Chapter 1: The Price of Sanctuary
The corridor looked clean. Too clean. Sterile in that way only places built to hide things could be. Bleach and silence. Juniper froze at the sight of her father—President Harlan Maddox—waiting at the far end. The gray suit, the trimmed hair, the calculated stance. He wasn’t a father waiting for his daughter. He was a politician preparing a press statement.
I’d seen grief, panic, raw survival. This wasn’t any of that.
“Charlotte,” Maddox said, like the name itself was a formal obligation. A practiced smile tugged at his mouth as he stepped forward, hands visible but unmoving. “It’s good to see you safe.”
Juniper didn’t rush him. Didn’t hug him. Her curls fell limp around her cheeks as she took one halting step, then another. And then stopped. “Dad,” she said, too quiet like a question. Like she wasn’t sure who he was anymore. This man seemed different from the desperate father I saw in the video chats recently.
He didn’t meet her halfway. He didn’t even lean in. Gave her a flat nod and shifted to me. “Mr. Cade,” he said, offering his hand. “Thank you. For returning my daughter.”
His palm was smooth. Too smooth. The handshake was short, sterile. All surface.
“I didn’t exactly do it for applause,” I said.
“You always had a choice,” he replied.
I almost laughed. Almost. Instead, I adjusted Luke’s weight in my arms. His forehead burned against my neck, the fever back with a vengeance. Max stood behind me, holding on to my belt loop like he was strapped in for a rocket launch.
Maddox’s eyes flicked over them without much interest. “Your family will be cared for. You have my word.”
“Emily?”
“She’s already in medical. Dr. Voss is settling her in. She’ll return in a moment.”
I didn’t answer. Because trust is currency, and I was broke.
He turned to Juniper. “Charlotte, we have much to discuss.”
Before she could respond, Max piped up. “We named her Juniper. We like that better than Charlotte.”
Maddox didn’t blink. Stared at him like he’d spoken a different language. Juniper knelt down and ruffled Max’s hair. “You can still call me Juniper.”
Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. Not with him already turning away.
Maddox turned without a word. “Dr. Voss?”
She appeared like she’d been waiting behind a curtain, calm and focused. “This way. All of you. Hydration, triage, rest.”
Juniper lingered for a beat, eyes still locked on her father, then followed without a word. Her posture was straight, but it looked like it cost her something.
We followed Voss down another hall. Luke’s breathing was fast against my collarbone, his fever pulsing through both our shirts. Max still clung to my belt loop like it was a lifeline. The moment the word "doctor," was mentioned, both boys stiffened. Max whimpered audibly from behind me.
A nearby nurse approached quickly with a hypo, knelt beside him, and said something soft. Max shook his head, on the verge of panicking. I glanced over just as she gently swabbed the back of his upper arm. The needle went in clean, and Max let out a tiny yelp.
“It’s okay, buddy,” I said, crouching slightly to meet his eyes. “Just a tetanus shot. You’ve had worse.”
He nodded bravely but wiped his eyes with his sleeve, shooting me a look like I owed him something huge.
Voss motioned me, holding Luke, to the clean table. “Let’s see that shoulder.”
Voss didn’t wait. She peeled back the bandages and examined Luke’s wound with a professional coolness that bordered on sharp. “Through-and-through,” she said, more to her team than to me. “Clean trajectory. No sign of infection—yet.”
She looked up at me. “Whoever packed this did a decent job under the circumstances, but frankly, it was fieldwork. Improvised. Lucky.”
I opened my mouth to defend myself, then shut it. She wasn’t wrong.
“He needs antibiotics—real ones—and a sterile environment until this closes properly. We’ll re-wrap and monitor vitals for the next 24 hours. He’s borderline septic from the fever. You’re lucky it didn’t spike higher. And probably a real night’s rest.” She looked up at me. "You too."
Then her gaze paused on my forehead. "That gash... if it were fresh, I’d stitch it. But it's too late now. We’ll clean it up and close it properly. My assistant will handle it."
Max hovered close while she worked, trying not to look worried and failing. Juniper sat quietly on the opposite exam table, her legs swinging slightly above the floor, posture stiff but composed. Dr. Voss had already checked her vitals and was finishing a scan of her bruised ribs. I glanced her way. “You holding up?”
She gave the world’s smallest shrug. “I thought he’d be... I don’t know. Different now.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t know what else to say. She’d told me once that her mother never really had time for her—but I never expected her father to be worse.
When Luke was bandaged and drowsy, I leaned in closer to Voss. “Can you tell me who won the war? Better yet, who was the enemy?”
She didn’t answer right away. “We survived. That’s the answer everyone gives. The other side collapsed, but winning? That’s harder to define. Maddox will want a word with you in private when we’re done and you’ve had a chance to clean up.”
I thought about the roads, the smoke, the silence from the sky. “Doesn’t look like victory out there.”
“No,” she said, a bit quieter. “People want to believe it’s over, like flipping a switch. But cities are still burning in places. We haven’t even buried the dead. There’s still a lot we don’t understand. Maddox believes in order—he has to. But whether the war’s truly over...” She shook her head lightly. “Time will tell.” She set aside her gloves and straightened, like she’d pulled the thread as far as she could, then looked back at me. “I’ll take you to see Emily soon. She’s stable. Hydrated. Calm.”
“Thank you,” I said, meaning it more than I expected.
She gave me a look I couldn’t quite name—something warm, but worn thin at the edges. And for half a second, as she leaned in over Luke, speaking softly to calm him, I caught myself watching her. Her skin was olive-toned and lightly freckled, and her hair—reddish-blond and swept back into a no-nonsense bun—glinted faintly under the fluorescents. There was a discipline to how she moved, a focus to her expression, and a calm that felt earned. Not glamorous—just real. She had the tired beauty of someone who hadn’t slept enough in weeks but still made time to help everyone else first. Sharp, capable, worn—but striking.
I immediately felt like an idiot. My wife was down the hall, barely clinging to herself, and here I was noticing Voss’s cheekbones.
I rubbed a hand down my face and looked away, ashamed of myself.
“You're safe here. Even if it doesn’t feel like it yet,” Voss said gently. “Once we’re through, get yourself to your quarters—shower, change, breathe a little. You’ll feel human again.”
But it didn’t feel like safety. Not really.
And as I looked around at the spotless walls, the quiet machines, the too-perfect calm, one thought crawled into my head and wouldn’t leave:
The war wasn’t over. It had just gone inside, changed its name, and put on a cleaner shirt.
