The laugh outside came soft.
Not loud enough to be a threat on its own.
That was why it worked.
Every person in the cage heard it and pictured the same thing: the janitor-shirt man standing right beyond the loading door in the dark, head tilted, patient as rot.
Ren rose without a word and crossed the bay low, gun up, staying outside the red wash from the office. Isaac watched her shape slide between tire stacks and tool chests until she became just another shadow among shadows.
Marlon didn't lift his head.
"Tell me that wasn't him."
Nobody did.
That answered it.
Jadah drew one knee up and wrapped both arms around it, then immediately swore under her breath when her shoulder reminded her what shape it was in.
Isaac looked at her hand.
Still.
Then the washer by her shoe gave one tiny turn on the concrete like it had heard him looking.
He looked away.
Across the bay, Ren stopped by the loading door and listened with her whole body. No peeking. No dramatic move. Just stillness with intent in it.
Outside, nothing.
Then a slow scrape across corrugated metal.
Left to right.
Testing.
Ty would've said he was ringing the walls to find the hollow part.
Ty was gone.
Isaac pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until pain flashed bright and useless. When he dropped them, Marlon was staring at him.
Not accusing.
Worse.
Seeing too much.
"You heard it too," Marlon said.
Isaac nodded once.
"Good," Marlon muttered. "Thought maybe I was finally losing it in a way that'd be convenient."
Jadah made a sound that might have been a laugh in a less broken room.
The loading door thudded once from the outside.
Not hard.
Like a person knocking to be polite.
Then the janitor's voice came through the corrugated metal, faintly warped and somehow clearer for that.
"You locked yourselves in a tire shop."
No one answered.
He waited a beat.
Then, almost fondly, "That's not a joke. I'm saying it because it's funny."
Marlon looked at the floor harder.
Isaac knew exactly why.
Ty should have answered that.
Ty would have.
Ren's voice came out from the dark by the bay door.
"Don't."
Isaac couldn't tell whether she meant don't answer him or don't let this get under your skin.
Either worked.
The man outside laughed again, softer.
"I liked the loud one."
That did something ugly to the cage.
Marlon's head came up fast enough that his vision must have swum. Jadah went white around the mouth. Isaac was already halfway off the bucket before he knew he'd moved.
Ren stepped into view with the gun still in her hand.
"Sit down."
Nobody did.
The janitor kept talking through the metal like they were neighbors separated by a fence instead of predators and prey separated by a loading bay.
"He was the easiest to find the center of," he said. "Some people are all edges. Noise. Motion. Him, though." A little pause. "Simple."
Isaac took one step toward the door.
Ren pointed the gun at him without even looking. "No."
He stopped because the word had more truth in it than force.
Jadah spoke before he could.
Her voice was thin, sharp, furious enough to cut herself on the way out.
"What are you."
The scrape on the loading door stopped.
For a second Isaac thought maybe he'd gone.
Then the voice came back, right on the other side now. Close enough that you could feel breath in the shape of the syllables even through the steel.
"Hungry, mostly."
Something hit the chain-link beside Jadah with a metallic tick.
A socket wrench.
It bounced once and spun to a stop near her boot.
All four of them looked at it.
Jadah's face emptied.
Then two more small pieces of metal shifted near her shoe. A nut. A washer. Tiny little movements. Not enough that anyone could pretend it was the building settling now.
Ren saw it and saw Jadah seeing it.
"Breathe," she said.
Jadah looked at her like she'd suggested a hobby.
"Be serious."
"I am."
The loading door clicked.
Just once.
From the inside.
Everyone froze.
Ren turned toward it in the same second Isaac felt that fine wrong pull under his sternum again. Not power. Nothing he could do anything with. Just a thread yanking toward danger before danger had fully chosen its shape.
"The latch," he said.
Ren moved.
Too late.
The inner lock bar on the loading door shivered in its brackets.
Then bent.
Not much.
Enough.
Jadah made a choking sound and both hands clenched at once.
Every loose piece of metal within six feet of her jumped.
Not flew. Worse than that. They chose.
Sockets rattled out of an open tray. Three bolts skipped across concrete. The wrench by her foot snapped against the chain-link and stuck there for a second before falling.
Marlon flinched so hard he nearly slid off the cardboard stack.
"Oh, absolutely not."
The lock bar on the loading door bent a little farther.
Ren whipped around. "Jadah."
"I know!"
"No, you don't."
"I said I know!"
Another handful of washers skittered toward her shoe.
Isaac saw the panic turning into direction in the room before anyone named it. Ren looking at the door. Then at Jadah. Then at the metal around the shop. The ugly arithmetic writing itself.
The janitor heard it too.
His voice warmed. "There."
Like he'd been waiting for a pitch and finally got one.
Isaac crossed the short space between himself and Jadah before he'd decided exactly why. He crouched in front of her, blocking her line of sight to the loading door and, more importantly, the door's line of sight to her.
"Look at me."
She didn't.
Her breathing had gone wrong. Too high. Too fast. Her good hand trembled once and a socket from the floor gave a violent little hop toward her knee.
"Jadah."
Her eyes snapped to his face.
Good.
He kept his voice low. Not soft. Soft would've sounded fake.
"Don't look at the door."
She laughed once, airless. "That is not helping."
"Do it anyway."
"What if it's me."
"It is you."
That landed. He saw it hurt.
He pushed through before she could fall into it.
"And it's not the whole room unless you make it the whole room. So don't."
For one second she just stared at him.
Then her gaze dropped to his mouth, maybe because looking lower felt safer than looking away.
Her breathing hitched again.
The hex nut near her shoe rolled another inch.
Not as hard this time.
Something in her changed.
Not control. Not even close.
But the panic stopped spreading.
That was enough.
Across the bay, Ren grabbed a heavy impact gun off the bench and shoved it under the rolling tool chest nearest the loading door, out of line with Jadah. Then she kicked a scatter of sockets farther away with the side of her boot.
"Less metal around her," she said.
Marlon looked at the walls of the tire shop, then at the tool chests, then at the shelving, then laughed once in disbelief that sounded one bad heartbeat from tears.
"Fantastic location for that."
The janitor knocked politely again.
"Don't worry," he called through the metal. "I can wait."
Isaac felt the tiny pull in his chest shift toward the office instead of the bay.
Different line.
Different danger.
He turned his head.
The front office.
The blinds.
The street side.
Not the janitor, then.
Something else.
Ren saw his face change and followed his look.
"What."
He shook his head once. "Front."
That was all he had. No explanation. No certainty.
It was enough for her.
She moved at once, cutting back through the bay toward the office door with the gun up. Isaac rose and helped Marlon stand because if danger was coming from two sides now, sitting on cardboard waiting to choose which one killed them first seemed disrespectful to everybody already dead.
Marlon bit back a sound as weight hit the bad leg.
"Still terrible," he muttered.
"Keep talking," Isaac said.
"Bossy."
Good.
Still him.
Jadah stood on her own this time.
Barely.
The metal around her stayed mostly still now, but Isaac noticed the chain-link at her back hum once when she straightened, a faint insect rattle that might have been his imagination if the socket near her shoe hadn't twitched at the same time.
He did not mention it.
From the office came a hard crack of breaking glass.
Ren swore.
Not loud. Real.
Then: "Down!"
Everybody obeyed this time because they were too tired not to.
Isaac got Jadah down behind the stacked tires a half second before something slammed into the service bay window high on the wall and turned it into a rain of dull cubes. Not a body. Not a person.
A tire iron.
It hit the floor, spun once, and came to rest pointing straight at the cage.
Outside the broken window, silhouetted against the red street flash, three shapes stood in the alley beyond the fence line.
Human.
Still human.
Not feral. Not crawling. Not roof-things. These stood too upright.
One of them lifted an arm and pointed directly at the chain-link cage.
Not the janitor.
Different.
A woman this time, hair hanging over half her face, coat soaked dark at the front, one eye glinting too bright in the bad light. Another man beside her held a crowbar low against one leg. The third was harder to read because he stayed back in shadow and kept his head tipped toward the sky like he was listening to something only he got to hear.
Ren fired through the broken window.
The woman vanished sideways before the shot reached where she'd been.
The crowbar man didn't.
He took the round in the shoulder, jerked, then smiled down at the blood spreading across his shirt like he'd just been handed proof of concept.
"They're learning," Ren said.
Nobody liked the sentence enough to answer it.
The loading door boomed from behind them.
Once.
Heavy enough to shake dust out of the rafters.
The janitor again.
Front and back now.
Isaac felt that little line under his skin split in two directions and hated it. Useless. Not enough to do anything with. Just enough to know there would be no good choice and know it early.
Jadah looked at the broken window, then at the loading door, then down at her own hand like she was negotiating with it.
"Tell me what to do."
Ren turned at that.
Fast.
Really looked at her for the first time since the office.
Then at the tool chest. The chains. The rolling metal stools. The stacked rims on the far wall.
"You can feel it?"
Jadah's laugh came brittle. "I can feel everything."
"Bad question," Ren said.
"No kidding."
Another boom from the loading door.
The inner bar bent another inch.
The janitor spoke again, amused even through the metal.
"You don't have to keep all of them."
Isaac's vision tunneled for one vicious second.
He stood before he knew he'd made the choice.
Ren pointed the gun at him again. "No."
He ignored the gun.
Not her. Just the gun.
"What if I go out."
Jadah looked at him like she might actually hit him despite the shoulder.
Marlon said, "Don't be stupid."
The janitor laughed immediately from the door.
"There he is."
That answered that.
No deal waiting. Just appetite.
Ren lowered the gun half an inch. "You open that door, he points at whoever hurts you most. Next question."
Fair.
Hated it. Fair.
The woman outside the broken window drifted back into view for a second, one hand trailing along the fence links. The metal sang under her fingers in a thin horrible whine.
Jadah flinched.
The chain-link of their cage answered with a matching tremor.
Everyone heard that.
Ren's eyes sharpened.
There.
A shape.
Not a solution. A shape.
She pointed at the stacks of steel rims by the back wall. "Can you move one."
Jadah stared. "I don't know."
"Try."
"No."
"Jadah."
Her head snapped toward the loading door as it boomed again. Then toward the window. Then back to Ren. The room had finally become smaller than her fear.
"Fine."
She stuck one shaking hand out toward the stack of rims.
Nothing.
She cursed.
The loading bar on the big door bent a little farther.
The woman at the window smiled.
Jadah made a fist.
A wrench shot off the bench and smacked the chain-link hard enough to ring.
Not the rims.
She swore again, louder.
"Good," Ren said.
Jadah looked like murder. "What part."
"The wrong thing still moved."
That almost got a laugh out of Marlon. Almost.
The crowbar man outside took one step closer to the broken window. Ren fired again. He moved cleaner this time. Not fast enough to blur, just early enough to be impossible.
Bad.
The janitor knocked once more.
"Your loud one died first," he said conversationally. "I'm curious which of you thinks you're second."
Marlon made a sound so raw it erased the room for a second.
Isaac turned.
Too late to stop the grief on his face.
The janitor heard that too.
Of course he did.
"Oh," he said softly through the steel. "There you are."
Jadah's hand snapped shut.
This time three lug nuts lifted straight off the floor.
Not high. Two inches. Three.
Enough.
Everyone saw them hover.
Then one of them shot sideways and clanged off the loading door like a thrown pebble.
The janitor stopped talking.
For the first time since they'd met him, the silence from his side of the metal felt like thought instead of control.
Ren looked from the door to Jadah and made the decision before anyone else could even catch up to what had happened.
"Again," she said.
Jadah stared at the hand she no longer trusted. "I can't."
"Doesn't matter."
"It matters to me."
"It matters to staying alive more."
The woman at the window vanished.
Ren moved the gun instantly to the office doorway.
Smart.
A second later glass shattered in the front office.
They were trying multiple entrances now.
The tire shop had stopped being shelter and become delay.
Marlon understood it too. Isaac saw it land behind his eyes.
"We move again."
Nobody wanted the sentence.
Everybody knew it was true.
Ren nodded once. "Back loading dock. Alley behind the bay."
"The one with the listening people?" Jadah said.
"The one not already aiming at us."
The loading door boomed again.
Hard enough that the bent bar screamed.
The little line under Isaac's skin pulled toward the rear of the shop this time.
Back dock. Ugly path. Still a path.
He looked at Jadah's hovering hand. The metal on the floor around her had gone very, very still.
Waiting.
"Jadah," he said.
She looked at him.
He didn't know what encouragement looked like for this. Didn't trust cheerfulness. Didn't trust much of anything.
So he gave her what was left.
"Break something."
For one second she looked too stunned to answer.
Then her mouth twisted.
Not a smile.
Close enough to one to hurt.
"Gladly."
She made a fist so hard the tendons stood out in her wrist.
Every loose piece of metal within reach jumped.
Wrenches ripped off the bench. Washers snapped off the floor. A socket set exploded open like somebody had kicked it. The biggest crescent wrench in the bay shot across the room and hit the already-bent loading bar dead center with a crack of steel on steel.
The whole door shuddered.
And from outside, for the first time, the janitor stopped sounding amused and sounded angry.