Chapter 30: Breathing Space

The transport rattled hard enough to make speech difficult. Ava sat near the rear doors, bracing a boot against the opposite bench. Across from her, a survivor kept checking the latch after every jolt.

She had sheathed the cleaned knife but could still feel it in her hand. When she closed her eyes, she saw the factory pillar instead: the holes her spikes had left in metal.

Gabriel lowered himself onto the bench beside her, his rifle resting across his knees. He didn’t speak immediately, instead letting the quiet settle between them.

“You did good out there,” he said finally, his voice soft.

Ava let out a bitter laugh. “Good? I lost control, Gabriel. Again. I’m supposed to be helping, not scaring everyone.”

Gabriel leaned back, studying her expression. “You scared the shit out of me.”

She turned to him, her eyes heavy with emotion. “You didn’t say.”

The vehicle hit a bump. Gabriel caught the bench. “I was afraid you couldn’t hear me anymore. Then you told me to stay back.” He showed her the patch on his sleeve. “I should have given you more room even after you called me over.”

Ava sighed, her fingers tightening around the hilt of her blade. “I just… I don’t want to be this. I don’t want to be a monster.”

“Tell Malik exactly what happened. Including the part at the pillar.”

“You think he can stop it?”

“I think he needs to know it’s changing.”

Ava nodded. She would tell Malik about the pillar. She would also have to tell him how long she had needed to hold herself against it.

“There was a moment when it felt easier,” she said.

Gabriel waited through the rattle of the vehicle.

“After I changed. I wasn’t tired in the same way. I didn’t have to work out what to do.” She looked at her hand. “I wanted that part.”

She tried to fasten the cuff of her bandage with her left thumb and forefinger. The last two fingers would not oppose. The clasp slipped, struck her knee, and lay there. She picked it up with her right hand. Rest would not have closed that gap. The transformed state had been easier. This was what coming back had cost, and it had not come back all the way.

What is wrong with me?

His eyes went to the dressing, then back to her face. “Tell him that too.”

She had hoped he would say everyone felt something like it in a fight. Give it a familiar name, make it small enough to put away. He did not, and she disliked him briefly for leaving her with what she had admitted.

Then the vehicle jolted and his knee steadied hers. She left it there.

The transport slowed as they approached a temporary checkpoint—a small outpost built into the remnants of an old warehouse. The team inside waved them through, their weapons at the ready. The vehicle pulled to a stop, and the survivors began to disembark, their movements slow and weary.

Gabriel and Ava stepped out last. The outpost crew took them through decontamination and checked the air in the inner court before clearing them to remove their masks. Cool evening air reached Ava’s sweat-damp collar. Beyond the courtyard, guards stood behind reinforced steel barricades.

The crew found her a clean shirt while her torn things went with the contaminated gear. Gabriel’s coat came back from cleaning damp at the seams; she returned it without trying to brush the damage smooth. It had covered her when she could not bear being seen. She wanted to thank him for that, but he was already fastening it, and she let the moment pass.

“At the subway,” Ava said, “you told me to go like you’d already decided which of us was allowed to die.”

Gabriel stopped fastening the coat. “I was keeping the alley open.”

“I know what you were doing. I was still there.”

“There wasn’t time to discuss it.”

That was true, and she hated him for having a true answer ready.

“Then tell me where you’re coming after us. Give me something besides your back.”

He looked toward the courtyard gate. “I should have called when I moved.”

“Yes.”

She waited for the promise that he would never frighten her again. He did not make it. When he asked whether she wanted company at the barricade, she said she needed five minutes first.

Harrow joined them in the inner court after those minutes, clutching the notebook tightly. His eyes darted around the outpost, taking in every detail. “What now?” he asked, his voice tinged with unease.

“We regroup,” Gabriel replied. “Jenna’s arranging for reinforcements. Until then, we wait.”

Inside, Ava watched the crew transfer the hospital folders and ledgers from her pack into two storage cases. She checked the contents before they sealed the lids. Gabriel handed over the scanner separately, identifying its incomplete copy of Harrow’s notebook for the records log.

He gave Harrow one job before the cases were locked: the courtyard lamp and a count of who came through the inner door. Not a weapon. Not the records. Harrow took the lamp as if it might be taken back. Ava let him walk the door without following him every step. She still knew where the cases were.

Jenna’s voice came through the outpost set after the log was closed. “Karrow wants an index of what you recovered. Redacted. Methods and gaps, not your medical file. I won’t send your chart unless you say so. I won’t send the index either, until you say so.”

Ava looked at the sealed cases. “The index. Not my file. And he doesn’t get a sample of me because he asked for paper.”

“That’s the message I’ll send,” Jenna said.

Ava wandered to the edge of the barricade, her gaze fixed on the horizon. The sun was setting, painting the sky in hues of orange and red. It was a rare moment of beauty in a world that seemed to offer so little of it.

Gabriel joined her, his presence quiet but grounding. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

“Do you ever think about what it was like before?” Ava asked suddenly, her voice barely above a whisper.

Gabriel’s brow furrowed. “Sometimes. But it doesn’t help much.”

“I remember leaving my field clothes on a chair,” Ava said. “Thinking I’d wash them the next day. There was soil on the sleeve.” She looked at the dressing around her hand. “The stupid things that stay.”

“Do you want to write it down?”

“When we get back.”

He nodded. “I’ll leave the journal out.”

She had begun to remember the reason she had left the washing. A specimen, a long day, the thought that tomorrow would have room for whatever she failed to do tonight. She could almost feel the impatience of that woman. It pleased her to remember an impatience nobody had caused by hurting her.

“I wasn’t always very sensible,” she said.

Gabriel glanced at her. “That part survived.”

She laughed before deciding whether to be offended. For once he had answered as though her old life belonged in an ordinary conversation.

She hesitated, her fingers brushing over the hilt of her blade. “I just worry… When I lose control, it feels like I’m slipping away. Like the person I used to be is fading, and all that’s left is—”

Gabriel waited until she finished trying to say it.

“I can’t tell you what it feels like,” he said. “But you corrected my grip while we were loading the vehicle.”

“What?”

“On the research pack. You told me I’d tear the pages.”

Ava remembered saying it, impatiently, while blood soaked through her dressing.

“I wanted it to get back intact,” she said.

“Then we should make sure it does.”

She stood beside him until the sun dropped below the warehouse roof.

Ava’s lips twitched into a faint smile, though her eyes remained sad. She leaned closer, her voice soft and vulnerable. “Thanks, Gabriel. For always being here.”

Gabriel stepped closer, his hand brushing against hers before he wrapped his arms around her in a firm embrace. “I’m not going anywhere, Ava,” he murmured, his voice steady and warm.

She rested her head against his chest, listening until she could distinguish his breathing from the wind at the barricade. Ava tilted her face upward, meeting his gaze, and Gabriel leaned down to kiss her. The first touch of his mouth was careful. The second was not. She opened to him, tasting dust and the salt of his lip, and the heat that had been waiting since the greenhouse rose low in her belly. She wanted to be alone with him—door shut, his hands under her shirt, the weight of him learned again after a day that had nearly taken it away. The wanting felt almost extravagant after the day they had survived, and she held him closer because she could still feel it.

Her breasts pressed against the hard line of his coat. Even that contact made her breath catch. She slipped her fingers inside the unfastened edge of his collar, finding warm skin, and felt him still against her.

I still want him. Even like this.

She had thought she would want to hide her body after the factory. Part of her did. Another part wanted the familiarity they were only beginning to learn: his weight beside her, the unguarded face he showed when she touched him. She could not explain how both could be true while her skin still hurt. She kissed him again, more firmly, before either of them tried to turn the moment into reassurance.

When they pulled apart, Gabriel brushed her cheek with his thumb. Ava caught his hand and kissed the knuckle where his glove had rubbed it raw.

Ava stayed close when the kiss ended. Gabriel’s coat fastener pressed into her cheek. She reached up to move it, then left her hand against his chest until someone called them in to eat.