Alexei snagged a small military backpack off a nail on the shack wall and opened it.
Inside there were bracelets with numbers stamped in metal, a punch, and a cheap hammer.
He went still for two seconds and then closed the bag again, single-fingered like it smelled bad and to touch it any more than strictly necessary would contaminate him in some way. He hung it back on the nail and walled it off in his head with a pin in it for later.
"We'll need to expect pens," he murmured, almost to himself. "And not the kind to write with."
Elias heard that anyway. "We free those first."
"We free ours first," Zubair cut in. His voice wasn't harsh, just a correction from a man who kept priorities in a simple list.
Sera cut the tension in half with a flick of her wrist. Her space responded the way a good dog did—a small cooler dropped into her palm from thin air, and a smile appeared on her face.
