The buzz was soft.
One mean little vibration against cloth.
In the dark car, it landed like a gunshot.
Everybody heard it.
Evelyn went still first. Then his hand was in his jacket, pulling Isaac's dead phone back out like he already hated what it meant before the screen even lit.
It should've stayed black.
It didn't.
Cold white lit his face from below.
Isaac saw the words before Evelyn could turn it away.
WRONG GIRL.
RIGHT SLEEVE.
NEXT ONE GOES THROUGH THE LOUD ONE.
Ty stared.
Then pointed at his own chest with his good hand. "That's me, right? I'm the loud one?"
Nobody answered, which was answer enough.
Jadah's whole body locked.
Her hand flew to the blood-soaked sleeve of her hoodie so fast it might as well have confessed.
Bad.
Evelyn snapped his eyes to her, then to Isaac, and all the control in him turned harder instead of breaking.
"Now," he said. "Get it off her."
"No," Isaac said.
"Yes."
"No."
Ty looked between them like he was one second from just opening the door and jogging into traffic. "Can someone please explain why my personality is now actionable intelligence?"
The front passenger twisted around, checked the rear window, then the side mirror.
"They're back on us."
The driver swore under his breath. "Two cars?"
"One confirmed. Maybe another hanging off."
Maybe. Good enough to die on.
Evelyn crushed the phone in both hands with sudden, ugly force. Not enough to break it clean. Enough to spiderweb the screen under his thumbs. Then he shoved it under his heel and ground down until something inside popped.
"Three minutes," the driver said. "Less if the light gods hate us."
"The light gods definitely hate us," Ty said.
Marlon made a low sound and folded a little farther sideways.
Ty caught him immediately. "No. No, no. Stay with me."
"I'm here," Marlon muttered.
"Sound more committed."
Isaac leaned toward Jadah before Evelyn could.
"Let me see your shoulder."
She stared at him.
For half a second she thought he meant the wound.
Then she understood the tone.
The tiny extra weight in it.
She shifted, slow enough to look stubborn instead of scared, and peeled her hand away from the ripped hoodie.
Blood had spread dark through the fabric from the slash across the top of her shoulder. Not gushing. Bad enough. Her sleeve hung heavy from more than blood.
Isaac tore the bottom hem off his own T-shirt with his good hand and his teeth. The rip jolted his shoulder and made his vision pulse white at the edges.
Did it anyway.
Ty looked over. "Oh, now we do field medicine?"
"Shut up," Jadah snapped.
Good. Still sharp enough to sound like herself.
Isaac leaned in close like he was just checking the cut. His fingers slid under the ruined sleeve, hit wet fabric, warm skin, then plastic.
There.
Tiny.
He palmed it in one motion.
Jadah sucked in one sharp breath when his knuckles brushed the wound.
He kept his face blank.
Wrapped the torn cloth over her shoulder with his left hand while his right closed around the flash drive so hard the edges bit into his palm.
"Too tight," she hissed.
"Good," he said.
He tied the strip off and used the next movement to press his bleeding forearm against his ribs like pain had made him fold.
It had.
Also gave him cover.
The flash drive slid from palm to wrist as he wound the bloody loose end of shirt around the slash on his own forearm.
One loop.
Then another.
Plastic under cloth.
Held flat against skin by pressure and blood.
It hurt immediately.
Perfect.
When he looked up, Evelyn was watching him.
Not his hands.
His face.
Trying to read what had changed.
Isaac gave him nothing.
Or tried to.
Across the seat, Jadah's eyes flicked once to his wrapped arm and away so fast it almost didn't happen.
Good.
The driver cut across two lanes and took a right so hard Ty slammed shoulder-first into the door.
"Wonderful," Ty said. "Love this carnival ride."
The front passenger checked behind them again. "They committed."
"Of course they did," Jadah said, voice thin now under the anger.
Evelyn leaned forward between the seats. "No clinic. No known stops."
The driver shot him a look in the mirror. "Then where."
"Ren's place."
That name hit the car and stayed there.
Not because the others knew it.
Because Isaac almost did.
Rain on a window. A woman laughing in another room. His mother saying, not in front of him.
The shape of memory. Nothing whole enough to trust.
Ty heard the name and pounced anyway. "Great. A name. Incredible. We're evolving."
Marlon's head dipped again.
Ty grabbed his jaw. "Hey."
Marlon blinked slowly. "Stop touching my face."
"There he is."
Evelyn twisted once, braced a hand against the seat, and looked straight at Ty. "Keep pressure on the leg. Harder than you think."
Ty did. His hand shook anyway.
Jadah sat back against the door, eyes closed for one second too long. Her face had gone chalky under the brown. Blood from the cut under her jaw had reached the collar of the hoodie and dried there in a thin ugly line.
Isaac looked at his own forearm.
The shirt strip was already going dark.
The flash drive pressed flat beneath it, small and brutal.
He could feel every corner.
The SUV shot under an overpass and darkness swallowed them for half a second.
In that dark, Jadah's hand found his wrist.
Not gentle.
Not romantic.
Just checking.
Still there?
Isaac turned his arm once, just enough.
Yes.
Her hand let go.
Across from them, Evelyn didn't miss that either.
His jaw set harder.
Good.
Let him keep guessing.
The front passenger said, "One car still on. Hanging back."
"Can they see in?" the driver asked.
"Not with tint."
Ty laughed once. "That's what we said about the other one."
Nobody liked that.
They blew another light.
Marlon made a sound low in his throat that wasn't quite pain and wasn't quite consciousness either.
Ty leaned over him. "Nope. Stay up."
"Trying."
"Try louder."
"Your mouth is bleeding on me."
Ty looked briefly offended. "That is not the point."
Jadah opened one eye. "Actually, that's kind of his whole thing."
Ty stared at her like she'd risen from the dead just to annoy him. "You're insane."
"Obviously."
Good.
Still her too.
The SUV veered off the main road and into a stretch of shuttered warehouses and auto lots fenced in with chain-link and rust. No storefronts now. No people on stoops. Just sodium-orange lamps and long dead windows.
The driver killed the headlights for three full seconds.
Ty made a wounded noise. "I hate that."
Then a corrugated gate ahead rattled once and began to roll up.
Just enough.
The SUV shot through the opening sideways, clipped a traffic cone into oblivion, and stopped hard inside a dark service bay that smelled like oil, brake cleaner, and wet concrete.
The gate slammed back down behind them.
Silence hit so fast it rang.
Not true silence.
Engine ticking hot.
Marlon breathing too slow.
Jadah trying not to breathe too fast.
Ty cursing under his breath in fragments.
But compared to the last hour, it felt like the world had stepped sideways and forgotten to make sound for a second.
Then the woman from the alley stepped into the bay light.
Dark coat gone now. Black shirt underneath. Hair still yanked back. Blood on one sleeve that didn't look like hers. Gun low in one hand. No wasted fear anywhere on her.
Her eyes found the back seat immediately.
Found Isaac.
Stopped there half a beat longer than they should have.
Then moved on.
"Out," she said. "Wounded first."
Ty looked at Evelyn. Then at her. "I need a vote on whether this is still kidnapping."
"Get him out of the car," she said, meaning Marlon.
Ty chose Marlon over the joke. Good.
He hauled him up with help from the front passenger. Marlon got one foot under him, then almost folded completely when the bad leg took weight.
The woman was there fast, grabbing under his other arm.
Her touch was efficient. Familiar with blood.
Not gentle.
"Still awake?" she asked him.
Marlon looked at her through half-lidded eyes. "Against medical advice."
That got the smallest exhale out of her. Not a smile. Close enough.
"Table," she said.
Two other people appeared from deeper in the garage, rolling a metal cart and clearing a workbench already covered in clean sheets, gauze, bottled saline, clamps, things that made Ty's face go pale all over again.
"Oh, I hate this room," he said.
Jadah got out next and almost made it clean.
Almost.
The second both feet hit concrete, her knees tried to fold. Isaac caught her under the good arm.
She swore at the floor like it had disrespected her.
The woman's eyes dropped to the blood on Jadah's shoulder, then to the line under her jaw, then to the wet shirt strip around Isaac's forearm.
Finally to Evelyn.
"What happened."
Evelyn looked older under the garage lights than he had in the alley.
"They reached the old house first."
Something tight and ugly moved across the woman's face.
Gone just as fast.
"And the item?"
Nobody answered.
That answer was louder than if they had.
Her gaze cut to Jadah.
Then Isaac.
Then his wrapped forearm.
Not because she knew.
Because she knew enough to know silence had changed shape around those two.
Ty heard the shift too and straightened up from where he was helping Marlon to the table.
"Oh no," he said. "No, we're not doing another silent code scene. Absolutely not."
The woman ignored him.
She took one step toward Isaac.
Not threatening.
That made it worse somehow.
"You're bleeding through that."
Isaac looked down.
The makeshift wrap on his forearm had gone almost fully dark now, blood seeping into the shirt cloth and holding it tight to skin.
And to the thing underneath.
"I noticed," he said.
Her eyes lifted back to his.
Then, very softly, like she was checking whether his face would give something memory couldn't:
"You were smaller the last time I saw you."
The whole room changed temperature.
Isaac went still.
Ty looked from one to the other. "Okay, great, another evil adult from the cinematic universe."
The woman didn't even blink at him.
Her attention stayed on Isaac.
Not warm.
Not cold either.
Worse than both.
Personal.
Evelyn said her name before Isaac could ask for it.
"Ren."
There it was.
Rain on a window.
A kitchen table.
His mother saying it low.
Don't let him hear that.
Isaac felt something in his stomach drop another floor.
Ren looked at Evelyn without taking her eyes fully off Isaac. "Did they see the transfer."
Evelyn didn't answer quickly enough.
That was answer enough.
Ren's gaze slid to Jadah's torn sleeve.
Then to Isaac's wrapped forearm.
Then back to his face.
A tiny pause.
Long enough to matter.
When she spoke again, her voice had gone flatter.
"Then either he moved it," she said, "or we don't have a night left to waste."
And Ty, finally hearing enough to stop joking at all, looked straight at Isaac's arm and said—
"Bro. What did you do."