Chapter 266: Talking to Lucy

I left the hotel and walked the short distance toward the small building Christopher had chosen for Lucy’s confinement—a former call shop sitting on the near edge of the cleared block, its windows opaque with grime and its faded signage barely legible. Unremarkable enough that nobody wandering the perimeter would give it a second look.

I wasn’t particularly worried about what I’d find inside. Christopher was angry about what they did. Mei mattered to him. Clara was also a friend, then latter having nearly died.

But Christopher wasn’t reckless with it. His anger had edges and he knew where they were.

The entire group was working on frayed nerves, and Margaret’s community even more so. They had been terrified witnesses to what Gaspar could do—had watched one of their own nearly die from a bullet and seen a young woman dragged away by something that didn’t belong in any world they had been prepared to live in. I had no illusions about how many people in that hotel would feel genuine moral conflict about Lucy’s wellbeing. She was Callighan’s. That made her the enemy.

But she was a hostage. A living, functional hostage was valuable. A dead one was just a problem.

I pushed open the call shop door.

"—spill it out, or we’ll think that we have no use for your tongue."

Christopher’s voice reached me before my eyes had adjusted to the dimmer interior.

A scoff answered him. Sharp and contemptuous.

"A man who hasn’t even finished growing is threatening me?" Lucy’s voice was rough and entirely unintimidated.. "Remove these ropes. If you’re a real man, come at me without them."

"The thing is," Christopher replied, and I could hear the smile in it even before I saw his face, "you are our hostage. Why would I untie a person like you just to satisfy my ego? I was educated at a genuinely prestigious institution. Don’t mistake me for an idiot, you wench."

"What did you just—"

"Wench," Christopher repeated, leaning toward her with deliberate emphasis. "With a capital W. Very large font. Bold, maybe."

Lucy’s jaw was clenched so hard I could see the muscle working in her cheek from the doorway.

"It doesn’t matter," she said through her teeth, each word precisely separated. "The moment I’m free, you are dead."

"You are never getting free," Christopher said. "So that remains a hypothetical. And if you prove entirely useless to us—" He gestured vaguely around the room. "Well. This building has doors. Infected have teeth. I imagine ten of them in a confined space would make for a very unpleasant final experience."

"Your threats mean nothing to me!" Lucy snapped, straining against the ropes binding her to the chair aggressively. "You don’t have the guts to actually do anything! You’re all words!"

"We are back to the beginning of the loop," Christopher said sighing. "This woman works exclusively on muscle memory and stubbornness. No strategic capacity whatsoever. What do you think, Cindy?"

Cindy, who had been sitting slightly apart offered a smile that contained more exhaustion than amusement.

"How many," I said from the doorway, stepping fully inside and letting the door fall shut behind me. I couldn’t entirely keep the complex mixture of amusement and exasperation out of my voice. "This has been going on for an hour, maybe?"

"One full hour," Cindy confirmed sighing.

"She’s fiercely loyal to Callighan," Christopher said, pulling a chair around and dropping into it backwards. "Honestly at this point I’m starting to wonder if it’s less about survival strategy and more about personal devotion. Maybe she is one of his sex slaves or something."

Lucy came out of her chair as far as the ropes allowed, the entire frame scraping against the floor with the force of it, her face flushing with anger.

"What did you just say?!"

"Interesting," Christopher said grinning. "Maybe I hit the bullseye."

"You piece of—"

"Alright," I said, pulling a chair from against the wall and positioning it in front of Lucy, sitting down. "Christopher. I think she’s enough riled. Give it a rest."

"Rile?" Lucy said, growling. "I’m not riled."

"You look fairly riled," I said.

"I look like someone who has been tied to a chair for hours and subjected to a boneless man’s empty threats," she replied with a snort.

"Did you expect a hotel room and a meal?" I asked, and let my voice go genuinely cold. "You’re with Callighan. A man who murders civilians, kidnaps people, and runs what amounts to a criminal organization that preys on anyone too weak to resist him. And you’re not just one of his people—you’re one of his trusted inner circle." I held her gaze. "You’ll have to forgive us for not extending hospitality."

"Trust," Lucy repeated. "That word gets used about Callighan more than it deserves to." She shifted in the chair, pulling slightly against the ropes. "We’re all trying to survive. Every single one of us. Callighan may be exactly what you say he is—I’m not going to argue his character with you. But he keeps people breathing. He enforces structure. In the world we’re living in now, that has value even when the man providing it is rotten."

"Through violence," I said. "Through threats. Through fear."

"Yes," she said simply, without apology.

"And the innocent people?" Cindy said, raising her voice. "The ones who didn’t choose to be in his path? The ones who just wanted to survive quietly without hurting anyone? Does their survival factor into your group’s calculation?"

Lucy looked at Cindy for a moment, and something moved in her expression—not remorse exactly.

"I don’t kill innocents," she said, her voice lower now. "That’s a line I’ve kept. Whatever Callighan orders, whoever he sends—I handle threats. People who come at me or mine with weapons. I don’t murder civilians." A pause. "The ones doing that are his prison friends. The ones who walked out with him when the virus hit and the walls stopped mattering. Gaspar and the others like him. They’re the rot at the center of it."

"Callighan escaped from prison?" I asked, the information catching me with genuine surprise.

"Before everything collapsed," Lucy confirmed. "The outbreak hit the facility and the guards had other things to worry about. He walked out with a group of them—career criminals, violent offenders, people with nothing left to lose and no particular reason to develop a conscience in a world without consequences." She looked at me flatly. "Gaspar was among them."

"And yet you stay," Christopher said. "Knowing what they are. Knowing what he is. Aren’t you the slightest bit ashamed?"

"Shame doesn’t keep you breathing," Lucy said. "I made peace with that a long time ago."

"Loyalty, then," I said, shifting forward slightly in the chair and resting my hand on the handaxe balanced across my thighs—not raising it, not threatening with it, just letting it be visible. "Is that what keeps you with him? Survival logic?" I tilted my head. "Because you’re a pragmatist, Lucy. You said it yourself. So explain to me why a pragmatist with no particular loyalty to a prison escapee and his friends is sitting here in front of me protecting them."

Lucy looked at the handaxe. Then back at my face.

"You’re not going to kill me," she said, sneering.

"I’m not going to kill you," I said. "I’m not like you people. All I want is my friend back."

"Just your friend?" Lucy said, watching me carefully. "Somehow I doubt that’s the whole picture."

"We didn’t want anything to do with any of you when we got here," I said. "We kept to ourselves. We weren’t looking for a fight. But your people forced our hand—Gaspar killed one of ours and took someone important to us. And from everything we’ve seen, he’s not stopping there." I leaned forward slightly. "You started this. Not us."

"Doesn’t matter who started it," Lucy said. "You can’t beat him. Full stop."

"If there was a real chance—would you cooperate with us?" I asked. I looked at her for a moment, straight. "I’m serious. Because sitting here looking at you, I don’t actually think you’re the worst of them. So talk to me."

"A chance?" She shook her head, frustration breaking through the surface. "You saw him. You stood in the same room as Gaspar and you’re still asking me about chances? Does that not tell you anything?!"

"We’ve seen some pretty monstrous things ourselves," I said. "More than you probably know. So no, we’re not scared." I tilted my head. "But you are. And it’s not about loyalty—we’ve already established that. So what is it?"

Lucy went quiet.

She bit her lip and looked down at the floor.

The silence stretched long enough that Christopher shifted in his chair.

"He has my brother," she said finally.

"What?" I asked.

"Callighan." Her voice had dropped, stripped of everything she’d been performing for the last hour. Just the plain, tired truth underneath. "I’m former marines. I got out with my younger brother when everything went down. We ran into Callighan’s group on the road here—wrong place, wrong time. Once I saw what kind of people he was running with I tried to pull us out." She paused. "He told me he’d leave us. We were surrounded by infected, out in the open, and he looked me in the face and said he didn’t owe protection to anyone outside his group." Her jaw tightened. "So I stayed. I kept us both alive."

"But he still has your brother," Cindy said quietly.

"Callighan set him up in Brigantine—away from the fighting around here. Safer, yeah. I can visit." She shifted in the chair. "But if I step wrong, if I give him any reason to think I’m not his anymore—" She didn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t need to. "I’m just trying to hold on until he gets what he wants from Marlon. Then I take my brother and we’re gone."

The picture clicked into place.

First time I’d seen Lucy and heard how she talked about Callighan, something was already off. She wasn’t devoted to him—she was caged by him. The brother wasn’t kept in a locked room somewhere, but Callighan had made it crystal clear he could reach him whenever he wanted. That was enough.

"You actually trust him to let you both go once he gets what he wants?" I asked.

"He’s a bastard," Lucy said. "But he keeps his word. He just wants Marlon dead—that’s all this is for him."

Something bigger was going on between Callighan and Marlon. Whatever it was, it wasn’t just territory.

"One more thing," I said. "What you told us earlier—that Callighan wouldn’t care if you lived or died, that you’d be a useless hostage." I watched her face. "Was that true?"

Lucy held my gaze and something in her expression shifted.

"If it’s Gaspar who took your friend—" she started slowly, "—then no, I don’t think Callighan has much say in what happens to her. They work together but Gaspar does what Gaspar wants. And if he took someone—" She stopped. Seemed to weigh whether to say the rest. "He won’t let go. That’s just what he is. Him and Williams and the others who came out of that prison. Breaking people is how they pass the time."

"What..."

Something in my chest went very dark and very still.

I felt it before I could stop it—Dullahan stirring, rising, that deep pressure building from the inside out. The floor shuddered once, a low vibration that ran through the concrete under our feet like the building had exhaled.

Lucy’s eyes went wide. She pressed back in her chair, staring at me in shock.

"Y—You—"

"Ryan." Cindy’s hand was on my shoulder immediately concerned as she called me. "Ryan."

I locked my jaw and forced it back down. Pushed the emotions back beneath the surface where it lived. It took more effort than I wanted to admit.

I stood up.

"I’m getting Mei back," I said, looking down at Lucy. My voice came out quieter than I intended, which somehow made it worse. "And if you actually care about your brother—really care—then listen to me carefully." I held her gaze. "The person belonging to our group Gaspar took is being held in Brigantine. We’re going there regardless. We’re getting her out." I paused. "We can bring your brother out too."

Her expression broke open for just a second before she pulled it back together.

"You can cooperate with us and that happens," I continued. "Or you can sit here and rot while I go take down Callighan anyway. And when that happens—when he’s gone and there’s nobody left to enforce whatever deal you made with him—you’ll be in here with no leverage and no say over what happens to your brother at all." I stepped back. "Your choice."

I turned and walked toward the door.