The footsteps stop right outside his apartment.
Not slowing down.
Not passing by.
Stopping.
Kael didn't breathe.
He was still crouched beside the man, one hand hovering uselessly over the soaked jacket, and for one completely paralyzed second his brain simply refused to produce a single useful thought.
Then it caught up.
And produced approximately forty thoughts simultaneously, all of them terrible.
The blood.
His eyes snapped to the floor.
The trail was obvious. Painfully, catastrophically obvious. Dark streaks from the door to where the man lay, soaked into the grain of the floorboards, spreading at the edges where the rainwater had carried it further than it had any right to go.
Anyone with a flashlight would see it under the door in an instant.
Move him.
The thought arrived sharp and final.
Kael stood, grabbed the man under both arms, and pulled.
He did not move easily.
Of course he doesn't, Kael thought, teeth gritted, hauling with everything he had. Of course. Because nothing about this is proportionate or reasonable—
The man was solid. Dense in the way that came from being built rather than simply large—muscle and frame and the dead, uncooperative weight of someone completely unconscious. Kael's bare feet slipped against the wet floor. He adjusted his grip, dug in, and dragged.
Slowly.
Agonizingly.
Inch by inch toward the back wall, away from the door, away from the worst of the blood trail.
The floorboards left faint dark streaks as he went.
Not helpful, said his brain.
Working on it, said the rest of him.
He got the man as far as the narrow gap between the desk and the wall—not ideal, not hidden, but out of the immediate sightline from the door. It was the best the apartment had to offer. The apartment, as previously established, did not have much to offer.
Kael straightened, chest heaving, and looked around wildly.
Cloth. He needed cloth. Something to slow the bleeding, to apply pressure, to do the one thing he vaguely remembered from a first aid module he'd sat through four years ago on a government program because attendance was mandatory and the heating worked.
He grabbed the dish towel hanging from the desk drawer handle.
Looked at it.
It had a small embroidered lemon on it.
He'd bought it because it was seventy percent off and it made him feel, briefly, like a person with a kitchen aesthetic.
Sorry, he thought at it, and pressed it hard against the wound beneath the man's ribs.
The man made no sound. Didn't flinch. Didn't react at all.
That was somehow more frightening than if he had.
Kael kept the pressure firm, reached sideways with his free hand and yanked the spare shirt off the back of his chair—his second-best one, the grey one with the small hole near the hem that he kept meaning to mend—and pressed that on top.
"He came this way."
The voice outside was clear enough to make out individual words now. Low and certain. Not a question.
"Last signal had him at this level."
"Then he's here."
Kael's jaw locked.
"Spread out. Check every unit."
Every unit.
He looked at his door. At the deadbolt. At the chain.
Then down at the floor, where the blood trail he'd tried to drag the man away from still started—visibly, undeniably—right at the base of his door.
There was nothing he could do about that.
There was genuinely, materially nothing he could do about that.
His breathing had gone shallow without him noticing—short, tight pulls of air that were doing very little for the oxygenation situation. He forced himself to slow it. Breathe low. Breathe quiet.
Stay small, said the part of him that had survived eighteen years of being overlooked by practicing exactly that.
Be nothing.
A flashlight beam cut under the door.
Thin. Bright. Sweeping left to right in a slow, methodical arc.
Kael went completely still.
The beam moved.
Paused.
He watched it, heart hammering so loudly he was certain it was audible through the wood.
The beam swept back.
Slower this time.
Hovering near the center of the gap, right where the floorboards were darkest.
Don't, he thought, at nothing in particular. At the universe, maybe. At whatever sequence of decisions had led to this exact moment. Don't. Please. Just—move on. There's nothing here. There's nobody here. This is the most boring apartment in Veltara, I promise you, there is nothing worth finding—
A voice.
Right outside.
Close enough that he could hear the particular flatness in it. Professional. Unhurried.
"There's something under this door."
Silence from the others.
Then: "Check it."
Kael looked at the man against his wall.
At the towel pressed to his side, already darkening through.
At the ring on his hand. The watch. The tailored jacket that cost more than three months of Kael's rent.
He looked at his own hands—trembling slightly, pressed flat against his knees.
I make coffee, he thought, one last, desperate time. I fix code. I keep my head down. I have done nothing wrong. I have never done anything wrong—
Three knocks hit the door.
Heavy.
Deliberate.
The kind that wasn't asking.
"Open the door."