Getting out of there in one piece, with Penny in tow, that was something I hadn’t been entirely sure was going to happen. But it did. I’d dealt with Callighan, made the exchange terms, and slipped out before anyone could regroup enough to stop me.

Penny. That was her name. She’d told me herself, in the brief window between when the wildness went out of her eyes and when she started crying.

I had her wrists tied behind her back, a length of rope looped through and held loosely in my hand as I walked her forward, not yanking at it, not trying to drag her, just keeping it there as a reminder. She wasn’t fighting me anymore, which was a relief, because the version of her I’d had to physically force to the ground had been something else entirely. Stronger than she looked, moving with the blind, unthinking ferocity of someone who wasn’t fully behind their own eyes. Whatever state she’d been in, it had burned itself out somewhere in the struggle, and what was left was this, a woman with her wrists bound, walking quietly beside me, her head slightly bowed and her breathing still uneven.

That encounter with Callighan had come directly out of that. Risky didn’t quite cover it. But I’d made it work.

"Please..." Her voice came out small and raw beside me. "Just let me go."

I looked at her. The late afternoon light wasn’t kind to the details, it showed everything clearly, too clearly and what it showed me made something in my chest tighten a bit.

"I can’t do that," I said, keeping my voice even. "You’re dangerous right now. Not because you want to be, I know that. But you are."

She flinched. "A..Are you... are you going to hurt me?"

"No," I said immediately quickly denying it. "I’m not going to hurt you at least when you are yourself..."

She didn’t look entirely convinced, which was fair. I was a stranger who’d just tackled her to the ground and tied her hands, so I wasn’t exactly starting from a position of trust.

"But you’re connected to Callighan’s group," I said, "and you’re a Symbiote host. You nearly killed me and you didn’t even know you were doing it. You understand what I mean? You were somewhere else. There was nobody home."

She shook her head, fast and desperate, and the tears that had been gathering finally spilled over. They ran down her cheeks in thin lines and she didn’t try to wipe them, couldn’t, with her hands behind her back.

"I didn’t want to...I never wanted to, I would never—" Her voice broke and she had to push through it. "It was Gaspar. He did something to me, he...he put something inside me and I can’t... it hurts, it hurts all the time and sometimes I just ...I can’t stop it, I can’t stop myself—" She was crying properly now, the words coming out in pieces. "Please. Please just let me go. It hurts..."

I slowed my pace slightly and looked at her properly. The crying wasn’t performance, I’d seen enough of both to know the difference. This was someone coming apart at the edges from something they’d been holding together for too long.

Gaspar had done something to her.

I turned it over in my mind, trying to fit it into what I already knew. Was she a Symbiote host the same way I was, the same way Sydney and the others were? Some kind of fragment passed on, a piece of something larger taking root in someone new? I’d done that, passed parts of Dullahan through intimacy without fully understanding what I was doing at the time. Had Gaspar done something similar, or something different? Something worse?

Because this didn’t feel the same.

Sydney and the others were still themselves. Still in their own heads, making their own choices, carrying what they carried without losing who they were. Penny had been a puppet. Moving without deciding to move, her body following instructions that weren’t hers, her face wearing an expression that didn’t belong to her. That wasn’t hosting a Symbiote. That was something else. Something that made my skin crawl a little just thinking about it.

And if I cut her loose right now, she’d go back to him. Not because she wanted to. Because she probably couldn’t stop herself.

"Penny," I said. She looked up at me, red-eyed and still trembling. "I hear you. And I believe you." I let that land before continuing. "But you understand why I can’t just open my hands and walk away, right? You said it yourself, Gaspar is controlling you. If I let you go, you walk straight back to him. Is that what you want?"

The sound she made wasn’t quite a word. More like the sound of someone realizing they’ve been caught between two walls and neither one has a door in it. She shook her head hard, eyes screwing shut.

"No....No, please—"

"Then stay with me," I said. "I’m not locking you up, I’m not punishing you, I’m not Gaspar. But until we figure out how to get whatever he put in you out of you... I can’t give you free rein. Not because of you, but because of what he left behind." I watched her face. "Do you understand the difference?"

It took a moment. Then she nodded, slow and small.

She glanced sideways at me, something like reluctant curiosity working its way through the misery on her face. "You’re... you’re like him? You have one too?"

"A Symbiote, yeah," I said. "I do."

She looked at me for a long moment, searching for something. Whatever she was looking for, I don’t know if she found it, but her expression shifted. Something in it settled, like a comparison she’d been running had come back with an answer she didn’t expect.

"You’re not like him," she said quietly. Her voice was steadier than it had been, but her lips were still shaking when she spoke. "Gaspar...he is a monster."

I didn’t answer that right away. My eyes had dropped, almost without meaning to, to her neck and arms... and they stayed there for a moment. The bruises weren’t fresh, but they weren’t old either. Deep purple, spread across her skin in clusters and patterns that had nothing to do with our struggle. Those had been there before I ever touched her.

What the hell had that man been doing to her.

I pulled my gaze away before she noticed me staring.

"Everything is going to be okay," I said, trying to reassure her. "I’ll deal with Gaspar. You’ll be free. That’s a promise."

She held my gaze for a second and then nodded.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Ryan," I said. "My name is Ryan."

Something shifted in her face. Soft and brief. "Thank you, Ryan."

I gave her a small smile and looked ahead.

Thank God Callighan hadn’t asked for Penny back. Part of me had been waiting for it, braced for the moment he’d add her to the terms, make her part of the deal along Lucy. He hadn’t. And I wasn’t naive enough to think I’d have been able to say no and walk away clean if he had. So yeah. Thank God for that. Sending her back to whatever Gaspar had turned her life into wasn’t something I would’ve been able to live with without feeling really guilty.

°°°

By the time Callighan returned to Brigantine and laid out what had happened at the Golden Nugget, Gaspar was already leaning back in his chair with the particular energy of a man who had just been told something he found deeply interesting.

"Ryan," Gaspar said. A slow grin spread across his face. "That has to be him. No — it is him, I’m certain of it." He had one leg crossed over the other, both feet propped up on the table in front of him with the casual ease of someone entirely at home in their own head. "Has to be."

"You sent that woman after him," Callighan said. His voice was flat cold. He stood across from Gaspar with his hands behind his back, his eyes steady and unamused. "Without telling me."

Gaspar lifted one hand in a loose, unbothered gesture. "I was testing the waters. That’s all." He chuckled, the sound light and easy, like this was all mildly entertaining rather than a conversation about operational security. "He’s dangerous... I needed to see how dangerous before I made any moves. And honestly?" He tilted his head. "The fact that he had the nerve to walk up to you with a hostage, surrounded by your men, and negotiate from that position?" He paused for effect, eyebrows raising slightly. "That says quite a lot, don’t you think?"

Callighan didn’t answer. But he didn’t disagree either, which Gaspar was perfectly capable of reading.

The grin widened. Gaspar shifted forward in his chair, dropping his feet to the floor and leaning his elbows on his knees.

"So. What’s next?" He asked.

"I hold up my end of the deal," Callighan said. "He brings Lucy back. I give him the girl."

Gaspar’s face changed immediately, the entertained looseness dropping away, replaced by something sharper.

"That’s the cover story," he said. "I’m asking about the real plan. The actual plan." He stood up from the chair, straightening to his full height. "We’re not going to get a better opportunity than this. He’ll be in the open, exposed, coming to us. Another Symbiote host, Callighan. Do you understand what that means?"

"I’m honoring the agreement," Callighan said, the same words, the same tone.

Gaspar’s jaw shifted. "You’re giving back the girl I captured." The lightness in his voice was completely gone now. "I’m the one who found her. I’m the one who secured her. She’s mine."

Callighan looked at him with an expression that communicated exactly how much weight he gave that argument.

"I’m the one making decisions here," he said simply.

The two men held each other’s gaze for a moment, Gaspar’s cold and calculating, Callighan’s steady and immovable. Then Gaspar let out a short, humorless laugh and rolled his jaw to one side.

"Fine, forget the girl for a second," he said, spreading his hands. "Tomorrow he walks into the open and hands us Lucy, and you’re just going to let him walk back out again? Let me come. Let me handle him. I bring him in, we get another host, we use what he carries—" He ran his tongue briefly across his lower lip, something hungry in the gesture. "Think about what we could do with that."

"You’re not going near that boy during my dealings," Callighan said. His voice had dropped slightly, quieter and colder. "And I don’t want you anywhere near the State Marina tomorrow. At all."

The smile on Gaspar’s face disappeared entirely.

For a moment he just looked at Callighan, something cold and flat sitting in his eyes.

"Your morals are going to get you killed one day," he said, and the lightness was fully gone now, replaced by something with an edge to it. "These pathetic, hypocritical principles you insist on dragging around like dead weight. That boy is a threat and you’re about to gift him a clean exit because you gave your word. You’ll regret passing this up. Let me come, and I’ll take care of it cleanly."

"And if Marlon is somewhere at the back with one of his weapons?" Callighan replied, his gaze going cool and sharp. "If the boy doesn’t come alone, if he comes prepared, if he comes with backup from the Boardwalk Community? Where does that leave you then?"

That landed. Gaspar’s mouth closed.

"You think you’re the only one who thinks ahead?" Callighan continued. "That boy came to my door and negotiated a hostage exchange under armed threat and disappeared from the middle of a street in the space of a blink. You genuinely believe he’s walking into that meeting tomorrow with nothing prepared behind him?" He let the silence do some of the work. "And I’m willing to bet he’s already made contact with Marlon’s group."

Gaspar said nothing. The muscle along his jaw moved slightly.

Callighan turned his gaze away, as if the conversation was already more or less finished.

"If you understand, stay out of the way."

Gaspar exhaled through his nose. "So you’re just going to make a clean, honest deal with the enemy. Hand over a resource, recover Lucy, shake hands and go." He scoffed, the disdain sitting thick in his voice. "Is she worth that much to you? She only works for us because we have her brother on a leash."

"She’s talented," Callighan said. "And I trust her more than a building full of rapists, murderers, and thieves."

Gaspar laughed at that. "You’re a murderer yourself, Callighan. Or have you forgotten?"

"I’ve never killed innocent with my own hands," Callighan replied without inflection. "And I’ve never killed anyone to end up in a prison cell."

"The very peak of hypocrisy," Gaspar said, shaking his head with a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. "You are genuinely extraordinary in that regard."

Callighan didn’t respond.

Because Gaspar wasn’t wrong, and Callighan knew it. He’d made peace with that particular contradiction a long time ago. He would hold certain lines and cross others. He would bend his principles exactly as far as he decided they needed bending and not one inch further and all of it, every calculation, every moral he kept and every one he quietly shelved, existed in service of one end. Getting to Marlon. That was the fixed point everything else moved around.

Gaspar held his gaze for another moment, then seemed to decide the conversation was over on his end. He turned and walked out without another word, his footsteps unhurried against the floor.

But the smirk that settled onto his face as he cleared the doorway, the one Callighan couldn’t see only grew wider as he walked.

There was no way he wasn’t going to do anything and stay meek.