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Previously: Lightning Never Hits Twice
Heat didn't care about nightmares. The Texas sun would rise whether he slept or not.
Sherrinford stared at the cracked plaster above the bed and thought about the fact that he had been attacked twice now and was still alive. He thought about the far simpler, colder fact that the odds were not in his favor if there was a third attempt.
The ceiling fan clicked with every slow rotation. The sound had settled into his skull sometime before dawn, a dry little metronome that marked out each second he failed to rest. Beside him, on the other side of the bed was James, sleeping peacefully. Sherrinford wasn't sure how he did it, but James had promised it got easier with time. Sherrinford had decided to trust him on that, but wondered every night how much time he'd meant.
His hand clenched briefly in the sheet as he remembered the way James had looked, pale and still on the safehouse lounge after the explosion, blood drying on expensive fabric. Somewhere between London and Texas, survival had morphed into a badly written probability problem. First attack, second attack, variables stacking, and in the middle of it all, one constant: James Sterling stepped between danger and everyone else as if his body were a negotiable resource.
And Sherrinford, for all his cleverness, did not.
He rolled onto his side and hissed under his breath as bruised ribs still protested the move. Mostly healed, but each breath carried a reminder. He knew enough basic self defense to break a hold or buy himself a few seconds of escape. He knew how to throw a punch that wouldn't break his knuckles or his wrist. He knew how to make an attacker regret underestimating him. He knew rules were for fools. But he was not a fighter, not in the way the world was now demanding. He had never trained for prolonged engagement, had no idea about firearms, and never learned how to handle someone determined to kill him.
Adequate had felt acceptable once. It didn't now.
The faint murmur of voices reached him from the kitchen, then faded. Cupboard doors opened and shut. Someone laughed once, soft and tired. Abuela moved through her own house like a benevolent ghost, small and indomitable, while the men she had let in tried not to bleed on her floors. The smell of coffee drifted under the door, mixed with fabric softener and the faint tang of antiseptic wipes.
You are the weakest link, his mind supplied, because it enjoyed cruelty. The phrase had a tidy symmetry, one that fit too neatly around his shape. James could shoot and scheme and charm information out of people who didn't even know they were giving it. Danny could dismantle a man or a bomb with the same calm focus. Even Abuela had a way of commanding a room with three words and a rosary. Sherrinford had code, pattern recognition, and a foundation of self defense skills that fell apart once a fight dragged past the first ten seconds.
That gap was becoming dangerous.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat for a moment, heels pressed into rough wood. The house held a particular morning hush, full of small domestic sounds that did not belong to him. A pot on the stove. The rattle of plates. The distant thump of a screen door. For a moment he thought about staying where he was, about letting the pattern continue. He would stay behind the keyboard. Danny would do the dangerous work. James would insist on taking point as soon as he could stand long enough to put on a jacket. The story would repeat.
Then he pictured James on the safehouse floor again, blood soaking into rug fibers, and the thought curled cold fingers around his throat.
No. That was the only word that landed with any weight. No, he would not repeat this pattern. No, he would not let the probability model run unchecked, because he knew exactly where it would lead if he did nothing. Odds always settled somewhere. So did bullets.
He dressed on automatic, pulling on jeans and the first shirt he happened to grab. The mirror over the dresser showed a man who looked more tired than injured. The bruising on his face had disappeared. The cut along his jaw had knitted tight, a thin, accusing line. Nothing catastrophic. Nothing that explained the way his hands shook when he thought about going back on a road with James behind the wheel.
He flexed his fingers until the tremor faded.
The hallway outside was cool in comparison to the bedroom, the tiles worn smooth by decades of footsteps. Sun poured through the small front window, turning dust motes into a slow, drifting galaxy. A framed picture of Fabian in a school uniform hung crooked on the wall, his hesitant smile captured in pixels. Next to it, a faded photograph of Danny in a younger uniform, shoulders squared, eyes already holding the kind of watchfulness that did not belong on a boy’s face.
He had seen the extension of that look before. Hard lines, steady hands, no hesitation. Red Haze in a needle. A man in a chair. Danny’s voice cold enough to bite through concrete. The memory sat heavy in Sherrinford's chest. It had been horrific and necessary. It had also been effective.
Danny still frightened him, even after stepping between Sherrinford and danger more than once. That truth mattered. Sherrinford needed dangerous right now.
He paused at the entrance to the kitchen. Abuela stood at the stove, stirring a pot with the gravity of a priest at an altar. The radio muttered low Spanish hymns. A plate of tortillas rested under a clean towel. The air was thick with the smell of onion and cumin and fresh coffee. James was nowhere to be seen, probably back on the sofa with a blanket over his legs and a scowl on his face for being forced into rest he disliked.
Abuela looked up and clicked her tongue. “Mijo, you are too thin,” she declared in Spanish, as if that were the central crisis. “Sit. Eat.”
“I'm not hungry just yet,” he replied, because it was easier than the truth. “I'll have something later.”
Her eyes narrowed, unimpressed, but she poured him coffee and set it in his path anyway. The cup was chipped at the rim, the glaze worn where countless hands had held it. He took a sip, let the bitter warmth burn its way down. It did not clear his head so much as sharpen the edges.
“Danny is outside,” Abuela said, as if she had been reading his intentions off the cut of his shoulders. “Since sunrise. That one never learned to be still.”
“I noticed,” Sherrinford murmured.
She studied him for a long moment, then nodded once, as if reaching a private conclusion. “You think too much and talk too little. Go.”
It might have been an order. It might have been a blessing. Hard to tell with her. Either way, he obeyed.
The back door stuck slightly in the frame, then gave with a small groan. Heat reached for him at once, dry and dense. The yard stretched out under a harsh sky, all big light and big shadows. The earth bore the scuffed marks of recent work, and the air smelled of dust, cut grass, and the faint metallic tang of old farm equipment. A lone oak cast a patch of shade near the side of the house, its branches riddled with wind chimes and old horseshoes.
The steady thump reached him before he saw the source. A dull, rhythmic impact, flesh and bone against heavy leather. A beat that did not match his pulse but tried to force it into step.
He followed the sound.
They had rigged a heavy bag from a sturdy beam on the side of the old barn, the chain creaking softly with each swing. Danny was there, bare forearms slick with sweat, T-shirt clinging to his back. The bag rocked under the precision of each strike. No wildness. No wasted movement. Feet planted. Shoulders turning. Hands wrapped. No hesitation.
This was not the man who joked over grill smoke or teased James about dance parties. This was the version that interrogated Vale without blinking. The version that once dragged two men out of a burning building with his shirt soaked in their blood.
Watching him now, Sherrinford understood more clearly than he liked that he was about to ask that version to turn his attention toward him in a different way.
He stopped a few paces short and let himself simply observe. Danny shifted his weight, drove a combination into the bag that made the chain jolt. There was a pattern to it, a small economy of motion that repeated and adjusted. Strike, reset, measure. The same kind of iterative process Sherrinford used in code, translated into fists and muscle.
You are asking to stand closer to this, his mind pointed out. To become someone who can at least operate in the same environment, even if you never match it.
He thought about his own lack of formal training. Of the few scuffles he had survived mostly by being quick or lucky. Nothing that would stand up to a determined assault, nothing that would prepare him for a focused attack or a man twice his size. Nothing that would stop an enemy from choosing him as the obvious target again. The fear was still there. It coiled under his ribs, tight and sour, but it no longer felt like a reason to stand still. It felt like proof that he needed to move.
He imagined the conversation ahead. I am tired of being the problem. Teach me to make myself less of a target. Show me how not to get anybody killed. All of it sounded melodramatic in his head, like bad dialogue from a mediocre thriller. The truth underneath, however, was simple.
He did not want to lose James. Or Danny. Or anyone else who had chosen, inexplicably, to stand near him.
The memory of lightning flashed across his mind. The taste of metal in the back of his throat. The sharp crack of impact. The way his body had folded without warning. Twice now he had been taken off the board quickly. Twice others had rushed to cover the space he left behind.
There would not be a third, he decided. Not like that.
The bag swung out and back again, a pendulum caught mid-arc as Danny broke his rhythm to adjust his stance. Sweat ran down the back of his neck, darkening the collar of his shirt. His breath came in measured pulls, not yet ragged, not yet strained.
Sherrinford inhaled once, deep and deliberate, then stepped forward. Gravel crunched under his boots, loud in the small pocket of shade. The sound felt like crossing a threshold, something quiet inside him snapping into place.
He closed the last of the distance until he stood at the edge of the training space, the bag swaying gently between them.
“Danny,” he said. “I have a favour to ask of you.”
Mentioned: @James Sterling III