A green diode blinked.

Boots moved.

A small cart rolled.

The sound passed his cube and kept going, purposeful, unhurried. He listened to the wheels until they turned a corner and became someone else’s problem.

He took inventory of what he owned in here.

Floor drain, centered. Useful once it mattered. Vent high right with a grille honeycombed fine enough to laugh at fingers. Bolts he could not reach without tools. Camera he could blind if he was allowed to sleep and dream a fire hot enough to fog the lens, but that would get him sedated again and moved down a list of notes labeled "noncompliant."

He crouched and touched the floor with the back of his hand. Not cold enough to steal strength.

They wanted their numbers honest. He respected the process, but he hated the men.

Movement across the corridor drew his eye. Elias’s fingers twitched. No more. Zubair lifted two fingers and lowered them—a signal old as their work together that meant breathe, we are not late yet.

The medic’s hand relaxed as if the body had heard and agreed.

He spoke then, low and even, pitched for the space between cells rather than the cameras.

"Elias."

A breath. A blink. The medic’s eyes opened, glassy, angry at light.

He tried to sit and then chose not to. Good. He had learned how to spend his body. Zubair let his mouth tilt, the smallest permission.

"Hydration?" Elias rasped and coughed once, mouth wry at his own reflex.

"Later."

"Others?"

"Breathing."

Elias’s eyes tracked past Zubair’s shoulder. "Sera?"

"Gone."

That one word landed in the corridor like a weight set down with care. Elias did not flinch. He closed his eyes once, opened them, and nodded as if he had just written the sentence in a margin he would not lose.

Zubair watched the line of tension around the medic’s mouth ease half a centimeter. Not relief. Adjustment. His brain had made room for the new shape of the day.

"Do you feel it?" Elias asked after a moment, voice softer, professional instinct reaching for a symptom he did not yet have the name for.

Zubair understood anyway.

The thing under his ribs had tucked itself small, a coal teaching the ash above it how to lie.

It was not fear. It was discipline so complete it wore skin. He touched two fingers to his sternum and let them fall, a soldier’s sign that meant friendly and dangerous at once.

"Quiet," he answered.

Elias’s mouth tightened. "Mine too."

"Good." Zubair let the word hold approval and command together. "Keep it that way."

A sound answered him from two cells down—Lachlan, emerging into the world like a man fighting off a heavy blanket.

He swore once, softly, more theater than anger, then tried on a grin that did not sit right yet and kept it anyway. He pushed to his knees and leaned his forehead to the plexiglass long enough to get his balance.

"It seems we went on a bit of a field trip," Lachlan muttered. "Did no one think to pack snacks?"

"Do not be stupid," Zubair returned, and found comfort in the ritual.

"I am offended," Lachlan deadpanned. "I can be stupid and charming at the same time."

Elias rolled his head toward the voice. "Vitals?"

"Present," Lachlan replied. "Annoyance elevated. Handsome unchanged." He glanced past Zubair. "Sera?"

"Gone," Zubair repeated.

Lachlan’s jaw set. The grin stayed where it was, now a baring of teeth with no amusement in it. "Then, clearly, we need to go get her."

"Yes," Zubair agreed. He did not add when. That part was his work.

A soft chuckle drifted from the far cube. Alexei did not bother opening his eyes.

"Already planning," he murmured. "Good. I hate to be the only one doing all the hard thinking."

Lachlan exhaled in a way that would have been a laugh on a better day. "How’s your head, snow ghost?"

"Empty," Alexei purred. "Perfect for thoughts."

Zubair let the exchange run until it steadied the room. Men needed to hear their friends in cages like these. It built a floor under the day.

He walked to the door again and placed his palm flat, then lifted it and studied the oils his skin left. A guard cleaning schedule would wipe that print within the hour. He could time attention by neatness if the routine held.

Footsteps grew in the corridor.

Two sets. Slow, but not nervous. The guards here believed in their walls. The men paused at the junction and looked in as professionals do, not to taunt, not to chat. Count. Confirm. Move on.

The first guard met Zubair’s eyes and held the line for a heartbeat. No ego. No flinch. A man who knew what a capable body could do and had planned to meet it with equipment, not bravado.

"Water," Zubair stated. Not a request. A reminder of the next thing on a schedule someone else thought they owned.

"It’s coming," the guard returned, tone flat. "Then pulls."

"Pulls," Lachlan echoed. "How friendly."

"Baseline," the second guard clarified. "Then imaging. Then sampling."

Elias’s mouth thinned. "Sampling," he repeated under his breath, and the word tasted like metal in three languages at once.

Zubair did not look away from the guard. "Where." Not a plea for information. A test to see what this one would give for free.

The guard glanced down the corridor and back. "Away."

Zubair nodded once. The truth, if not the answer.

The guards moved on. Their boots faded. The hum returned to the front of the room’s music.

He let his mind start the first small calendar of captivity.

Water and pulls meant blood drawn and cuffs laced.

Imaging meant time under machines and a room with a door that opened wider than a feed slot.

Sampling meant pain in controlled doses. He filed the order and assigned the risks.

He thought of Sera again. Not a hope. A vector.

She would bend what she needed to bend when the timing paid. He could buy her seconds here by being uninteresting. He could save his men pain later by making the first sessions look like the facility’s plan was working.