Chapter Three
The Black Tide operations room was starting to feel full, what with all the new members coming to live at their ohana.
Screens lined the walls. Maps, feeds, encrypted data streams—information flowing constantly across surfaces that had been designed to absorb and distribute it as quickly as the team needed.
The room smelled faintly of coffee, machine oil, and the ocean air that drifted in through the ventilation system from the cliffs beyond the facility.
Tonight, it was unusually full.
Kael stood near the center table with his arms folded across his chest, broad shoulders relaxed, but his attention razor sharp. Years of command had taught him how to read a room before anyone spoke, and right now every set of eyes in it was fixed on the screen mounted at the far wall.
Bateman filled most of that screen.
The Pathfinder commander leaned back in his chair in his office at Obsidian Ridge, boots kicked up on a desk just out of frame, expression neutral in that deliberate way of his that suggested he was enjoying the tension just a little too much.
"So," Drew muttered from where he leaned against the table. "You gonna tell us why you dragged us all in here, or are we just admiring your rugged good looks today?"
Bateman snorted. "Careful, Rhodes, jealousy ain't attractive on you."
Keanu wasn’t in the mood for niceties. He needed to know what the hell was going on. "You said someone asked for Ahi"
Bateman nodded once. "Yep. Someone we all know reached out just now and said that they needed help from Ahi. So, Keanu, as that is you, I thought I’d call and let you know."
Keanu froze and could feel the steady, knowing gaze of Kael staring at him from the front of the room and knew that the rest of his team’s expressions showed nothing but confusion.
"How," Keanu asked slowly, "in the hell did you know I was Ahi?"
That question shifted the air in the room. All of them reacting in one way or another. All of them but one. Kael never moved.
Drew straightened slightly. "Hold up, who the hell is Ahi?"
Niko glanced toward Kael. "I assume this matters, there is a history, and you know all about it."
Kael didn't answer. Instead, he looked toward Keanu. The unspoken permission in the gesture was obvious, and he could almost hear Kael’s voice.
Your story, little bruddah. You tell it when you’re ready.
Keanu exhaled slowly. "It's nothing really," he said at first.
Bateman made a doubtful noise. "That's a lie," he said cheerfully.
Keanu shot him a look. "Shut up."
Bateman just grinned.
Before Keanu could respond, Bateman reached off-screen and pressed something. The display split, and another video feed appeared.
Marsh's face filled the new window. He sat somewhere dimly lit, expression neutral—but his eyes flashed with unmistakable satisfaction.
"Of course it was you," Keanu muttered under his breath.
Marsh lifted one shoulder in a half shrug.
"Data trails talk, my friend," he said simply. "And data never lies, and I always like to know who we are working with."
Keanu rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "You could've just asked.”
"Where's the fun in that?" Marsh replied.
Luca frowned slightly. "Someone want to explain what's happening?"
Keanu looked around the room. These men were his family. They had grown up together, looked after each other, bled together. Fought together.
Built something stronger than most people ever experienced in a lifetime. But this was one piece of his past he had never really unpacked. Not because he didn't trust them. Because he didn’t want to relive it, and it had never seemed important to have to.
Until now.
"Two and a half years before I joined the service," Keanu said quietly, and the room stilled. "I had some time to burn."
Tane raised an eyebrow. "You? Burning time? Pun intended."
"Funny," Keanu said dryly.
He leaned back against the wall.
"I am the youngest of us," he explained. "Took me longer to finish school. When I did, you guys had already joined up, but I wasn't ready to enlist yet.”
Niko tilted his head. "Let me guess," he said. "You discovered the joys of making bad decisions."
Keanu huffed softly. "Something like that."
His gaze drifted briefly toward Kael. "I started racing, street racing.”
"I’m guessing it was illegal racing," Ethan guessed.
Keanu nodded. "Underground circuits. Desert runs. Canyon routes. Places where the rules didn't exist and the money was stupid."
"Sounds like you," Luca said.
Keanu ignored him. "At first, it was just adrenaline and the speed. The heat of competition. Then I started winning."
Bateman chuckled softly. "Yeah, you did!”
Keanu shot him another glare. "Eventually, people started noticing."
"And that," Ethan said quietly, "is usually when things go bad."
"Exactly." Keanu pushed away from the wall and walked toward the center table. "I got pulled into a crowd that was deeper than just racing. It was a crime, and it was organized. Violent. The kind of people who use speed for things that aren't exactly legal."
"Smuggling drugs," Victor guessed.
"Among other things." Keanu rested his hands on the table. "They didn't just want drivers. They wanted assets. People who could move things fast and disappear."
Silence settled over the room.
"And when I realized what I'd stepped into," Keanu continued quietly, "I had to call family to help me to get out."
His eyes lifted to Kael. The older man didn't hesitate.
"I'd do it again, little bruddah," Kael said simply. "Anytime."
Keanu nodded once. "I know."
Drew leaned forward. "Okay, so what actually happened?"
Keanu exhaled slowly. "Danger," he said. "Blackmail. Violence. In that spectacular order. Then I got the hell out, and I never looked back." He met Bateman's gaze again. "Which is why I'm curious who exactly asked for me."
Bateman finally leaned forward. "Atua," he said.
The word landed like a hammer. Keanu went still.
Bateman continued. "And Lykos."
The room faded.
Keanu wasn't standing inside Black Tide headquarters anymore. He was somewhere else entirely. Heat. Dust. Engines screaming through canyon walls. A pair of headlights sliding into his rearview like ghosts.
A voice over the radio laughed like the race itself was a religion. And a man who drove like the road belonged to him, and the past he thought he'd buried two and a half years ago had just come roaring back across the desert.
With two names he hadn't expected to hear ever again.
****
Six years earlier.
The desert canyon pulsed with life.
Engines rolled through the narrow walls in deep, thunderous waves, the sound trapped and amplified until it felt like the rock itself was vibrating beneath the weight of it.
Headlights cut through the dust hanging thick in the air, turning it into something almost tangible—gold and silver streaks shifting with every movement.
The smell of fuel and overheated rubber lingered, heavy and familiar, clinging to skin and lungs alike.
Keanu stood beside his car, one hand resting lightly against the warm metal of the Hellcat’s hood.
The black paint swallowed the light, broken only by the stylized flames that curled along the lower panels, as though the machine had already been claimed by fire.
His racing suit was sealed, helmet already on, mirrored visor down. No face. No identity.
Just Ahi.
Around him, the canyon was chaos—crowds perched along ridgelines and truck beds, music vibrating through the ground, voices rising and falling in waves of anticipation. But Keanu’s focus wasn’t on them. It never was.
He watched the drivers.
Watched the way they moved. The way they handled their machines before the race had even begun. That was where the truth lived.
“Big night,” a driver nearby said, shifting a crate of drinks as he passed. “Bigger money than usual.”
Keanu reached out, taking one without looking away from the line of cars ahead. “Same road,” he replied calmly. “Same physics.”
The man huffed a quiet laugh. “Not the same drivers.”
That was when the energy shifted.
It rolled through the canyon like a change in pressure—subtle at first, then undeniable. Conversations dipped. Heads turned.
A matte black GT-R eased into position at the starting line.
It didn’t arrive loudly. It didn’t need to.
The car sat low and wide, every line of it purposeful, the kind of build that spoke of precision rather than excess. It didn’t look like something meant for the street.
It looked like something designed to win.
“That’s Atua,” someone said quietly.
The name meant nothing to Keanu.
The reaction did.
The driver stepped out, tall and loose in his movements, dark hair pushed back as he spoke with someone near the start line. There was an ease to him that didn’t come from arrogance—it came from certainty. Like the outcome had already been decided somewhere in his mind.
Then the passenger door opened.
The second man stepped out with a different kind of presence—leaner, sharper, his stillness more deliberate. Where Atua moved like water, this one held himself like a blade.
“And that’s Lykos.”
Keanu’s gaze sharpened slightly as he watched them together.
“They run as a team?” he asked.
“Most of the time.”
It showed.
Even from a distance, the connection between them was unmistakable—not competition, not hierarchy, but balance. The kind that came from long familiarity, from knowing exactly how the other moved without needing to ask.
Interesting.
“You thinking about it?” the driver beside him asked.
Keanu glanced at him, then back to the line.
“Winning?” he said, sliding into the driver’s seat.
A faint smile curved beneath the helmet, unseen.
“Always.”
The race started when the flare burned bright against the night sky, then dropped to the canyon floor.
Engines roared to life all at once, the sound violent and immediate as the canyon erupted into motion.
Keanu’s world narrowed the second his foot hit the accelerator, everything outside the car falling away until there was nothing left but the road, the machine beneath his hands, and the split-second decisions that would decide everything.
The Hellcat surged forward, power snapping through the chassis as he cut through the pack with practiced precision. The canyon walls closed in fast—sharp turns, blind rises, rock faces waiting for mistakes.
Ahead of him, the matte black GT-R moved like it belonged there.
Atua didn’t fight the road. He flowed through it, every corner taken with an ease that bordered on the unreal. Lykos sat low in the passenger seat, his attention split between mirrors and terrain, reading the race in a way most drivers never could.
Finally. A worthy opponent. He pushed harder.
The gap between them shrank, the Hellcat responding eagerly as he drove it right to the edge of what the road would allow. The GT-R shifted slightly ahead of the next corner—just enough space to open a line that shouldn’t have existed.
An invitation ... or a challenge. Keanu didn’t hesitate.
The car slid cleanly through the turn, tires gripping just enough as he surged alongside the black machine. For a brief moment, they ran parallel, engines screaming in unison as the canyon blurred around them.
Atua glanced across.
And smiled. Exhilarated.
Keanu felt his own grin answer it, hidden behind the visor. Good.
The road twisted sharply ahead, and both drivers accelerated without hesitation.
Now it was a race.
They pushed deeper into the canyon, speed building with every corner, every shift of the wheel. Keanu matched the GT-R move for move, reading the road, reading the driver, adjusting in real time as the margin for error narrowed to almost nothing.
A straight opened briefly, and they surged side by side again, engines straining against each other as the canyon walls blurred dangerously close.
Atua flicked his headlights once.
A signal.
Keanu answered with a sharp press of the throttle, holding the line.
They hit the crest together.
For a split second, the world disappeared beneath them—weightless, suspended—before gravity snapped them back to the asphalt. The Hellcat landed hard, skidding before Keanu brought it back under control, feeding power through the slide.
The GT-R landed clean. Of course it did.
The next corner came too fast. A hairpin. And chaos.
Cars piled into the turn ahead, metal grinding against rock as one spun across the road, blocking the inside line completely.
Atua cut left, threading through a gap that barely existed.
Keanu went right.
The outer edge dropped into darkness, the canyon falling away into nothing. He took it anyway, riding the very edge of the road as gravel spat into the void beneath him. The car held in a controlled drift that shouldn’t have worked—but did.
They emerged from opposite sides of the wreckage.
Even.
Then Keanu edged ahead. The tunnel swallowed them whole.
Sound amplified, compressed, the roar of engines becoming something almost physical as it bounced off the walls. Keanu held the centerline on instinct alone, trusting the feel of the car more than what little he could see.
Then something shifted.
A flicker ahead that felt wrong. The tunnel spat them back into the open—and straight into an ambush. Barricades. Trucks. Armed men stepping into the road.
Not racers.
Keanu reacted instantly.
The Hellcat snapped sideways under braking, tires screaming as he redirected toward a narrow maintenance track carved into the canyon wall. Gunfire cracked through the night, sparks jumping from asphalt and steel.
Behind him, the GT-R didn’t hesitate.
Atua mirrored the move perfectly, while Lykos leaned out just enough to return controlled fire, buying them the seconds they needed.
The track was barely wide enough for one car.
They took it side by side anyway.
Keanu adjusted his line without thinking, giving the GT-R enough space to hold position without clipping the wall. The other car matched him seamlessly, the two of them moving in perfect, unspoken coordination as the path twisted dangerously along the cliff face.
Trust.
Instant. Absolute.
They broke free miles later, the main road opening ahead of them as the gunfire faded into silence.
For a moment, they drove side by side. No crowd. No noise.
Just the three of them and the open road. Atua turned his head.
Through the mirrored visor, Keanu felt the weight of his gaze.
Lykos watched him too, eyes sharp and assessing.
Then Atua grinned.
A challenge.
He accelerated.
Keanu followed without hesitation. They crossed the line seconds apart. No clear winner. No one who mattered would care. Because by the time the rest of the field arrived—
The Hellcat was already gone.
No helmet removed.
No name given.
Just scorched asphalt and the lingering sense that something had torn through the canyon and vanished into the night.
“Who the hell was that?” someone asked.
The answer came quiet.
Certain.
“Ahi.”