The corridor narrowed the further they climbed, lantern light thinning between fixtures until whole stretches sat nearly dark, and Finn's boots kept catching on warped floorboards he couldn't quite see in time to avoid. Somewhere below them the ship groaned against its own weight, timber flexing with the current, and every creak sent his pulse spiking before his mind caught up and told him it was only wood.
"Wait." He grabbed Silas's sleeve, breathing harder than the pace should've earned. "We don't actually know where they took her. We're just — walking."
"Marrow said 'the good cell.'" Silas's mouth curled around the phrase like it had gone rancid on his tongue. "Men like him, 'good' means closer to him. Officers' quarters, probably. Higher up." He tipped his chin toward the stairwell ahead, barely lit, the steps disappearing into shadow after the third one. "Educated guess. That's all I've got."
"Educated guess." Finn's laugh came out thin, humorless. "Love that for us."
They took the stairs two at a time, Silas leading, one hand trailing the wall for balance in the dark. The air changed as they climbed — less salt and bilge, more the dry, dusty smell of a space kept for someone who considered himself above the rest of the crew. Finer boards underfoot. A strip of threadbare carpet, faded red, running down the center of the passage like someone had once tried to make this stretch of ship feel like something other than a prison with better lighting.
Finn spotted the guard first.
He lay slumped against the wall a few yards ahead, chin dropped to his chest, one leg splayed at an angle no comfortable sleep ever produced. Finn crouched fast, two fingers pressed to the man's throat, holding his own breath until he found the pulse — steady, if slow.
"Alive," he breathed, some tension bleeding out of his shoulders. "Just out."
"Surely, wasn't us." Silas had gone very quiet, eyes scanning the corridor ahead, jaw tight. "Someone beat us here."
They found the second guard a few strides on, sprawled face-down near a door hanging crooked on one hinge — wood around the latch split and splintered outward, pale raw grain showing through the dark paint, like something had struck it hard enough from the inside to tear the frame apart.
Finn's stomach dropped before his mind fully processed why.
"That's not—" He didn't finish. He was already moving, shoving the broken door the rest of the way open, lantern light from the corridor spilling into the small room beyond.
Empty.
Straw lay kicked into churned, uneven drifts across the floor, dark in one corner where something had scraped hard across it. A length of chain lay flung against the far wall, not coiled the way it would've been left, but thrown — the kind of throw that came from someone's arm, someone's fear, someone's fight. And above it, cracked deep into the plaster in a spiderweb pattern, a gouge Finn's stomach recognized before his mind gave it a name.
A body. Something hit that wall hard enough to be a body.
"Ze—Lynn." Her name came out cracked, too loud in the small space, and he was already turning in a full circle, checking every shadowed corner as though she might simply be crouched somewhere he'd missed, waiting to laugh at him for panicking. "Lynn!"
Nothing answered. Only the wrecked cell, and the low creak of the ship settling around them, indifferent to how loud his heart was pounding.
"She's not — " His voice broke properly this time, hands coming up to drag through his hair, chest heaving too fast. "Silas, she's not here."
Silas had stopped in the doorway, not moving, his eyes tracking slowly across the room — the chain, the scuff marks gouged into the floorboards, the crack in the plaster — with the careful, cataloguing attention of a man forcing himself to read a scene instead of simply reacting to it.
"She must have fought her way out," he said finally, quiet. Then, softer, almost to himself: "Or somebody fought their way to her."
"Which one." Finn rounded on him, breath ragged. "Tell me which one. I need it to be the second one, Silas, I need—"
"I don't know." And for once the charm was entirely gone from Silas's voice, stripped down to something raw and unsteady that matched Finn's own. "I don't know, Finn. I wish I did."
Finn's hands curled into fists at his sides, panic climbing too fast to fully contain, spilling out in words that came too loud, too fast. "So she could be hurt right now. Or they took her somewhere worse, and we're standing here in an empty room doing nothing—"
"Or," Silas cut in, crossing the small space in two strides and gripping Finn's shoulder hard enough to stop the spiral cold, "someone got to her before Marrow could finish whatever he came in here to do. Look at the door, Finn. Nobody kicks a door in like that to take someone further into danger."
Finn's jaw worked, breath still coming too fast, fighting for control he didn't fully have.
"You don't get to be the calm one," he said, voice cracking. "Not tonight."
"I'm not calm." Silas's hand tightened once on his shoulder before dropping away, and for a second something raw and frightened showed plainly on his face before he pushed it back down. "I promise you, I am nowhere close to calm right now. I just don't have room left to be anything else and still be useful to her. So pick. Panic, or help me find her. You don't get both."
Finn stared at him a long moment, chest still heaving, and something in Silas's own barely-held composure — the tightness at his jaw, the way his hands weren't quite steady either — settled him more than the words alone managed to.
"Up," Finn said finally, rougher than before but no longer shaking apart. "Toward wherever that bastard actually sleeps. If she's not there—"
"Then we tear apart every room on this ship until we find her," Silas said, already turning back toward the stairwell. "Together."
Finn nodded once, sharp, and they moved — faster now, boots pounding hard against warped boards, both of them chasing the same fear down a corridor neither could see the end of yet.