Page 27 of Eden and her Mercenary
Royal and I exchanged glances, a silent communication passing between us. Finally, he nodded. "Alright, she comes with us to Dr. Chen's. But—" he fixed Harrison with a steely gaze, "—if anything happens to that dog because of you, there won't be a safe house on earth that can protect you."
Harrison met his gaze unflinchingly. "Understood."
We split up as planned, Ryker driving the damaged van to create a false trail, while Royal, Harrison, and I transferred to Mack's truck with the neural mapper. Before departing, Royal pulled his brother aside for a brief, intense conversation that ended with a quick embrace.
"Stay safe," Ryker called as he climbed back into the van.
"You too," Royal replied, his usual confident demeanor slipping just enough to reveal genuine concern.
The drive to Dr. Chen's clinic was tense and mostly silent. Harrison dozed fitfully in the back seat while Royal navigated, following Mack's truck along increasingly remote roads. I fought to stay awake, adrenaline gradually giving way to bone-deep exhaustion.
"You should sleep," Royal said softly, noticing my struggle. "I'll wake you when we arrive."
I shook my head stubbornly. "Can't. Not until I know Stella's okay."
He reached across the console, taking my hand in his. "She's with Wren. No safer place right now."
I wanted to argue, but exhaustion was winning. My eyes grew heavier, Royal's hand warm and reassuring in mine, as darkness claimed me.
Chapter 9
Royal
The last time I broke into a place for a good reason, it was an illegal apocalypse bunker full of poached bear parts and enough ammunition to arm a small coup. That had felt cleaner than this.
In the glow of pre-dawn, Dr. Chen’s hunting-lodge-turned-clinic was a slab of old timber perched above the lake, cedar and birch wound up so tight you’d miss it from the highway. We parked under a tangle of last year’s Christmas lights and three sun-bleached American flags, because Chen liked reminders that she was still, technically, a citizen of somewhere. Above the door hung a cartoonish wooden welcome sign: “If You’re Here, You’re Lost. Or You Know the Code.”
Eden was up, but her face had the hollow edges of deep-bunker sleep as she rolled open the truck door. Harrison, surprisingly, was already gathering the neural mapper, clutching it like it might leap out of her arms if she didn’t concentrate. Mack’s hands, steady as a ritual, lifted the sedative cooler and surgical case from his truck bed.
We looked like a hell of a crew, I thought: a mob enforcer, a dog transporter, a disgraced neuroscientist, and a small-town vet all marching before 6 AM into the den of a surgeon who’d once gotten sanctioned for using a 3D printer to replicate a patient’s larynx without telling the hospital. I almost laughed.
Before I could, the front door popped open and Chen leaned out, silver hair bound into a knot at the nape of her neck. “You’re late,” she said, glancing at her watch, which I noticed she wore upside-down. Her eyes fell to the neural mapper and then to Harrison. “You brought the witch with you. Good.”
She let us in without another word. The inside was a riot of taxidermy and mid-century Danish furniture—a haphazard chemistry between old world survivalism and Scandinavian minimalism. If Ed Gein and Martha Stewart had ever co-hosted a show, it would look like this.
Chen led us through to the “theatre”—her repurposed den, now lined with LED surgical lamps that splayed light across the huge stone hearth and a slab of stainless steel where one might imagine a bear skin stretched, except it was the place for the patient. The walls were unevenly painted, the smell of isopropyl and wet dog barely covering the musk of pine resin.
“Where is the subject?” Chen asked, stretching nitrile gloves over her thin fingers. Her voice couldhave carved glass.
“On the way,” I said. “Leaving a false trail for the Junction cleanup crew.”
“Good. They’re sloppy, but it only takes once.” She waved us to the side and began prepping the table, snapping tools into a neat row. “Harrison, you’ll walk me through the protocol for disabling the anti-tampering device. You’ll do it slowly. If you lie, you’ll watch the dog die.”
Harrison, to her credit, didn’t flinch. She unlatched the hard case and began to assemble the neural mapper, hands moving with the subdued energy of someone resigned to harm reduction. “It’s a three-step protocol,” she said, “biometric handshake, then ROS scavenger injection, then low-frequency override. You’ll have to—”
“We’ll have to sedate first,” Chen interrupted, handing the vial to Mack, “then excise the tissue en bloc. How long is the kill-switch response?”
“Twenty seconds,” said Harrison.
I watched Eden as she listened, her jaw set but her fingers trembling at her side. I moved over; she gave me a quick look, unsure, and I just put my hand on her shoulder—felt the little quiver there.
We waited in the shadows for the next twenty minutes, Mack quietly prepping syringes while I used the downtime to text Ryker—status on the decoy. Hisreply was nearly instant: "Split off. Two tails. ETA to you in 3 hrs, will circle property before approach."
I deleted the text and pocketed the phone.
∞∞∞
They arrived in Wren’s SUV with the sort of casual haste that meant nothing had gone wrong, but it still felt like maybe it had. Wren came in first, hair up in a towel turban like she’d just gotten out of the shower—her way of telling us, I guess, that she was unfazed. Declan followed, carrying Stella in a blanket like she was an artifact smuggled out of some war zone. The dog’s breathing was shallow but even, her eyes open and glassy as she took in the light.
