Everything was falling apart.

James gritted his teeth as his knees hit the floor. He struggled against the restraints around his wrists, and nearly toppled forward when the agent delivered a swift knock to the side of his head, using the butt of his gun as leverage. A single, wordless warning, for him to knock it off.

“Please,” he gasped, head ringing from the blow. “She’s not here. Please.”

The agent ignored him. “Search the rooms. She’s going to be here somewhere.”

The group of agents spread throughout the house, checking behind doors, under and in anything large enough to hide. From where he kneeled, he could see one of them enter the bedroom, and eyed the opening to the attic.

“Please,” he tried again. “I-“

The side of James’s head cracked against the wall from the force of the next blow, knocking the words out of him in a daze of stars. His stomach flipped. If they found her, all his work would be for nothing. If they found her, he’d never see her again.

The agent stepped towards the opening, nudging the panel with his rifle. The panel slowly shifted aside, inch by painful inch as James waited with bated breath. It was over. They would find her, and take her, and-

A blast echoed through the tense silence. The window blasted open, and a round sliced through the agent’s eye, leaving the meat of his head exposed. For a long, tense moment, nobody moved or said a word. And then the body crumpled to the floor, and all hell broke loose.

The moment the body fell, the lights shut off, all the electronics in the old cabin shutting down. The m whirring ceased and left only a deafening silence in its wake.

Commands were shouted. The agents swore as they tried to obey, bumping into furniture and walls and even each other. James heaved a sigh. Either they didn’t know what they were up against, or they were just so ill-prepared that it wouldn’t have mattered.

The shackles around James’s wrists groaned against him, and finally snapped under the force. They fell to the floor with a clink, and James ducked in time to avoid the butt of the rifle he knew was swinging right in his direction. Even in the pitch black, his hand wrapped easily around the shaft of the other man’s gun, and he yanked.

For good measure, James shot a foot out, catching the agent just beneath the knew. Still unrecovered from the blackout, the agent lost his footing instantly, going tumbling into the dark. One down.

Another shot rang out above the shouting, this time deafeningly close. James smiled. Reinforcements had arrived.

James stood, and cloaked in unrelenting shadow, ghosted through the cabin, only pausing long enough to slide his dagger into each agent’s chest. Step. Sidestep. Stab. Step. Sidestep. Stab. One by one, the bodies crumpled to the floor, tac gear clattering against the floorboards.

James grabbed the next body, slamming them into the wall and raising the dagger. “Hey, hey, it’s me! Easy!” The voice barked out, shoving his hand away. James scoffed, turning back towards the dozen or so agents that remained. “Thanks for the backup,” he said into the black. “Get the girl. I’ll hande the rest of them myself.”

He could sense the nod in return despite the dark. All the years they’d fought side by side, and they still knew each others’ languages by heart. Raising the dagger and crowching low, James disappeared back into the shadows, moving like a phantom until the last of the agents had fallen.

Only when the cabin lay as dead as the corpses by his bloodstaied feet did James know he could make his way up to the attic. He hoisted himself up to hear Cody mumbling soothing nothings to the girl to calm her. Instantly, the adrenaline left his body; she was safe, and in good hands once more. Leave it to Cody to show up at the least convenient time and still shine through.

“So,” James said, the beginnings of exhaustion starting to creep up on him.

“So,” Cody repeated, looking up from where the young girl was curled against his now tear-soaked shirt. “What now?”

James wiped the dripping dagger against his tac pants, expression unchanging. He could feel the blood on his face starting to dry.

“Now we kill every last son of a bitch who dared try to lay a hand on her.”