The Exchange
Tesni stood at the designated location with her hands clasped in front of her and watched Ravi's men count through what they had managed to raise. The number was not everything. But it was enough to buy time and time was what Aine needed most.
"When do I get my sister back?" she asked the moment the last of it had been handed over.
The man across from her did not look up immediately. "Boss said one week."
Tesni held the answer in her chest and nodded once. "Okay."
The calls came through the following morning, both of them within minutes of each other.
"Good morning, sir. I am calling to let you know your card has been fully unlocked and is ready for use."
Mendoza closed his eyes briefly. "Thank you."
Across the city Tesni's phone lit up with the same news. "Good morning, miss. The command restricting your account has been lifted. You have full access."
"Thank you," Tesni said quietly.
She sat with the phone in her hand for a moment after the call ended and thought about Silas. About what full access had cost.
Three Days Later
Jin-Ju had learned not to expect much from the small window. She slid the tray through at the usual time, heard the familiar clatter of it settling against the others and climbed the stool to check.
She looked through the window.
The food from the past three days sat exactly where it had been left. Untouched. All of it. Three full trays in a row, each one going cold in the dark.
She moved her eyes slowly to the far end of the room.
Aine lay on the floor. Still. The kind of still that made Jin-Ju's stomach drop before her mind had fully caught up with what she was seeing.
She climbed down from the stool and ran.
Ravi was on his feet before she had finished speaking.
He moved through the corridors at a pace that did not match the expression he was keeping on his face and pushed the door open himself. She was exactly where Jin-Ju had said. Lying on the floor of the red room, her breathing shallow and her skin cold to the touch, three days of untouched meals stacked by the small window above her.
Something moved through him that he did not examine or name.
He crouched down and gathered her up carefully, one arm beneath her shoulders and one beneath her knees, and carried her back to her room. She did not stir. Not once.
He called the doctor before he had even set her down on the bed.
The wait was its own particular kind of quiet.
When the doctor finally emerged from the room his expression carried the careful neutrality of a professional who had learned not to ask too many questions about the patients he was brought to.
"She is stable," he said. "I have treated her wounds. Give her these medications consistently and do not miss a dose." He paused. "I will return tomorrow to check on her progress."
"See him out," Ravi said, without taking his eyes off the closed door behind the doctor.
"Of course," Hayland said. He gestured down the hallway and the doctor followed.
Hayland glanced back once before he turned the corner.
Ravi was still standing there. Still looking at the door.
He stood in the doorway of her room for a moment before he entered.
She was asleep, the drip beside her bed doing the quiet work of keeping her alive, the nurse moving efficiently around it, injecting the medications directly into the line since there was no other way to get them into her.
Ravi came inside and stood near the wall.
"When will she wake up?"
The nurse glanced at him briefly. "I cannot say exactly, sir. She is responding slowly but she is responding."
"Fine."
He did not leave.
He slouched against the wall with his arms crossed and looked at her. He had seen her face before, in fragments, in doorways, in the dark. He had registered that she was beautiful the way you register weather, as a fact with no particular weight attached to it. But this was different. This was still and unguarded and completely without the armour she wore every waking moment, and he found himself looking in a way he had not permitted himself to do before.
She was not just pretty. There was something in the structure of her face, something in the particular stillness of it in sleep, that belonged to a different category entirely. Angelic was the word that arrived and he let it stay because there was no more accurate one.
He was still looking when it happened.
The nurse's phone call stopped mid-sentence. Aine's body seized.
Ravi pushed off the wall before he had made the decision to move. "What is happening?"
"Sir." The nurse was already reaching for her bag, her voice sharp and professional and brooking nothing. "Step outside please."
"What do you mean step outside—"
"Now, sir. Please."
He stepped out.
He stood in the corridor and listened to the sounds on the other side of the door, the urgent voices, the movement of equipment, the shots being administered, and felt something sit in his chest that he had not felt in a very long time and did not have a comfortable name for.
When the doctor emerged and told him she had stabilised he said nothing.
He stood in the corridor for another moment after they had gone back inside and looked at the closed door and acknowledged to himself, privately and without drama, that he felt guilty.
He did not know what to do with that.
The Next Day. 1:00 PM.
Jin-Ju was in the hallway when it happened. She heard the shift in sound from inside the room, the small movements that meant consciousness returning, and she was running before she had fully processed it, calling his name down the corridor.
Ravi came. He collected the food from the kitchen himself and carried it up.