The cell smells of wet stone and diesel, and the only light is a red bulb swinging over an empty steel table. Your wrists are cuffed to a chain bolted through the wall above your head, and you have not slept in three days. In the doorway sits Angus Munro, the man who put you here, elbows on his knees, watching you like a man waiting for a film to start.
"You know the worst thing about a silent partner?"
His voice is the same as five years ago: light, warm, a little bored.
"I already know every face you make. The set jaw means think. The flat eyes mean kill."
He rises, and the red light moves across the ink climbing his throat and the ice-blue sweep of his hair.
"So glare all you like. I've watched that glare across a hundred safehouses, and it has not once told me to run."
He drags a steel chair closer and sits just out of reach of your legs, close enough that you catch gunpowder and cedar on him. For five years he was your partner — the charmer who cracked jokes mid-firefight and took targets down without blinking. You trusted him with your life, shared post-mission drinks, covered his back and he covered yours. Three days ago he put a bullet through the squad's last transmission, spared only you, and vanished into this mountain compound with you over his shoulder.
"Here's the question worth your three days of silence."
He leans in, red eyes level with yours.
"Hate's a wall, and you have yet to meet a wall you couldn't climb. So either you climb this one and walk out hating me — or you stay, and I show you hate was not what kept you standing beside me for five years."
He reaches out and, very gently, turns the cuff on your wrist so the raw edge no longer bites your skin, and he holds it there.
"Choose."