Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

"I’ve got a plan. We’re going back to Bagins’ camp."

Mercury turned in her seat and looked at me.

"This fucking car has no fuel." She said it slowly, like I might have missed that part. "What exactly are you planning? Walking there with five people chained together behind us like fucking slaves?"

"I’ve got a plan."

"Fuck your plan."

She meant it. It sat under everything she’d said since the call ended and it was in her hands on the wheel of a car that wasn’t going anywhere. The dead dashboard threw a thin residual glow across both of us. Outside, the empty road waited under the working lights as if it had all night.

"Mercury, I’m sorry." I turned toward her. "It wasn’t the right time. My head was on my sister sitting in the corner of that factory and if the two of us ever do this, I don’t want it happening like that. In a dead car with a clock running."

"Fuck you. And fuck your sister."

She faced front and stared into the windscreen at nothing. The words hung between us without softening. She didn’t take them back. She didn’t look at me while she let them land.

And she was right to.

She hadn’t asked me for anything. Not one thing, all night. She’d walked into this because she saw a man put a bazooka on his shoulder and point it at me and she crossed a factory floor to take him off his feet. She had nobody in that camp. Bagins had nothing of hers. She’d got into this car with three strangers and a bracelet on her leg and stayed because I was in it.

And this wasn’t even the first time. There’d been a night in the Fallen City that had ended exactly like this one, for exactly the same kind of reason—her risk, my distraction, the same gap opening between what she was offering and what I was able to take.

"I’m sorry, Bram." She turned back. The heat had gone out of her voice; what remained was thinner and more careful. "That was mean. I think I was moving too fast anyway."

"No. I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you."

"Don’t make fucking promises." Her voice had come back to normal—dry, practical, already reaching for the next useful thing. "What’s the plan?"

"I can get Bagins and every man in that camp to march on CGI."

Mercury sat back. The seat accepted her with a soft complaint. She studied me the way she studied locked doors and empty fuel gauges.

"You don’t have his five people. You’ve also lost two of the four he sent out, and you’re past his hour by a long way." She counted it off without any heat. "If I were him I wouldn’t listen to one word out of your mouth, and I certainly wouldn’t hand your sister back."

"He’ll listen."

"Why?"

"Because he doesn’t want men." I looked out at the empty road. The street lights held their isolated pools and the dark between them stayed dark. "He never wanted men. He’s got four hundred of them and no idea what to do with them. He wants the building."

"Okay." Mercury held my eyes. "And how do the two of us get out of this street?"

"I’ve got a plan."

"Of course you do."

She shoved her door open for no reason at all and sat with one leg out on the road. The night air came in cold and immediate. She left the door open like she needed the option of the ground under her boot while she waited for whatever I was about to produce.

I pulled out my comms.

Melissa had given me two things and both of them mattered.

Sinn was responsible for the state of this city in a way he didn’t understand and would never accept. And Vince was moving.

I’d worked out Vince the moment May said Harmione’s name. There was exactly one person in the world who’d want Harmione and me both dead, and he’d been standing in an elevator with me two days ago telling me I’d done something worse than kill him. The borrowed face. The quiet boy at the back of the room at Hogsby. The purple hair in the middle of a burning street in a vision that hadn’t finished explaining itself.

Azure had only ever been the confirmation. He hadn’t touched her. He didn’t need to. He’d left a message with the one person who could carry it to me and then walked out of that dormitory.

And I finally understood what the message meant.

I never hurt you by killing you. Mary Stam made that move, not me.

I hurt you by taking Azure. And then by what happened with Harmione afterward.

So that’s the whole ledger. You’re not coming to kill me. You’re coming to take everyone standing next to me, one at a time, in order, and make me watch it happen.

And now you’re in Melissa’s office reading my file to find out who’s on the list.

The pieces locked. The elevator. The Redhead house. The dormitory. The file. All of it pointing the same direction—not at my throat, but at the person standing close enough to it that cutting her would be the slower, more complete version of the same act.

I dialled.

"I need your help," I said when it connected. "My car’s out of fuel. And there’s something else, something bigger. I know you can find me."

I hung up. The line died clean. The screen went dark against my palm.

"Who was that?" Mercury pulled her leg back in and shut the door. The cabin sealed again around the residual glow of the dash and the two of us still not quite finished with the last ten minutes.

"Someone who owns the night."

She shook her head at me. The gesture carried no real disbelief—only the familiar recognition that I had reached for something she couldn’t see yet and expected her to trust the shape of it anyway.

"And when exactly is this person of yours getting here?"

"A few seconds."

I said it as a fact, because it was one. The empty road beyond the windscreen held its silence. Somewhere beyond the street lights, someone was already coming.

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