Chapter 26
title: "Six Minutes" wordCount: 2383
I was shoving my father's research into a messenger bag with hands that wouldn't stop shaking when Yuki grabbed my wrist.
"Stop packing your life and start running, because Severin doesn't take prisoners."
The papers scattered across my desk—three years of fieldwork, translations of Sumerian tablets, photographs of dig sites in Syria that no longer existed. My fingers hovered over a leather portfolio containing my father's original sketches from Uruk.
"I need—"
"You need to be alive in six minutes." Yuki was already at my bookshelf, pulling down the three volumes I'd marked with red tape on the spines. "These. Nothing else."
"Those are just—"
"Your father's research hidden in fake dust jackets. I'm not an idiot." She threw them at me. "What else is critical?"
Asheron moved through my apartment like a shadow, opening drawers, scanning contents, closing them. He hadn't spoken since I'd woken on my floor with his hand pressed to the back of my neck and Yuki standing over a body I didn't recognize. The Hunter—because that's what it had been, what Asheron had killed in the three seconds I'd been unconscious—was gone now. Yuki had done something with it. I hadn't asked what.
"The external drive," I said. "Blue one, top drawer of the filing cabinet."
Asheron had it before I finished speaking. He held it up, tilted his head. "This contains?"
"Scans of everything. Every tablet, every translation, every—" My throat closed. "Every paper I've published."
"Good." He crushed it in his fist.
The plastic cracked like a gunshot. I lunged forward but Yuki caught me.
"He's right," she said. "Anything digital is a trail. Anything they can trace is a weapon."
"That was five years of work."
"That was a map to everyone you've ever cited, every site you've ever visited, every colleague you've ever mentioned." Yuki's voice was flat. "Severin doesn't need you alive if he has your hard drive."
The words hit like a physical blow. I sat down hard on my desk chair.
Asheron was watching me with those too-old eyes. "You published your research."
"I'm an academic. That's what we do. We share findings, we build on each other's work, we—" I stopped. "Oh god."
"What?" Yuki was at the window, watching the street.
"My last paper. The one on null blood carriers in historical records." My voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else. "I cited twelve primary sources. Locations, dates, family names."
"How many people read it?"
"It was in the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Maybe... two thousand subscribers? Plus anyone with academic database access."
Yuki turned from the window. Her face was carved from stone. "When did it publish?"
"Four months ago."
She pulled the dead Keeper's phone from her pocket. The screen was cracked but functional. Her fingers moved fast, pulling up files, images, data I couldn't track.
"Yuki—"
"Shut up." She wasn't looking at me. "Asheron, how long?"
He'd gone still in that way he did, that predator stillness that made my hindbrain scream. "Four minutes. Maybe less."
"Then she needs to see this now." Yuki thrust the phone at me. "Crime scene photos. Prague, six weeks ago."
The image loaded slowly. A hotel room, expensive, old European architecture. A body on the floor, throat torn open, blood everywhere. A woman, maybe thirty, dark hair, eyes open and empty.
Beside her body, printed on hotel stationery, was a page from my paper. My name at the top. My citations highlighted in yellow.
"Next one," Yuki said.
I swiped. Another city, another room. A man this time, younger, same wounds, same arterial spray patterns. Same page from my paper, different citations highlighted.
"He's using your research as a hunting guide." Yuki's voice was clinical, detached. "Every null blood carrier you mentioned, every historical reference you traced, every family line you documented. He's killing them in order of your citations."
The phone slipped from my hands. Asheron caught it before it hit the floor.
"How many did you cite?" he asked.
"Twelve confirmed carriers. Five possibles." The numbers came automatically, academic reflex overriding the screaming in my head. "But those were historical records, most of them were dead, I was documenting bloodlines that existed centuries ago, I never thought—"
"How many are still alive?"
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't—
Asheron's hand closed on my shoulder, and the bond flared hot and bright, cutting through the panic like a blade through silk. His certainty poured into me, cold and absolute.
"How many, Mira?"
"Five." My voice cracked. "My father was tracking five living carriers. He was trying to warn them, to protect them, but he died before—"
"Where's his list?"
I pointed at the leather portfolio Yuki had thrown at me. "Inside. He kept notes on all of them. Names, locations, how to make contact."
Yuki had it open before I finished speaking. She pulled out a folded paper, yellowed at the edges, covered in my father's cramped handwriting.
Five names. Five addresses. Five people my father had spent his last years trying to save.
Two of the names had been crossed out in red ink.
"That wasn't there before," I whispered. "When I looked at this last week, there were no marks, no—"
"Someone's been in your apartment." Asheron was at my desk now, opening drawers with surgical precision. "Recently. They wanted you to know."
The red ink was fresh. I could see where it had bled slightly into the paper fibers, still damp at the edges.
"The two crossed out," Yuki said. "Prague and Vienna?"
I looked at the crime scene photos again. Matched the faces to the names. "Yes."
"He's playing with you." Yuki was moving now, grabbing my coat, my boots, shoving them at me. "He wants you to know you led him to them. He wants you to feel responsible."
"I am responsible." The words tasted like ash. "I published their locations. I documented their bloodlines. I made them targets."
"You made them visible," Asheron said. "There is a difference."
"Two people are dead because of my research."
"Two people are dead because Severin is a monster who kills for sport." His voice was hard, flat, allowing no argument. "You did not put the blade to their throats."
"I might as well have."
He moved faster than I could track, suddenly in front of me, his hands on either side of my face, forcing me to meet his eyes.
"Listen to me. You will carry this guilt. You will let it carve you hollow. You will use it as a weapon against yourself until there is nothing left but the wound." His thumbs pressed against my cheekbones, grounding, solid. "Or you will use it as fuel. You will save the three who remain. You will choose."
"I don't—"
"Choose, Mira."
The bond between us was a live wire, burning, demanding. I could feel his certainty, his absolute conviction that I was capable of this, that I could be more than my guilt.
I'd never hated anyone more than I hated him in that moment.
"Fine." I shoved his hands away. "The three who are left. Where are they?"
Yuki was already scanning the list. "Seattle, Cairo, and... actually, the third one just says 'mobile, contact through intermediary.' Your father didn't know where they were."
"Then we start with Seattle and Cairo." I was moving now, shoving papers into the bag, grabbing my father's journals, his notes, everything that mattered. "We warn them, we get them somewhere safe, we—"
"Two minutes," Asheron said.
"I'm not done packing."
"You are done." He took the bag from me, zipped it closed. "We leave now or we do not leave at all."
Yuki was at the door, weapon drawn, checking the hallway. "Basement exit. Maintenance tunnels connect to the building three blocks west. We can lose them in the underground."
"My research—"
"Is in the bag or it doesn't matter." Asheron's hand closed around my wrist. "Move."
We moved.
The basement smelled like mildew and old concrete. Yuki led us through a maze of storage units and mechanical rooms, her weapon up, her movements precise. She'd done this before. Run from something. Hidden in the dark.
"Here." She stopped at a metal door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. "Maintenance access. Tunnels run under the whole block."
"Locked," I said.
She shot the lock. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space.
"Not anymore."
The door swung open on darkness and the smell of stagnant water. Yuki pulled a flashlight from her jacket, clicked it on.
"Stay close. Don't touch the walls. Some of these tunnels haven't been inspected in decades."
We descended into the dark.
The tunnel was narrow, barely wide enough for us to walk single file. Water dripped from somewhere above, and I could hear things moving in the shadows—rats, probably, or I hoped it was rats.
Asheron was behind me, his hand on my shoulder, guiding me when I stumbled. The bond hummed between us, a constant awareness of his presence, his focus, his—
"He's here," Asheron said.
Yuki stopped. "Where?"
"Your apartment. He is in your apartment now."
I could hear it then, faintly, filtering down through the concrete and earth—footsteps above us, moving through my space, touching my things.
"How many?" Yuki asked.
"Just him. He sent the others elsewhere."
"Why would he come alone?"
"Because he is not hunting us." Asheron's voice was grim. "He is hunting information."
My father's journal. The one I'd been reading last night, the one with his handwritten notes about the three remaining carriers, the one I'd left—
"Oh no."
"What?" Yuki turned, flashlight beam cutting across my face.
"I left it on my desk. The journal. The one with all my father's notes about how to contact the remaining carriers." My voice was rising, panic clawing up my throat. "It has everything. Names, safe houses, emergency protocols. If Severin finds it—"
"He's already found it." Asheron's certainty was absolute. "That is why he came."
"We have to go back."
"We cannot go back."
"Those three people will die if—"
"Those three people will die if we are captured." His hand tightened on my shoulder. "We warn them. We move faster than he does. We use what advantage we have."
"What advantage? He has the journal. He has the roadmap. He has everything."
"He has information," Asheron said. "We have you."
Above us, I heard a door slam. Footsteps moving toward the basement stairs.
"Move," Yuki hissed. "Now."
We ran.
The tunnel seemed endless, a concrete throat swallowing us deeper into the earth. My lungs burned. My legs screamed. The messenger bag bounced against my hip with every step, heavy with my father's research, with the weight of everything I'd failed to protect.
"Almost there," Yuki said. "Fifty more feet."
The tunnel opened into a wider chamber, some kind of junction point where multiple passages converged. Yuki swept her flashlight across the space, checking exits, calculating routes.
"That one." She pointed to a passage on the left. "Comes up in an alley behind the Thai restaurant on Seventh."
We were moving toward it when Asheron stopped.
"What?" I asked.
He tilted his head, listening. "He is not following."
"That's good, right?"
"No." His eyes met mine in the flashlight beam. "That is very bad."
"Why?"
"Because he already has what he came for."
The words hit like a fist to the stomach. Severin wasn't chasing us because he didn't need to. He had the journal. He had the names. He had everything he needed to find the remaining carriers before we could warn them.
"Then we move faster," I said. "We get to them first."
"How?" Yuki's voice was sharp. "We don't have phones, we don't have transportation, we don't have—"
"We have me." I pulled the list from the messenger bag, the one with my father's handwriting and Severin's red ink. "I know these people. I know how my father would have contacted them. I know the protocols."
"You know what your father wrote down," Asheron said quietly. "Severin knows that too now."
"Then I know what my father didn't write down." I folded the list, shoved it in my pocket. "The things he only told me. The backup plans. The emergency contacts."
"You think you can outthink Severin?" Yuki asked.
"I think I can outthink my father's paranoia, and my father was paranoid enough to have contingencies for his contingencies." I started toward the exit passage. "We get to Seattle first. We warn them. We move."
We emerged from the tunnel into an alley that smelled like rotting vegetables and exhaust fumes. The night air hit my face like a slap, cold and sharp and real.
Yuki was already moving, checking sight lines, scanning for threats. "Clear. We need to get off the street."
"Where?" I asked.
"Anywhere that's not here."
We'd made it maybe three blocks when my phone buzzed in my pocket.
I'd forgotten I still had it. Forgotten it was on. Forgotten everything except the need to move, to run, to escape.
The screen lit up with a text from an unknown number.
A photo loaded slowly, pixel by pixel.
My father's journal, open on my desk. The page with the emergency contact protocols, the ones I'd just told Asheron and Yuki about, the ones I thought only I knew.
Below the photo, a message:
Thank you for the roadmap. —S
My phone buzzed again. Another photo. This one was a screenshot of a flight booking confirmation.
Seattle. Departing in four hours.
A third buzz. A video this time.
I didn't want to open it. Didn't want to see what Severin wanted me to see.
I opened it anyway.
The video was short, maybe ten seconds. A hotel room, expensive, European architecture. A woman tied to a chair, dark hair, terrified eyes. She was saying something, pleading, but there was no audio.
Then Severin walked into frame.
He smiled at the camera. Blew a kiss.
The video cut to black before I could see what happened next, but I didn't need to see it.
I knew.
My phone slipped from my fingers and Asheron caught it, his hand closing around the device, around my wrist, around the scream building in my throat that had nowhere to go except—