Baron was right. Helena is becoming a problem. I never should’ve touched her. We could’ve left Fury her coordinates in the mountains and found Alastor ourselves, but instead, I helped her. I comforted her, and she looked at me like that .

And I think I liked it.

I don’t know what the hell is happening to me anymore. This job was supposed to be simple—get in, kill Bane and Alastor, get out. But Helena...

I groan, pushing a hand down my face.

She brings something out in me, some warm feeling in my chest that makes me want to claw it out. It’s uncomfortable and unbearably strong, and it’s because of her. I need her gone, need to focus, but the idea of leaving her is like a bug under my skin. Baron feels it too, I can see it in the way he watches her. He’s less coordinated at hiding his feelings than he wants to believe, and he’s never been fixated on anything except death until now.

We push through the trees into Lienz. We’re not far from the rendezvous. Another ten minutes and I’ll leave her to the city while Baron and I drive far away from her. We’ll recon with Fury and—

The sign of smoke stops us dead in our tracks. Ruins of buildings and cobblestone are strewn about, the grass and trees burnt down to a black ash.

Lienz is gone.

It’s not just damaged—it’s destroyed. Everything. The school. The homes. Everything.

Helena takes a cautious step forward, her eyes scanning the destruction as she carefully steps around the decimated city. “What happened?” Her voice is steady but quiet, and there’s something fragile underneath it.

My gaze lifts to Baron, whose eyes are wide and his jaw clenched. I remember their screams, the boy running to him when the school was fired on.

“Acacia,” Baron spits. “When you directed us to Lienz, Acacia followed. They fired on the school…with the kids still inside.”

She looks physically ill, wrapping her arms around herself to keep her from vomiting. I never believed she intentionally led us there, despite Baron’s rage, and this just confirmed it. She’s sick from it, disgusted, but maybe she’s finally starting to understand exactly who Bane was.

Helena moves deeper into the ruins, lifting her feet carefully around the bodies covered in rubble and ash. She’s eerily silent, studying the face of every body, every child that she passes, and stepping around an elderly couple hugging each other in the remains of a house that’s fallen on top of them.

She rounds the corner and freezes when she finds the school sat in pieces in the back of the town. The children are scattered along the courtyard, their bodies contorted and upturned in the debris, but that’s not what makes Helena stop, or what makes Baron kicking the rubble and scream in anger.

The minister is lying dead in the center of the courtyard clutching the body of that same boy that ran to Baron. She cradles him in her arms, her face twisted up in distress and pain as she tries to shield him from Acacia. In front of her, a large pole is struck into the ground, and the boy’s head is attached to its end.

She stumbles back, her hand flying to her mouth to stop it but she bucks forward and vomits.

It’s a gruesome sight. The child was clearly left for Baron to find—a punishment for the both of us—but not something I hadn’t expected. I don’t share the same anger Baron has. I knew this would happen. Acacia never shows kindness or restraint, even with children. Especially with children.

I move beside Helena as she retches again, sweeping her hair behind her shoulders as she spits more bile onto the broken cobblestone.

“I know,” I whisper, holding her hair back until she stands again.

She takes a single second to collect herself, sniffling away the shock and horror before she continues on to the east side of the town. She stops every few feet, taking in some new destruction, buildings and homes caved in and shrapnel stuck inside the faces of those who weren’t blown off.

It wasn’t my request to shelter her from this. It was Fury’s. Baron and I would’ve told her about Acacia otherwise, but she knows now and every step she takes only hardens the disgust and disbelief on her face.

“My friends. Alastor,” she says, shaking her head. “How could they do this? To women? To children?”

“It’s not the first time,” Baron grinds out.

A cold emptiness falls over me and I shoot a look at him and he instantly stops talking before Helena has a chance to speak, though I don’t miss the look she gives me in return.

“What is he talking about?” She asks me.

No. I’m not having this conversation. Not to her. Not to anyone.

Baron knows better than to talk about what happened in DC, or at least the pieces he knows about. He steps up, leading forward. “We need to contact Fury, move the rendezvous. We’re compromised here.”

Helena speaks up instantly. “Then take me with you.”

“No.”

She turns, her eyes full of anger and hurt.

“Look at what they’ve done!” She throws her arms wide, gesturing to the destruction around us like I can’t see it. Like I haven’t been aware of what Acacia’s capable of for decades. “How can you expect me to turn a blind eye to this?”

“We aren’t.” Baron says. “This is what Acacia does. They don’t give second chances like we do.”

“I can handle myself.”

Baron laughs humorlessly.

“It’s not about your strength, doll, it’s about being smart.” He nods towards her leg. “You’ve got one working leg and no protection. You don’t know Acacia like we do. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

She opens her mouth to speak, and I give her a look, daring her to challenge either of us. Her jaw falls shut. She’s angry, and she has every right to be, but anger is a distraction. Baron is living proof of that. Emotions cloud judgment and the last thing we need is impulses. Baron is hard enough to reel in when he decides to start carving out contractor’s eyes, Helena won’t be any better, not after the display she showed with the sniper. She’ll only get in the way.

We move in silence, crossing the city slowly. Helena takes care not to disturb the bodies but Baron trudges through, marching angrily through the carnage. Still, as we push through the debris, an unsettling feeling nags at me. The city feels strange. Familiar, almost.

I nudge Baron. “Do you recognize this place?”

He squints through the wreckage, shaking his head. “I can’t see anything through all this shit. Looks like that fuck hole in D.C.”

I glare at him.

Shut. Up.

Helena seems to notice Baron’s silence again, and she speaks up, eyeing us both with caution. “You said the bunker was in the mountains. How do you know it’s still there?”

“What are you talking about?” Baron asks.

“If Bane blew you off the mountain, how do you know the bunker didn’t get destroyed too?”

“It’s not that easy, doll. Bunkers are made of steel-reinforced concrete. It’s not going to blow up as easily. Buried, maybe, but not gone.”

This would all be a lot simpler if that were true, and maybe Bane and Alastor could’ve died along with it.

She pauses, staring at me. “And what happens if you do find it?”

Baron and I exchange a look. We’re both thinking it, and I’m sure Helena doesn’t need us to know the answer to that. There’s only one right answer to that.

“Make sure Acacia is blown off the face of the earth,” he answers.

Helena stares at us for a moment before she scoffs. “You can’t be serious.”

My eyes narrow. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“You can’t just kill everyone associated with them,” she argues. “You said it yourself, Acacia is everywhere—military, government. You can’t just murder all of them.”

I swallow down a growl, taking a single step closer. “Watch me.”

“Why the sudden cold feet?” Baron muses. “You agreed that they deserved to die.”

“ Bane deserved to die!” She corrects. “Alastor deserves to die. You can’t just up and murder thousands of people! They didn’t do what Bane and Alastor did.”

She steps in front of the two of us as she speaks, an unconscious gesture to prevent us from moving, like it would change anything that’s already happened.

“Then it’s a good thing I don’t care what you think.” He takes a slow step forward, matching her stare with a dark one of his own. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re all guilty. They’ve all killed people, they all watched these kids die. They don’t get a free pass for being a foot soldier. That sniper sure as hell didn’t.”

Her jaw tenses. “That was different.”

I cock a brow, pushing her. “Was it?”

She doesn’t even hesitate, even when Baron looks down on her and tries to intimidate her. She matches his stance, squaring her shoulders and turning her chin up in defiance.

“Some of them were manipulated,” she says. “I was. That doesn’t make me a mercenary.”

“You weren’t part of Acacia, doll,” I remind her. “You were a target.”

“People like Bane and Alastor were exceptions. You can’t murder anyone who breathes near Acacia. Not all of them are psychopaths—they’re just doing their job.”

I grow still, and my eyes lock onto her. That phrase—a phrase that’s been used to justify murder and apologize those too weak to take responsibility—makes my blood boil. I very rarely feel anger, but I can feel black dotting around the edges of my vision as I look down at her and I know she feels it too when she steps back with wide eyes.

“Do you think the Nazis were ‘just doing their job’ when they murdered millions of women and children?”

Her jaw snaps shut, and it takes me several moments to force my fists to unclench. I tighten my scarf, tucking it into the collar of my shirt. I’ve lost a lot of people in my life because of ignorant thinking like that. Words like that allow people to do whatever they want to someone else under the guise of not knowing it’s wrong. They do. They just don’t care. I won’t allow her to debase herself by becoming an idiot to defend a company of mercenaries.

Voices in the trees jolt Baron away for a minute before he ducks.

“Get down!” He gets low to the balls of his feet, and I grab Helena, pulling her down with us as Acacia patrols move through the area. That’s not good.

“Acacia?” Helena whispers.

Baron scowls. “They should’ve moved on by now. It’s been days.”

“Maybe they finally got wind of the sniper’s disappearance?” She asks.

“Not this soon,” Baron says, shaking his head. “They’re looking for something.”

I frown. What could they still be looking for? They already tore apart the city. There’s nothing left. There’s nothing they could possibly find here.

Except…

Oh my god.

“The bunker,” I say. “We must be close.”

They both turn to me, confused, but they don’t question me. It’s here. That’s the only reason Acacia would stick around for so long.

Helena’s eyes scan the area as patrols move about. “Great,” she huffs. “Now what?”

I keep my eyes on her as we creep through the debris, avoiding the contractors as they patrol in clusters. Helena is struggling, her breathing uneven. I can see the way her chest rises and falls raggedly, her steps slower, but she keeps pushing forward. Her resolve never wavers, even as her body fights against her.

“Not all it’s cracked up to be?” I ask quietly.

She shoots me a glare. “Not when I have minimal clothes and no weapon.”

“We’ll get you a weapon.” The patrol ahead of us breaks between the treeline and disappears out of sight. “Come on,” I say, moving along the outskirts

I slip into the gap of a demolished building, keeping low and ears tuned in for any small sound. Baron leads, signaling us with his hand when it’s safe to move from one building to the next. Every time another patrol passes, he flattens himself against a wall, growing frustrated and cursing under his breath each time he’s stopped. Helena moves quietly despite the fresh wound in her leg drawing pain from her. She tries to hide it but it’s evident in the limp she disguises as cautious strides. She’s struggling, but even with the dozens of contractors scanning through the town, she still remains unnoticed—-something I remember even from that first night I’d watched her in the woods.

“We need to find cover,” she whispers. “We’ll be spotted.”

I glance back at her, catching the tightness in her face when she speaks. She’s scared. No. She’s angry. Enraged, either at Acacia or the fact that she knows she’s straining just to keep up with us both. It creates a pang inside me—something unfamiliar and unsettling in my chest that I force down seconds later. Now’s not the time to get cold feet.

I motion for Helena to move forward, covering the rear as we weave through the broken remains of Lienz. A large building comes into view—-a black cathedral standing tall in the midst of trees just outside the city. There’s no path leading to it but cars surround the tall building. It’s unnatural, standing in the middle of the forest with two identical spires stretching into the canopy of leaves around it. A church, I realize, standing like a ghostly sentinel over the destruction. And then, I see it—-a large ‘A’ carved into the face of the cathedral.

Baron sees it too, and we both remember the symbol written on the books strewn about the ground when Baron ran into the minister.

Ascension.

Baron turns back to Helena, his face suddenly serious and harsh. “When we interrogated you, you told us to come to Lienz. Why?”

Helena takes a step back, her brows furrowing. “I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I was trying to buy time.”

“But you knew the name of the nearest city to our location. How?”

Helena looks to me, a confused defensiveness in her voice. “It was the first thing that came to my head. I didn’t even know it was a real city until now.”

I look back at the church, perfectly concealed in the forests’ darkness. It’s decades old, the black barely able to conceal the age of the brownstone or the worn metal doors surrounding wood that only supports a gothic architecture from at least the early 1900s. It’s been here for years, sloppily changed to blend into its surroundings. They’ve been watching Lienz for decades.

But why?

Then it dawns on me and my heart drops.

“It’s here. The bunker is here.”

Baron’s eyes widen. “What? Where?”

“I don’t know.” I glance toward the church. “But someone in there might.”

Baron shakes his head, not even bothering to glance at the hundreds of contractors moving around the building. “We don’t have the artillery for that.”

“We need to take that risk,” I argue. “We can’t fight unprotected.”

“I’ll go.”

Baron and I both turn back at Helena. She squares her shoulders, an unsettling resolve crossing her face. “If they think we’re dead, we can use that to our advantage.”

I study her for a moment, waiting for her to stand down, but she doesn’t. I admire her resilience to her choice. It’s a stupid one, but it’s a choice. Dead or not, she’ll be caught the second she steps foot in there. Even if she wasn’t injured, stepping in there without a mask or protection, she will be seen instantly. Acacia doesn’t take lightly to their contracts getting away.

“You want to go in there looking like that?” I nod to her torn clothes.

She frowns, crossing her arms. “You said I was on my own when I cleared the mountains, didn’t you?”

My eyes narrow. “I did.”

“Then I’m no longer your problem.”

I step closer, my jaw tensing at her defiance. “Eager to leave, aren’t we?”

“I’m doing us a favor,” she shoots back, her chin lifted. “I’ll take care of my problem, you take care of yours.”

I sigh. Every time I think she’s finally obtained some shred of intelligence, she has to go and do something like this. She’s going to get herself killed, and then Fury will nail my balls to their door.

Baron jumps in before I do, laughing in her face. “You don’t know what you’re getting into, doll,” he says, flashing a smile. He extends his arm, gesturing toward the church. “But by all means. Go.”

Helena eyes him warily, a brow lifting with suspicion. “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Baron crosses his arms, his grin fading into a sneer. “We held up our end of the bargain. Now you can get the hell out of our lives.”

Helena hesitates for a moment, her eyes flicking between the two of us, calculating, but eventually walks off into the woods towards the church and the hundreds of mercenaries inside.

I don’t offer another word. Apart from physically restraining her, she won’t stay, no matter how we ask. She’s a child convinced that she can fight her own battles and walk into fire themselves. There’s a lot of things I’ve learned from working in the field for so long, and one stands out from the rest: the best for a child to learn not to play with fire is to let them get burned.