits while you’re linked, the pulse will travel through the entire network.”
“I know.”
“You won’t survive the feedback.”
Through the open gate, Jinx saw Milo struggling against Soraya and Rowan, trying to rise from the cart. Soraya held his shoulders without pressing the wires while Rowan spoke to him too softly for Jinx to hear.
Her bats showed the west unit closing around them. One vehicle accelerated. A drone locked onto the monitor. Agents raised their weapons.
Jinx sent half the swarm west.
Bats poured over the roof and dropped toward the service road, covering the drone camera, striking the lead vehicle’s windshield, and flooding the motion sensors along the fence. The formation broke. Weapons turned toward the wings.
Away from Milo.
Jinx met Stellan’s eyes. “They track patterns. Give them too many.”
Understanding reached him, followed by horror.
“You’re turning the swarm into false targets.”
“I’m using what they taught me.”
She drove a baton into the gate’s exposed control housing.
Metal folded around it. The gate dropped six inches, and Stellan turned instinctively toward the mechanism.
Jinx shoved him beneath the opening.
He caught himself on the road and spun back as the gate began descending between them. He threw both hands toward the motor. Damaged gears jerked upward.
Jinx struck the housing again.
Sparks burst from the panel. The gate slammed lower.
“Stop!” he shouted.
“You can’t hold this and keep Milo alive.”
“I can try.”
“I know.”
That was why she had to choose for him.
The gate reached chest height. Stellan crouched on the other side with both hands raised, blood running freely down his face as the internal components strained against Jinx’s damage.
For a moment, he stopped it.
Jinx watched his fingers shake and the tendons stand out along his wrists. He would ruin himself before admitting there were limits.
“Stellan.”
His eyes lifted to hers.
“Take care of him.”
Something broke across his face. “You should be the one doing that.”
“Yes.”
It was the only honest answer she had.
“Yes, I should.”
The dispersal rig fired.
White light filled the substation.
There was no single impact. The pulse entered every connection at once and found every bat still linked to Jinx’s mind.
The first wave fell from the roof. Small bodies struck metal, concrete, and vehicle glass.
Jinx’s knees buckled. She caught herself against the gate as Stellan screamed her name from the other side.
The pulse spread through bats diving at drones, clawing surveillance lenses, hiding in ventilation shafts, and hanging beneath bridges. Every pair of eyes became white light. Every heartbeat crowded into her chest.
She could have severed the network.
The reflex had been trained into her: close the connection, shut them out, save the central nervous system before the feedback reached the heart.
Jinx began to pull away.
Then, through twenty failing sets of eyes, she saw the west road.
Soraya pushed Milo toward the railway overpass. Rowan ran beside her. Levi turned before shots were fired and steered them around danger he had not yet seen. Alex’s cards formed black barriers between the cart and the Recovery unit. Magnus crushed the front of a pursuing vehicle until its engine dropped against the asphalt. Hector pointed them toward a narrow route between two loading bays.
Stellan was still at the gate, trying to lift it.
Still looking at her.
A Department drone rose above the group. Its camera found Milo.
Jinx held the connection open.
Three bats struck the drone at once. One tore loose a cable. Another disappeared beneath the rotors. The machine spun sideways and crashed into the road, forcing the agents behind it to scatter.
A second pulse entered the swarm.
Jinx’s back struck the gate. Her batons fell from her hands.
The substation fractured into final images: rain on black wings, white coats entering through the broken door, Milo beneath the blankets, fries in a paper bag, a child laughing behind a water tower.
Agents moved around her. Someone ordered her to sever the network. Someone else called her Vigil.
Jinx opened her eyes.
A Recovery woman stood several feet away, her weapon lowered now that Jinx could no longer stand.
“Vigil,” she said. “Disconnect.”
Jinx tasted blood.
The name had frightened her once. The Department had chosen it because Jinx sounded too small for reports, too human for the work they wanted from her. Vigil watched. Vigil followed. Vigil knew every route and never questioned the destination.
The Recovery Team thought the pulse had trapped her.
They did not understand that it had also connected their grid to her.
Every camera struck by a bat. Every drone wrapped in wings. Every motion detector flooded by the swarm. Every vehicle sensor following the wrong heat signature.
Jinx pushed through the pain and opened the network wider.
The surviving bats split in every direction—north over the railway, west toward the river, south through abandoned warehouses. They carried movement across every monitored route in the district, creating false turns and phantom targets faster than the Department’s system could erase them.
Agents shouted as their trackers changed.
RECEIVER SIGNAL — WEST
Then:
RECEIVER SIGNAL — NORTH
Then everywhere.
The Recovery woman looked toward the rig operator. “What is happening?”
Jinx smiled, though it hurt.
“You lost him.”
The third pulse fired.
The world disappeared.
Outside, Stellan felt the gate’s mechanism release.
The steel barrier dropped the rest of the way and struck the ground hard enough to shake the service road. He pressed both hands against it, searching for pins, gears, the emergency brake—anything he could move.
Nothing answered correctly.
Jinx had destroyed the housing too completely. Bent teeth overlapped inside the motor. Broken wires fused against bare metal. The manual release had sealed shut.
He could repair it with tools and time.
He had neither.
“Jinx!”
Milo screamed from the cart.
Soraya struggled to keep him from tearing free of the straps. His eyes burned black and gold, his body rigid beneath the coats as every marking pulsed with whatever was happening on the other side of the gate.
He could hear her.
Stellan knew it before Milo spoke.
“The bats,” he said through chattering teeth. “They’re falling.”
Stellan crossed the road and caught Milo’s face between his hands.
“Listen to me.”
“She can’t close it.”
“Milo.”
“It’s inside all of them.”
Another wave of pain crossed the boy’s face. His monitor spiked.
Stellan adjusted the oxygen valve while Soraya held the cart steady.
Behind them, the west Recovery unit regrouped. Magnus shouted for everyone to move. White rounds tore holes through the narrow wall of Alex’s cards.
Rowan seized the front of the cart. “We have to go.”
Stellan looked once at the closed gate.
No weapons. No wings. Only the low hum of electricity beneath the rain.
Milo turned his head toward the steel barrier. “Jinx?”
Stellan had delivered terrible answers in hospital rooms, waiting areas, and hallways where vending machines buzzed through the worst moment of someone’s life. He had always found words.
Not now.
The monitor alarmed again.
He checked Milo’s pulse and forced himself to look at the living person in front of him instead of the gate behind them.
Jinx had known he would.
She had counted on it.
“Take the cart,” Stellan said.
Rowan obeyed.
They ran beneath the rain. Soraya stayed beside Milo while Levi and Hector led them between the loading bays. Magnus held the pursuing vehicles under crushing pressure. Alex covered the rear, every remaining card flashing through the dark.
Stellan kept one hand on Milo’s shoulder.
The boy’s eyes remained fixed behind them.
Through the Receiver, Jinx’s network reached its final edge.
One heartbeat.
Another.
Then nothing.
Milo made a sound Stellan would hear for the rest of his life—small, confused, nothing like a scream.
“She can’t hear me anymore.”
Stellan’s stride faltered.
Soraya looked at him, but neither of them spoke.
The markings on Milo’s wrists dimmed beneath the coats. Behind them, every bat vanished from the sky.
Department trackers flickered across Hector’s stolen screen. Locations multiplied through the industrial district, then disappeared in waves. The final Recovery vehicle turned north, chasing a signal that no longer existed.
Jinx had done it.
They had lost Milo.
At the far end of the loading yard, Magnus forced open a maintenance barrier and waved them through. Alex crossed last, sealing it behind her with three cards.
They reached the railway underpass before anyone stopped.
Rowan bent over with his hands braced on his knees. Soraya stayed beside the cart. Stellan checked Milo’s breathing, though rain blurred the monitor through his glasses.
Hector looked down at his phone.
The Six-Fold Array had updated.
01 / RECEIVER — SECUREMENT FAILED
Beneath it appeared:
SIGNAL DISPERSION DETECTED
Then:
SAINT VIGIL — TERMINATED
Alex read the last line over his shoulder. Her face emptied. Soraya closed her eyes.
Stellan stared until the words stopped looking like language.
Milo did not need the screen.
His head turned toward the distant substation, rain collecting in his hair and running over his temples.
“He made them fire it,” he whispered.
Magnus looked at him. “Who?”
Black-gold light returned faintly inside Milo’s eyes.
“Five.”
Another line appeared on Hector’s screen.
AMPLIFIER OUTPUT INCREASED
Milo’s mouth trembled.
“He wanted her to stay connected.”
Stellan covered his hand. “Why?”
Milo looked beyond the railway and the dark buildings, toward something only he could hear.
“So I would feel it.”