"You motherfuckers listen to me." 

Yet another voice sounds from the other room. A deep growl that freezes my blood and makes the tiniest hairs of mine stand on end. When I turn, however, I don't see anyone new. Instead, the two upright men stare, frozen, at the one in the chair. At Jesse.

"If any one of you as much as touches her, I will hunt you to the edge of the fucking universe," he continues in his terrifying growl as I shimmy the rod out of a small hole in the seam of my pants. "And when you die, I will haunt you in the afterlife until your fucking souls bleed out like wrung, wet rags on the streets of hell. And if there is no afterlife, I will make whatever god is out there create one just so I can roast you on a fucking spit for all eternity."

Silence. Everyone, Kaen's mother included, stares at Jesse. I freeze as I insert one end of the bobby pin in the keyhole and use the opportunity to lean to the side, giving myself better leverage. I can rotate it now and get free, but I pause.

The two men in the other room exchange a long glance. Kenneth turns to Jesse first, face paler than a sheet and eyes wider than dinner plates, and brings his knuckled fist across the man's face.

At that moment, I twist the pin and break free.

Kaen's mother immediately reaches for her gun at her waist, but I'm faster. Hurling my body at her, I topple her from the chair and send the gun sliding across the room. Then I elbow her on the side of the head. Her skull bounces off of the concrete floor. I yank her phone out of her pocket and run towards her gun. When I pick it up, I spin on my heels and aim it at her face. The three men in the other room don't react to what they don't see or hear.

"Next time," I pant as I press the muzzle to her forehead, "post more guards inside, darling."

She blinks as she tries focusing her eyes, and slowly brings her hands up. I use her face to unlock her phone and text Kenneth, ordering him to hold. He does. I guide the woman up and search her, checking all the seams she never thought to check on me. I find two sets of keys, one small enough for the handcuffs. I pocket them both, drag the chair I recently vacated to one of the shadowed corners of the room, and sit her down in it.

"I can tell what my son and the rest of them see in you," she says as I bring her wrists together behind the chair's back. "You're so much like her."

Her words freeze me as I click the cuffs together. The pounding of my head intensifies as the syllables penetrate. My brain pounds in sync with my heartbeat, and thunder roils in my ears as those words sink in. I round on her. She's smirking, looking almost identical to a man who swore he'd go to hell and back for me. One of the two.

"What the fuck did you just say?" I barely recognize my voice, so quiet and venomous. So like my father's.

"History repeats itself, honey," her smirk doesn't falter. "Go on, now, try and free one of your toys before mine catch on."

This isn't real. It can't be real. I'm dreaming. I'm still passed out somewhere and dreaming. Because there is no way in all the fucking world that she, Kaen's mother, who is supposedly dead, begins humming Liszt right now. That piece.

But she does. She does it while staring into the depths of my very soul. There is no mistaking it.

I smack the side of her head with the butt of her gun, cutting off that awful hum and making her head loll as she falls unconscious. Then I text Kenneth. I don't have time for any of her stupid fucking tricks. Whatever is going on here, freezing me in place is exactly what she wants. I'm not giving her that.

Kenneth seemingly takes forever to check his phone and leave the room. I press myself against the wall behind Kaen's mother and aim a gun at her head, praying she won't wake up too soon and alert guards undoubtedly posted outside. Knocking someone out doesn't work like it does in the movies—you usually have a few minutes at most. That's why they used a sedative on me and Jesse earlier. The clock is ticking fast.

Luckily for me, he arrives before she comes to. The door swings open as he steps in, and swings shut in the second he takes the seemingly empty room in.

"Hands where I can see them," I order.

His eyes follow my voice, taking a few moments to adjust in the darkness and harden as he makes out my form pointing a gun at the back of this woman's head. He slowly brings his hands up, hatred radiating in his eyes.

I tilt my chin at his holster belt. "Off. Slide it here. Slow-like."

He does as told, steadily bringing his hand to his holster belt. I watch One-Eye and Jesse out of my periphery. The big oaf asks taunting questions, trying to rile his captor up so he'd give information about what he'd done to me. My heart aches for both his devotion and the way those fuckers exploited it. But I can also haunt devils in the afterlife, even ones I'm terrified of, and I won't stand by watching him hurt Jesse any further.

"Just so you know," Kenneth sneers, laying his gun on the floor. "If you do anything to her, your boyfriend's dead."

He kicks it over to me. I stop it with my foot and pick it up, not taking my eyes off of him.

"It's a good thing these walls are soundproof, then," I say as I point his gun at him. "And that your buddy can't see us. A marvel of physics, truly. Cuffs."

It's lucky I noticed them on his belt loop. They've clearly been preparing for more prisoners; probably trying to use Jesse and me as hostages. He unhooks them. I jerk my head to that exposed water fountain pipe.

He gets the message and slowly makes his way to the thing. I follow him with the gun, eyes trained fully on him. His eyes are, likewise, fully trained on mine, save for one look at the woman in the chair. When I shove the other gun's muzzle into the back of her head, however, he looks back up to me, anger blazing hot again.

"Anytime this month," I tell him.

He shackles one wrist to the pipe, the cuffs making a satisfying click. I waste no time pistol-whipping him. My brain feels like it's going to burst, and I'm nauseous enough to vomit out my whole stomach, but I'm glad my reflexes aren't too impaired. Any slower, and he would've caught me with his free hand. But he only slumps, allowing me to liberate him from his keys, phone, and anything he can use for a lockpick.

This is too easy, a voice at the back of my mind tells me as I stand. I ignore it. I'll have time to consider everything when Jesse is free.

Something stirs behind me. I whip my face and gun at once, hitting Kaen's mother on the side of her head again. She slumps once more. Now that's gonna leave a mark.

I shove one gun behind my waistband and grab the empty chair in the middle of the room, hands on either side of its back.

"Sorry for giving your mom mild brain damage, babe," I say as I face the glass. One-Eye is about to lose his temper at Jesse, who is still relentlessly taunting him. "It was necessary."

I swing the chair as far back as my limbs allow and smash it into the glass.

Judging by the state of the water fountain, this is an old building, so I'm not surprised it took minimal effort for that pane to shatter. Shards fly everywhere, stinging like the tiny rose thorns in the Hydra's garden. I toss the thing away and leap over the hole I created, aiming my gun at One-Eye and... not finding him.

He'd fled, leaving the door wide open. I'm staring at two surprised guards for one long second instead. Before I get a chance to think, I shoot them both in the head—easy enough to do with my concussion at such a short distance, but not a good idea for my ears, which begin ringing again.

I do my best to ignore it and unshackle Jesse who, thankfully, managed to turn his face away from the glass, most of it marring his left side and back only.

"We need to get out of here," I yell at him through the ringing in my ears. The only reason I haven't shot our other two prisoners is because you can never count on a room being soundproof enough for a gunshot not to penetrate. All of that is moot, now that One-Eye escaped and I just shot the two bullheads in the hall.

I toss him the gun from behind my waistband and spare a glance at the two shackled forms in the other room. Bad idea, because I freeze as mumbled thoughts jump around in my head. I can shoot them now. I can kill them both.

"Sienna?" Jesse's voice penetrates. "We have to go!"

I grab his arm and tilt my chin in the woman's direction. I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out.

"Sienna, we have to go," Jesse repeats. "There's no time for this."

"But, this is..."

"If you're so upset about it, leave her. We have to go. NOW!"

I blink as my head snaps to him, the last of the ringing in my ears dissipating, giving way to distant shouts and alarms.

I nod at him. "Let's go."

There are cameras right outside, which we shoot before making our way through dilapidated hallways swarming with rats of both human and animal kinds, the former of which we dispose of.

"I think we're underground," Jesse tells me as we round a corner.

I nod to the end of that hallway. "No windows or doors leading out. But there are stairs."

Said stairs sit in what used to be a boiler room. They're made of crumbling metal, not unlike a dilapidated fire escape.

"There's no way we're making it up that thing," Jesse says as he studies the rusting steps. "It's falling apart."

I nod, hoping that we will have a choice in the matter. As we round another corner out of the hallway, however, Jesse's arm flies out to stop me. He's looking up, and my eyes follow.

"Shit," I hiss, immediately backing away. I'm staring into a big black circle and a red blinking dot below. A camera, the first of its kind that I see away from the interrogation room. And it saw us.

Yells from our right, a rush of booted feet from ahead of us.

"Fuck," Jesse snaps between clenched teeth. So much for that hope.

We run to the crumbling staircase.

"Save your strength, baby," a poisonous voice yells behind me, almost freezing me in place. "You'll need it for what I have planned for you. There's no way out that way."

The only thing spurring me on is Jesse's hand at the small of my back, clenching into a fist at those words. I dare look back, seeing One-Eye taking his sweet-ass time at the head of his lackeys.

I shoot at him, but he's too far and my concussion is too bad to hit true at this distance. I drop a few of his friends, though. He only laughs.

"Keep going," he calls. "You'll only make it worse for yourself."

We reach the stairs, and Jesse pushes me onto it. "Go, I'm right behind you."

It takes me a few steps on the creaking thing to realize he isn't. I turn back, the shifting of my weight emitting a loud groan from the crumbling metal. He locks eyes with me. "Go."

"I'm not leaving without you," I snap.

"This thing can't hold us both, Sienna."

"Then we both stay."

His jaw clenches as he turns to the rapidly approaching crowd. Glancing to the side, he shoots one of the gas pipes before him, pushing them back and buying some time. Then he turns to me, stands just before the stairs and brings his hand forward. I lean into his palm on my cheek.

"Sienna," he says. "I lost my sister to gangbanging pieces of shit like this. I'll be fucking damned if I lose you too."

"This isn't your—"

"I don't care!" He snaps, the look in his eyes shutting me right up and bringing a hard ball to my throat. "You've done a lot of things yourself, and I trusted you. Now it's your turn. Do this for me. Go."

My throat seizes up. "Jesse..."

He brings me forward and our lips meet. I hang onto them like I'm on the precipice of falling off a cliff and they're the tree root keeping me from tumbling to my death. Jesse. My Jesse. I can't leave him here. I can't do this.

He breaks away and presses his forehead to mine. "I will find you. I promise. Okay?"

He's lying, but I cling to the false hope he gives me and find myself nodding as tears run down my face.

"I love you," he whispers.

I'm plunged into an ice bath. My eyes bulge as I look up at his tear-filled ones. That false hope dissipates like a lavender bomb dissolving in the bath he drew for me. I can't accept the finality of those words. I can't give up those bright eyes, those strong hands, this brilliant, funny person who just admitted... who just said...

"Go," he pushes me up and off of him as he walks away, taking the heat of his body with him. I can't move.

"Sienna!" He snaps in that voice that makes me flinch, not looking at me. "Now!"

Tasting the salt of my tears, forcing my body to move against every sense in me, I do as I'm told. The stairs whine and groan at my weight. One step collapses beneath my foot. I catch myself on the rusting banister, not looking at how the broken pieces fall to the ground, because if I look I'll find Jesse there, abandoned, possibly being attacked right this instant. Instead, I right myself and plant my foot on the next step. Forward. Only forward. Do this for me. But as I approach the top, my heart plummets to my stomach.

There's nothing but stone in front of me.

There is no way out that way.

"NO!" I bang my fists on the concrete like I expect it to do anything. The stairs shake with my shifting weight, but I don't care.

All for nothing. I can almost hear One-Eye laughing at me. And Jesse... I can't hear him. The walls close in, and my rib cage tightens around my lungs. I can't breathe, can't see, can't hear anything but a high-pitched, rhythmic beep. Like that bomb in Bennett's house.

It gets faster.

I stare at the wall of rock in horror for a fraction of a second, one that is enough to spur my feet on their descent. I take the broken stairs two at a time, mindless of any pieces falling. Still, I don't get far.

The explosion rattles the fragile staircase like a baby rattles a... well, baby rattle. I hold on to a railing as it pushes outwards, swinging by some miracle from its remains bolted to the rock. I close my eyes, forcing myself to take deep breaths in through yet another ringing in my ears. If I get out of this alive, I'll probably end up deaf.

Closing my eyes is another bad idea, as the swaying only accentuates my concussion-fuelled nausea. Not wanting to look down, I tilt my head upwards before opening them.

And what I see has to be a hallucination. What's holding the railing is not a bolt, it's not a thing.

It's Elijah.

His hair, always so neat and pulled back, is hanging in tatters about his eyes. His sleeves are rolled up, exposing a full sleeve tattoo and two bulging forearms. His neck is taut with effort as he yells a word that sounds like 'pull', though I can't hear him.

And whoever is helping him does just that, lifting me up with the railing. I will my legs and arms to move, climbing the thing like one would climb a ladder, using the balusters for steps. When I reach the top, I feel two strong, warm hands grab my forearms and pull me over the edge. I land in Elijah's arms, shaking and panting.

"You're okay," he tells me. "I got you."

I lift my head and press my mouth against his as fresh tears run down my face. He smells of spice and tastes like bourbon. I wrap my arms around him and pull him close against my chest, willing him to hear everything I want to say with my lips; how thankful I am, how elated I am to see him, how I feared I'd never be able to do this. It doesn't take long for his hands to wrap around my waist, for his mouth to move with mine, and for his breath to quicken.

I pull back and see him smile. I'd be shocked if I wasn't so elated, as I've never seen him smile before. Not genuinely like he does now. It makes him look so young with those straight teeth and that dimple on his left cheek.

Then I see his helper.

When my eyes meet Gage's, he doesn't hesitate. I reach out to him, and Elijah lets me go as the bigger brother scoops me up and presses his mouth against mine. I welcome him as I throw my arms around him, feeling warmth spread through me as his large hands wrap around my waist.

But I remember the last person I kissed before Elijah, and I pull away.

"Jesse," I say as soon as my mouth is free and look at the other brother. "Jesse's still in there."

Elijah's face hardens. "Was he on the stairs with you?" I shake my head and hear screams coming from below.

"Then don't worry," Gage says. "Kaen's on it."