She reached the tent where Hale sat. The guards were two men she’d seen laughing earlier; they were drunk on the power of having a captive. Grace slid a strip of cloth in the doorway and feigned a limp, collapsing in their path. She let the adrenaline carry her through the lie — the touch of their cocky hands. When their guard sagged, she struck: a knee to the groin, a palm to the throat. The first went down without noise; the second fought. He bit her hand. She tasted blood and used his momentary shock to bring him down with her elbow.

Hale had watched the scene with a soldier’s calculation; when the second guard thudded, the rope binding Hale’s wrists had loosened — he’d worked at it while playing the captive. He didn’t stand. He didn’t need to. His hand, once freed, went to his boot and slid a small, serrated knife into his palm and then, with the slowest smile Grace had ever seen, he nodded.

They moved with the ease of two people who had navigated fire together. Hale beat the last man with the butt of his own boot, the guard’s face folding like paper. Grace checked the tent flap. Two men at a distance moved toward the comms tent, shouting about the blackout. The compound’s tension hummed up like a wire.