Chapter 323
(Ethan)
We move fast, three of us and four Digimon cutting through empty streets while the sky starts going gray at the edges instead of black. Nobody talks much. There’s nothing to plan yet, just the address and the miles between here and there.
The warehouse sits at the end of a dead-end block near the river, boarded windows, a chain on the gate that’s already been cut. Smoke curls off something inside before we’re even close enough to see flame, and a sound underneath the quiet doesn’t belong to any warehouse I’ve ever walked past, impact, metal buckling, something moving fast enough to displace air.
Gatomon’s already sprinting before I catch up to the fact that we’re running now.
Through the gap in the fence, past a stack of crates knocked sideways, and there he is, upside down off a strut with a line of webbing anchoring him to the ceiling, three men below him spread wide the way people move when they’ve done this kind of thing before. Peter twists, drops, catches one across the jaw with a kick that shouldn’t be physically possible from that angle, and he’s already moving again before the guy hits the ground.
He was supposed to be behind a screen somewhere, not out here.
Except patrol never actually stopped for him, remote just meant the tech side, not staying inside forever, and whatever brought him to this specific warehouse tonight was exactly the kind of Shadowstone thread he’d been chasing solo the whole time we were chasing our half of it. None of that matters right now. What matters is three of them and one of him, and the math on that isn’t close.
One of the men has something in his hand that isn’t a gun, held wrong for a gun, held like a tool meant for grabbing rather than shooting. Peter clocks it too, his whole body shifting weight before it even gets raised.
“Now would help.” I’m mostly talking to Gatomon, who’s already answering before I finish the sentence.
She hits the nearest one from the side, full weight, and he goes down hard enough that he doesn’t get back up in any hurry. The second doesn’t fare any better, BlackGatomon sweeping his legs out before he can turn. Renamon comes in high, catching the third mid-reach for whatever that tool actually is, knocking it clean out of his hand and across the concrete.
Peter drops the last few feet and lands in a crouch, and for one second, mid-chaos, he just looks at me.
“Ethan?”
“Yeah.”
There’s no room for anything else right now. Impmon’s already dealing with the one Renamon dropped, and Jessica’s shouting something about the gate in case there’s more of them coming, and none of it stops long enough for a real reunion yet.
The three of them don’t get back up clean, and the ones who can still move choose the smart option and run for the same gap in the fence we came through, gone into the dark before anyone thinks to chase them.
Nobody says anything about who they were. Nobody has to. I don’t know, not really, not the way Ethan-back-on-the-rooftop-with-Sitwell kind of knowing, just the same shape of danger wearing a different face.
Gwen’s already on her feet.
“We should move. In case they come back with more.”
We clear the scene fast, out through the fence gap, down two blocks, into an alcove behind a shuttered laundromat where the Digimon can fold back into cover and the rest of us can actually breathe for a second.
Peter looks worse up close, a cut above one eyebrow, his jacket torn at the shoulder, but he’s standing, and he’s here, and that’s the whole bar tonight.
Jessica’s still catching her own breath. “You look like garbage.”
“Feeling’s mutual.”
Peter almost smiles. It doesn’t quite land.
Gwen doesn’t say anything. She just grips his shoulder once, hard, and lets go.
I want the whole thing, not the shorthand version.
“What happened? Start from the actual beginning.”
Peter leans back against the wall, still catching his breath.
“I was patrolling. Same as always, same route, and I’d been swinging past that block for a few nights because of the pattern I flagged, figured I’d finally go take a real look tonight.” He shakes his head slow. “Didn’t even get through the door good before they were on me. No warning, no chance to ask who they were. They just came at me like they’d been waiting.”
Gwen leans forward slightly, watching him.
“You didn’t know them?”
“Never seen them before in my life. Didn’t say a word either, not one, just moved like they had a job to do and I was standing in the way of it.”
I don’t tell him what I know, what Sitwell said on that roof, what three weeks of tracking a pattern taught the rest of us the hard way. Not yet. Time enough for that later.
Right now there’s just this, Jessica dropping down next to him against the wall, close enough their shoulders touch. Gwen finally lets herself sit too, knees pulled up, watching Peter like she still doesn’t quite believe he’s actually there.
“I really thought.”
Jessica stops herself there, shakes her head instead of finishing it.
Peter bumps his shoulder against hers.
“I know. Me too, for a second.”
Gatomon settles by the mouth of the alley, still watching the street, but even she looks less coiled than she did an hour ago.
We stay like that for a while, all of us crammed into the same few feet of dark, nobody in any hurry to be the first one to say we should get moving again.
I watch the three of them, Jessica’s shoulder against Peter’s, Gwen’s eyes finally losing that flat, watchful edge they’ve had since we walked out of the storage room. Nobody’s talking about badges or safehouses or anything past the next five minutes. For once tonight, nothing else needs saying.
Peter’s here, safe, in one piece even if the jacket isn’t. That’s enough to hold onto for now.