Liam’s eyes opened slowly.

The ceiling above him was familiar. Exposed beams.

The warehouse. The same flat even lighting he had looked up at a dozen times before.

He blinked.

His wrists were behind him.

He tried to move them and felt the rope.

His ankles were the same, tied to the legs of the chair, the knots tight and deliberate.

He lifted his head.

The room swam for a moment before it settled.

His vision was still slightly off at the edges, the way it had been on the pavement before everything went dark, but the center was sharpening by degrees.

He looked around.

Five people he recognised, all of them in chairs or on the floor, all of them bound.

Two were slumped forward, still out. One was sitting upright against the wall with his eyes open and a cut above his eyebrow that had dried dark down the side of his face.

Another was on the floor on his side, breathing steadily, unconscious.

And Shay.

Sitting directly across from him, tied to a chair, his eyes already on Liam. Alert. Taking in the state of him.

"You good?" Shay said.

Liam looked down at his wrists. Then around the room. Then back at Shay. "I was just outside," he said, his brow pulling together. "Standing on the street. Now I’m here tied to a chair." He shook his head slightly. "Who did this."

"I don’t know him," Shay said. His voice was controlled but the jaw underneath it was tight. "He walked in asking for you. When we didn’t talk, this happened."

Liam looked at the guys on the floor. Then at the ones in the chairs. "How did everyone lose to one person."

"That’s the thing." Shay looked at the floor for a moment. "We didn’t even get to fight. We just woke up like this."

Liam looked at him. "Nobody threw a single punch."

"Not one."

"That’s strange," Liam said.

"Yeah," Shay said. "It is."

The room was quiet for a moment.

Just the low ambient sound of the building around them and the breathing of the people in it.

Then from somewhere behind Liam a voice came.

"You’re finally awake."

Liam turned his head as far as the chair would allow.

The red suit.

He was standing near the back wall of the warehouse with his hands loose at his sides, his jacket still sitting perfectly on his shoulders, his pale grey eyes finding Liam’s with the same calm directness he had carried outside Liam’s building two nights ago.

The thin scar below his left cheekbone. The two toned hair. Everything exactly as it had been.

Liam’s jaw tightened. "What are you doing here."

"We were sent to make something clear to you," the red suit said. His voice was even and unhurried. The same as before.

"We?" Liam said. "Make what clear?"

Movement from his left.

"Is that bastard awake yet?"

The dark suit came around from the side of the room, walking toward them with his hands in his jacket pockets, his eyes already on Liam, the particular energy of someone who had been waiting for this moment and had decided in advance how he was going to play it.

He stopped in front of Liam’s chair and looked down at him.

Liam looked up at him.

The dark suit grinned. Wide and slow. "Hello, asshole." He crouched down to eye level. "You’re finally awake."

He reached forward and put two fingers under Liam’s chin, tilting his face upward. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Liam turned his head sharply, shaking him off.

The dark suit straightened up.

He reached into his jacket and produced the Desert Eagle and pressed the barrel against Liam’s temple.

With his other hand he pulled the slide back and let it go, the click of it sharp and loud in the quiet of the warehouse.

Liam looked at him.

"Is this genuinely the only thing you know how to do?" he said.

The dark suit’s jaw tightened.

Liam sat with the gun against his head and looked up at him and thought clearly and quickly.

’Pulse Bound Might,’ he thought. ’And Silent Stride immediately after. If I time it right I’m out of this chair before he processes what happened.’

He activated both.

The rope at his wrists split. Not slowly. In one sharp movement, the fibres parting under the sudden output of force, the pieces falling away.

He was out of the chair in the same motion, his body dropping low and moving sideways, and the gun swung through empty air where his head had been a half second before.

He came up behind the dark suit’s arm.

His hand closed around the man’s wrist and redirected the gun away in one clean movement. Then he drove his fist into the man’s stomach.

The impact landed with everything behind it.

The dark suit left the floor.

He traveled backward through the air and landed hard near the far wall, skidding slightly, the gun clattering across the concrete away from him.

He lay there folded around his own midsection, making a sound that had no words in it.

The red suit watched his partner land.

Then he stepped calmly to the side to avoid being in the path of him.

Liam straightened up and looked across the room.

He cracked his knuckles once, the sound of it carrying in the quiet space. "Unlike the restaurant," he said, "I’m not caught off guard this time." He looked at the red suit. "So I’m going to enjoy this."

He moved toward him.

The red suit didn’t move.

Liam threw the punch.

His fist went through smoke.

He stumbled forward slightly, his knuckles finding nothing, and pulled up short. Where the red suit had been standing was a thin curl of dark blue smoke, rising slowly from the floor in a twisting line before dissolving into the air of the warehouse.

Not a cloud. Not a burst. Just a trail, like the after-image of movement, the shape of where a person had been a fraction of a second after they stopped being there.

Liam stood in the middle of the warehouse and looked at the smoke fading.

He turned around.

"Over here."

The red suit was standing behind him, on the other side of the room, near where three of Shay’s people were bound and sitting down.

He had a dagger in his right hand.

The blade was pressed against the side of one of the men’s necks, the edge sitting just below the jaw, the man’s eyes wide and completely still, understanding exactly what the pressure meant.

Liam looked at the dagger. Then at the man’s face. Then at the red suit holding it.

He thought about it.

The distance between them.

His speed with Silent Stride active.

The angle of the blade against the neck. Whether he could cross the room and redirect the dagger before the red suit completed the motion.

He ran it through once. Then again.

’No,’ he concluded. ’He finishes it before I’m halfway there. And he knows I know that. That’s why he chose this position.’

He stayed where he was.

"What do you want," Liam said. His voice came out flat and controlled.

"Nothing," the red suit said. He said it simply, without performance. "I’m doing what master says."

"What did he say."

The red suit looked at him for a moment.

Then he drew the blade across the man’s neck.

The sound it made was small and immediate.

"No—" Liam was already moving before the word finished leaving his mouth, crossing the room at full stride, everything in him directed at closing the distance. "No—"

He wasn’t fast enough.

Liam heard Shay’s chair.

The violent creak of it as Shay threw his whole body weight against the ropes, a sound coming from him that wasn’t a word, just pure rage finding its only available outlet.

Liam reached the red suit and swung.

The man stepped backward into the blue smoke and was gone.

The trail curled upward from the floor near where he had stood and dissolved.

Liam spun around.

He was already across the room, standing behind the dark suit who was still on the floor recovering, and he reached down and closed one hand around the man’s collar and hauled him upright, holding him in front of himself.

A hand around his throat. Not squeezing. Just present.

He looked at Liam across the warehouse.

"Master says he can’t hurt you directly," he said. His voice was still completely even. Still unhurried. Like he had read the information from a sheet and was simply relaying it. "But that doesn’t apply to anyone around you." He let his eyes move briefly to the man on the floor against the wall. Then back to Liam. "Anyone you love."

Liam stood there.

His hands were at his sides.

His breathing was controlled and even and his face was showing nothing and underneath all of that something was burning at a temperature that had no upper limit.

The red suit looked at him for another moment.

"You killed my friend," Liam said. Quiet. Each word placed individually.

The red suit nodded once. "You’re really i always follow orders." A pause. "So we’re equal now."

He released the dark suit.

Liam moved.

He was fast. He was everything he had. Silent Stride and every piece of ability he could direct at closing the distance in the least possible time.

The blue smoke curled up from the floor before he got there.

He swung through nothing.

His fist hit the wall of the warehouse instead.

The concrete cracked.

A spider web of it spreading outward from the point of impact, dust falling from the ceiling above the spot.

His fist went through to the wrist and he stood there for a moment with his arm in the wall and the dust settling around him and the warehouse completely silent.

He pulled his hand back.

He turned around slowly.

The red suit was gone. The dark suit was gone. The room was exactly as it had been before they arrived, except for the man on the floor against the wall who was not going to get up.

And Shay.

Shay was still in the chair.

The ropes were still on him. His head was up and he was looking at the man on the floor, not blinking, not moving, his whole face doing something that had run past anger and come out the other side into something quieter and heavier and much more permanent.

Liam walked across the room to him.

He crouched down and worked the knots on Shay’s wrists until they came loose, then moved to his ankles. He straightened up.

Shay didn’t move immediately. He sat in the chair and kept looking at the man on the floor.

Then he looked at Liam.

Liam looked back at him.

"This is my fault," Liam said. "All of it. They came here because of me. That’s on me."

Shay shook his head slowly. "No." His voice was low and rough and had been through something to get there. "I brought you into my fight. I asked you to lead something that had my mess already attached to it. Everyone knew the risk." He paused. "Doesn’t mean it hurts less."

"No," Liam said. "It doesn’t."

The warehouse was quiet around them. The other men were starting to come around, the ones who had been unconscious shifting and groaning, the ones who had been awake the whole time saying nothing.

Shay looked at the floor for a moment. Then he looked at Liam.

"Promise me something," he said.

Liam looked at him.

"We make every single one of them pay," Shay said. "Every last one."

Liam looked at him for a long moment.

"I promise," he said.