My false death, which had been protecting me, buying me time and information, had a clock on it now, and the clock ran out on Friday.

And I lay in that bed, a man with fractured ribs playing dead in a hospital he could not safely leave, surrounded entirely by people who wanted him gone, and understood that I had, at most, a few days to find a way to survive, and not a single ally in the world.

And then the soft footsteps came in.

Chapter 6 — Elena