The guard is with them. They’ve learned his name is Kenny. He keeps trying to negotiate, and Nora keeps telling him to shut up. He would have suffocated had they not helped clear the muck off his face. He coughed and wheezed for a good minute, desperate for air, before he finally realized his own M9 was trained at his head.

This facility is a concrete maze. Kenny led them to the locker room, and he will lead them out of here and into the open air, but first he needs to be cuffed. Nora has a pair in her purse. “This is stupid,” he says as the bracelets tighten around his wrists. “You’re being stupid. We gave you back your kid. We’re trying to help understand what’s happening to her. And this is what you do? Attack me? Pull a gun?”

“Kenny,” Jack says, “I realize you have to put in some effort here, since your job is on the line, but shut the fuck up.”

Kenny stops talking after that, but he sighs a lot, walks as slowly as he can, and stares meaningfully at every security camera they pass, hoping someone might pop out of a doorway and catch them. But the halls are mostly empty at two a.m. At one point, they hear voices up ahead, but Nora presses the muzzle into Kenny’s cheek and puts a finger to her lips. Jack creeps toward the corner and is ready to peer around it when he feels a hand on his arm. Mia. He pulls back and she steps forward. He hears her snort softly, as if to dislodge something from her sinuses, and out of her mouth comes what looks like a gray-green ball. She plops it into her palm and rolls it around the corner. There is a muffled thump, like a gunshot heard through a pillow, and a voice cries out, “What the hell?” The exclamation is cut short by a choking cough, and a few seconds later they hear bodies drop with meaty thuds.

Mia looks at Jack, and one side of her mouth hikes up in a smile. A familiar dimple hollows her left cheek, and only then does he feel like he’s truly found his daughter.

They continue on. Jack is so worried about what’s waiting for them as they turn corners and tromp up staircases that he doesn’t realize they’ve lost Mia. He calls to Nora, and she looks at him with a mixture of panic and anger as if to say, Again? “I know,” he says and he holds up his hands, which tremble with the familiar panic surging through him. “I know.”