As the boat surged ahead and the potions wore off, each member of the team faded back into view. Grim was hunched over the steering wheel, navigating through the cracked windshield with a stony expression. Sherry was pressing a cloth to Banneker’s stomach, the green of the healing potion mixing with the deep red from the wound. Another vial of green dangled from Banneker’s hand, only a few drops left in the bottom of the glass.

“Sherry,” Banneker groaned and scrunched his eyes closed, head lolling back and forth on the seat, “Sherry, when will it stop?”

“It’s healing, it’s healing,” Sherry mumbled. She took the vial from his hand and held his fingers tight. “You’re going to be fine, just keep breathing through it.”

Between the three of them, no one was in a position to explain the situation as Ambrose had promised. Eli slouched, dropped his head into his hands, and fought the urge to vomit. “Why did we…” he swallowed hard, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “What did we just do?”

“Up here, Valenz.”

Eli looked up to find Grim motioning him forward, their eyes fixed on the water. He took a breath and staggered towards them, pausing to set a hesitant hand on Sherry’s shoulder.

“Is there anything I can—“

“No, no. He’ll be alright.” She shook her head and pushed him forward. Eli squeezed Banneker’s arm, then slipped to the front of the boat alongside Grim, where they gripped the wheel with a blood-stained hand. Blooms of scarlet covered the front of their shirt.

Eli recoiled instantly. “Grim, are you—?”

“It’s all Banneker’s,” they grunted. Their expression cracked briefly, then smoothed back out. “What did Beake tell you in the basement?”

Eli’s mind shot back to the potion, the veins, the kiss. He shuddered and kept his gaze on the water.

“Nothing,” he retorted, folding his arms. When Grim remained silent, he reluctantly shifted his shoulders. “He said…he said drawing him out was the only way to make it stop.”

Grim nodded. “If we all flew out in three days as you expected, Pearce would never stop hunting us. It wouldn’t matter if Ambrose handed off the research, or never stole another thing in his life. We’d be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives.” Their grip on the wheel tightened. “So he dropped a tip to draw Pearce out, get himself captured.”

Eli stiffened. “And now?”

“Now he’ll kill Pearce.”

“He’ll kill—?” Eli’s stomach flipped, and he covered his hands with his face. “Why does he insist he do everything by himself? Why is he such an idiot? Why didn’t he—,” he gestured back to the shore and raised his voice to a bellow. “Why didn’t he fucking tell me?”

Grim’s jaw clenched. “Because I told him not to.”

“You what?” Eli whirled around. There was nothing to throw, nothing to kick. He settled for kicking Grim’s shin. “You asshole! I know the agency, I know Pearce, I could’ve come up with another way—“

“Another way?” Grim had the gall to laugh. “You would’ve tied Ambrose up and dragged him onto the plane, had he told you about the plan!”

The truth in their words curdled the anger churning in Eli’s stomach. “At least he would have been safe!”

“You call being hunted safe?”

Eli opened his mouth, then closed it and set his jaw. Grim ran a hand over their buzzcut. “I know you’re worried, but…Beake isn’t doing this alone. He never does anything alone. We all decided on this plan together, and he wanted you to be a part of it.” For the first time, they turned from the broken windshield to look at him. “If you’re going to be angry at anyone, be angry at me. All Beake is trying to do is secure a new life with you.”

Eli’s anger quickly dissolved into guilt-ridden pain. As stupid as he was, Ambrose was right. Pearce was the biggest threat to their new life—all their new lives—outside of the cabin. Or…what was left of the cabin.

Not meeting Grim’s gaze, he sat on a blood-soaked seat and swallowed the bile in his throat. “I can still be a part of the plan.”

“What?”

“It’s my life too, isn’t it?” he snapped, then took a breath and sat back. “Let me help secure it.”

#

As Grim steered the boat towards an empty dock, Sherry, Banneker, and Eli gathered to talk through the rest of the flannel brigade’s plan. Unwilling to have Banneker waste precious energy on rambling, Sherry commandeered the hacker’s phone and held it up for Eli to see.

“Ambrose is wearing a tracker that Banneker’s drone—“

“Tom.” Banneker held up a finger.

“That Tom is following.” She swiped to a bird’s eye view of four armored trucks speeding down a forested road. “They’re headed to their facility out west, as we suspected. City’s too far away.”

Banneker tried to lean forward to look at the screen. “Did you check to see if Pearce with them?”

Sherry pushed him back down. “We know he isn’t.”

“He wouldn’t be,” Eli muttered in agreement. “Doesn’t like getting his hands dirty in actual raids.”

“But he still wants Beake dead,” Grim called back over the slowing rumble of the motor. “Pearce will try to kill him before he gets to the facility. Claim he was shot in the attack, then drag in the dead body as proof. No one in the agency will refute him.”

Eli rubbed his forehead as he recalled the old agent files in his bug-out bag. Ambrose wasn’t going to be another dead man on Pearce’s list. “So how is Ambrose planning on killing Pearce first?”

Banneker squirmed in his seat. “Tom will hit the truck in about three miles, when Ames needs to drink the partial neutralizer that’s in his pocket. The impact should distract the guards inside just long enough for him to take it.”

“Partial neutralizer?” Eli repeated. Sherry pressed her lips into a line as she swiped to something else on the phone—a series of changing numbers and a rapid heartbeat line.

“My invention, against my better judgment,” she mumbled. “The dose should keep his heart going while retaining some of his powers.”

“Keep his heart—?” Eli started, then swallowed the rest of his words. Banneker already lay in a pool of his own blood, while Grim remained a tense statue at the wheel. No one on the boat needed him pressing that phrase.

“When Pearce intercepts the trucks,” Sherry continued, “Ambrose will use his remaining powers to take them out. Grim has a truck and a bike at the dock—with any luck, we’ll pick him up before the agency realizes anything’s wrong.”

“And what will we be doing while Ambrose is taking out,” Eli counted the trucks again and grimaced, “at least two dozen people?”

“Laying cover fire and making sure no one escapes,” Grim said. “Something you could help with, given your shooting skills.”

The boat slowed into a no-wake zone, and the sudden quiet of the motor rang in Eli’s ears. Banneker checked his watch, then tugged on Sherry’s sleeve. “Hey, Tom should be hitting the truck soon. Could you…?”

She shifted the phone back to the stream of the drone, which now flew low over the forest. Pine boughs whipped past the camera as it dipped over the two-lane road and swerved around to the side of the truck. Eli felt Grim’s shadow slip over his shoulder as they all gathered close around Sherry to watch.

“Okay. In three…” Banneker bit his lip. “Two…”

The drone ducked and flew straight into the wall of the truck, blurring the footage into a smudge of gray, then black. When it re-connected, it was hovering over the road again, watching from afar as the truck slowed down and pulled to the side.

“So if Ambrose took the neutralizer…” Sherry handed Eli the phone, then whipped out her own and mumbled indistinctly about heart rates and statistics. Eli returned to scrutinizing every motion of the truck as it ground to a halt, letting out a single agent from the front.

“What’s happening?” Banneker leaned towards Eli, and he realized he was holding the phone an inch from his face. He blinked and angled it towards Banneker, who tapped the screen to connect audio.

“…tire blow?” the driver was calling out to the agent, who half-heartedly scanned the outside of the truck.

“No, tires are fine.” Gun in hand, the agent moved to the back of the truck and pounded against the door. “All good in there?”

“Grim,” Sherry cut in, her voice too sharp, “the boy’s stats aren’t changing.”

As Grim shifted to Sherry’s side, Eli kept his eyes glued to the footage. “Can the drone see into the truck when they open the door?”

“Sure, let me…” Banneker took the phone and pulled up the controls. As the doors swung open, the drone dipped low again, then zoomed in past the agent’s shoulder.

As Eli expected, eight agents sat on the horseshoe bench within the truck, all armed and stiff-postured. Their prisoner slumped in the back, a light-colored blur against the darkness of the surrounding uniforms.

“One sec,” Banneker tapped at another set of controls, and the camera shifted into sharp focus on Ambrose.

Eli almost vomited over the side of the boat.

“Sherry…” His voice came out rough, almost a whisper. “I don’t think Ames took the neutralizer.”

Sherry and Grim instantly crowded around his shoulders to see what the drone was focused on. Ambrose was unconscious, drenched in blood from his hair down to his belt.

Below the ragged shifting of his ribcage, his cuffed hands remained empty and still.

Then the door slammed shut, and the truck pulled back onto the road.