The alarm shrills. A shattered silence.
She does not ask of time remaining.
They hunt him unremittingly now. As they do each time he dares enter their fortress to bring destruction and justice and so much more.
He does not let her lead. He takes the vanguard as Evelyn indicates poorly lit corridors, passages, neglected routes.
Her steps are irregular, in fits and bursts to each wayward breath, ungainly compared to the tireless eloquence of the man before her. There's a tear in the right sleeve of his overcoat. Dark crimson smears; less his own than not. A large black canvas shoulder bag is over his left shoulder. Evelyn does not ask its contents. She thinks she knows. Dark crimson smears. Fallen bodies—agents. How many have there been? Evelyn has lost count. Yet unwinded he remains, when Evelyn's own breathes heave and sweat plasters her hair to her forehead. Who are you? Evelyn wants to ask. Special Forces? Ranger, Delt, SEAL?
Who's guardian angel will he be today? The new arrival in room nineteen? The man from room eleven whose screams she hears every night without reprieve? The teenage boy who gripped her hand and pleaded for something she cannot give?
Too many. There are too many. Too many faces.
Because it will only be one. It's only ever one. One new identity, one at a time. Samaritan's rival can only do this much, Evelyn knows. She might ask why. She doesn't. She does not ask at all. There's safety in silence. If such a thing as safety exists.
They are in a narrow passageway with crumbling flooring and flickering light fixtures above them. At its end is a left corner that takes them to the main hallway. To the holding rooms.
He edges out with his gun trained ahead of him, keeping Evelyn's body behind his own.
Empty.
They do not stop to wonder for how long.
The alarm shrills—an emergency light in the corner strobes to its rhythm. Below it is a camera that a single shot from his silenced pistol shatters.
Evelyn does not ask how he knows which room. She suspects she knows. And when he stops in front of room four she thinks there must be some kind of mistake. Perhaps he will enter the code and realize. Perhaps he means room five, or even three.
He doesn't.
The door is simple. Standard size like all the rest. Stainless steel with no window. A four-button keypad which clicks open when the correct sequence is entered.
And Evelyn does not remember him entering the sequence, though he must have because the door clicks open, a shift of bolts and metal. Evelyn opens her mouth to speak but no words form. Does he not know? Does he not know it's too late? Why does it guide him here, where nothing remains?
The room is small, unadorned. He fills its entirety the moment he crosses the threshold. A single lamp in the corner offers scant light. A bed—a wooden slab with a thin mattress— is against the back wall.
It is here the little girl sits.
She is small, small for her eight years. Her feet don't reach the floor. Her shoulders are turned inward, an unnatural rigidity. An inertness. Her gaze shifts ascetically. Involuntary. And it is not presence but absence that emanates the worst kind of calamity. A thin white T-shirt and faded yellow trousers hang from her frame—too big. Scuffed ballet flats. An oval face. Pale. Dirt-smeared. Battered.
Bright orange hair.
It's ephemeral, but Evelyn sees it. She sees it as his eyes rake over the child, cataloging every tear, every shadow. Every bruise.
Never has she seen such anger.
With each sweep of his eyes it ignites further until Evelyn begins to question savior or foe.
Then it's gone.
He is folding himself down to the little girl's level. Dark predator to gentle giant. He is speaking and words matter less than cadence. He is beckoning – offering and not taking, and Evelyn realizes she has forgotten its face. Narcissism and brokenness so consume, she has forgotten the face of kindness. She looks. And remembers.
The little girl eyes him but does not respond. Evelyn wonders if he knows. Evelyn wonders if he knows the child no longer speaks.
He is sliding the bag from his shoulder, overcoat pooling the floor in a dark halo. Evelyn glimpses the barrel of a large rifle, and so at odds it is with the manner in which he kneels before the child, endeavoring to minimize inherent stature, that she can't quite comprehend.
He produces an object. It is faded and torn but unmistakable.
A child's pink backpack.
Evelyn sees the change then, if only subtle at first. The little girl's eyes widen perceptibly. There's a flicker of something.
With a care unbefitting of his caliber, he lifts the doll from inside. It is made of soft fabric with painted features and wool for hair. Well-worn and well-loved, with stained feet and patches and a tattered dress.
And Evelyn's throat is suddenly too big, a throbbing pulse.
Because the little girl is reaching for the doll.
And Evelyn was wrong.
It's not too late.
Eight-year old Elva hugs the tattered rag doll to her chest with thin arms—arms mottled with bruises, a vivid mapwork of yellow and purple, of grips too tight and malignity most heinous—and smiles; brittle and fleeting, yet extant.
Evelyn had forgotten how.
Evelyn remembers.
Evelyn remembers Marty and The Stubborn Zax. Evelyn remembers fortitude and kindness and a child's unending resilience. And realizes.
It's enough.
She looks to the man with the darkest shadows, the kindest heart, and realizes it matters not how many he saves. How many he cannot. When he appears. How frequently. Only that he does.
Because he has bestowed upon them something infinitely more precious than the sum of lives saved and lost. Something sentient and inherently human that Samaritan, for all its brilliance and domination, will never understand.
Hope.
Elva sits straighter, a spark of wondrous curiosity in her eye, and Evelyn thinks the child means to hug him.
She does something even more extraordinary.
She speaks.
"I knew you'd come," she says, soft but certain, face pressed to the doll's woolen hair. "I saw you," she tells him, and it's triumphant—matter-of-fact, as if such a thing could be none other. She lifts her chin as she looks at him. "You were in the park," she says simply. "And I saw you. I saw you and I knew you'd come save me."
He his still. Raw. Formidable and fragile all at once. The child places her arms around him then, doll in hand, dangling incongruous against his back as she hugs his neck.
Evelyn watches his arms fold tentatively around the little girl's frame. She watches hands she has seen capable of unmatched violence lift the child with unassuming gentleness.
She removes the crumpled piece of paper from her pocket. Because ghosts persist, an aura that surrounds, and Evelyn suspects he could stand in a room full of people and still stand alone.
She presses the crumpled paper into his hand, telling him without words.
It's enough.