The chains didn't bite.
They waited.
Lena felt them like gravity—coiled, patient, certain she would fall the way everyone eventually did.
Rafferty stood a few steps away now, hands folded over the silver head of his cane, as if this were a boardroom negotiation instead of a collapse. The Silver Men held their perimeter with the calm of men who had already calculated every death in the room.
"Time," Rafferty said gently, "to simplify things."
He gestured once, and the Men shifted—subtle, lethal. Lanes of fire closed. Escape routes vanished.
Lena swallowed.
Her heart beat against the device in her chest, fast and furious, like it was trying to outrun the decision before her.
"You don't have to do this," Brine said. His voice was steady, but his eyes weren't. They were stripped bare now—no masks left, no strategies, just him.
"You come with me. We get you out. I don't care what it costs."
Rafferty smiled.
Of course he did.
"And there it is," he said softly. "The lie heroes always tell themselves—that love is stronger than leverage."
He turned to Lena. "Come with me, and no one else dies tonight."
Moody's jaw flexed. "You're lying."
Rafferty didn't look at him. "I rarely need to."
Lena closed her eyes for half a second.
When she opened them, the world was sharp again.
She looked at Rafferty first—at the calm cruelty, the ownership already written into the way he said come with me. At the future where she would be managed, deployed, praised, erased.
Then she looked at Brine.
He wasn't promising safety.
He wasn't promising control.
He was promising risk.
She took a step.
The Silver men rifles tracked instantly.
Another step—toward Brine.
Rafferty's expression didn't change. But something colder moved behind his eyes.
"So," he said quietly. "You choose the wound."
Lena stopped in front of Brine. Close enough to feel his breath hitch. Close enough that he reached for her without thinking—and stopped himself, hands hovering, because he was afraid to cage her again.
"I choose you," she said. Her voice shook.
"Not your secrets. Not your plans. The last time i chose someone else, this is what i got. So i chose you."
For one impossible second, hope flickered.
That was when the shot came.
It wasn't loud.
It was precise.
A sharp, insect-fast thup—and Lena gasped as something kissed the side of her neck. Cold fire spread through her veins.
"No—!" Brine shouted, catching her as her knees buckled.
Rafferty exhaled, almost regretful.
"Sedative," he said mildly. "Fast-acting. Non-lethal. I did say I preferred her intact."
Brine roared, turning, but red dots flooded his vision. Dozens. Maybe more.
One move and he would be erased.
Across the perimeter, hidden behind a collapsed wall, Finley's lens stayed steady. Her hands trembled, but the feed was clean—audio, visuals, Rafferty's voice, the sniper's vector. She sent it all in a compressed burst.
To Luke.
Now.
Moody moved.
It wasn't smart. It wasn't calculated. It was instinct—the same one that had made him stay when Brine ran.
He lunged toward Rafferty.
"Moody, don't—!" Brine shouted.
The second shot came before the warning finished.
Then the third.
Moody staggered, momentum carrying him forward before gravity remembered him. He hit the ground hard, blood blooming dark across his back.
"NO!" Lena tried to say, but the word drowned in sleep.
Rafferty winced faintly.
"Excessive," he murmured into the comm.
"I only authorised one."
The Red didn't move.
Brine dropped beside Moody, hands pressing uselessly against the wounds.
"Stay with me," he begged. "You idiot. You absolute—stay."
Sirens rose in the distance—Hellfire's response, finally punching through the confusion. An ambulance tore into view as Brine's men forced their way through what little space the Red allowed.
Rafferty lifted Lena easily, like she weighed nothing at all.
"She made her choice," he said, stepping back into the smoke. "And so did we."
Brine looked up, wild, broken, helpless.
Rafferty met his gaze one last time.
"Family," he said pleasantly, and vanished.
The smoke swallowed them.
Brine stayed on his knees as medics dragged Moody onto a stretcher, as doors slammed, as engines screamed.
He watched the space where Lena had been taken.
And for the first time since he'd learned how to survive,
Brine didn't know how to breathe without her.