Killian
Nine days. Nine fucking days since they ripped her from that house, and I’ve got nothing. Less than nothing. I’ve got dead bodies, cold trails and dead ends that lead nowhere but the bottom of a bottle.
The abandoned warehouse reeks of motor oil and cold metal. Gabe’s rigged fluorescent lights buzz overhead, a constant, high-pitched whine that I can’t turn off. Each flicker drills into my skull like Morse code: failure, failure, failure.
I press my thumb and index finger against my eyes until I see stars. Nine days without sleep. My body’s forgotten what rest feels like. Everything hurts. Bones, teeth, the space behind my eyes. Even my hair hurts. But I can’t sleep. Not while she’s out there.
I ignore him, focusing on the surveillance photos spread across the makeshift table.
Julian Ross's known associates stare back at me, a gallery of predators who've all turned out to be dead ends.
Nine days of following leads that go nowhere, raiding facilities that were abandoned hours before we arrived.
Different warehouse. Different city. Same desperate search.
Gabe had a hole in his side that eventually needed staples to hold it together. Jackson had lost two-thirds of his servers to the assault. Kai pulled a couple of his stitches out and is bleeding still. But we were alive.
And Ellie? Well, she may as well have disappeared off the face of the fucking planet.
“Sleep is for people who haven’t lost her. I don’t get to sleep while she’s…”
I can’t even go there.
Gabe's massive frame shifts in my peripheral vision, but he doesn't respond. Smart man. He knows I'm walking a razor's edge between functional and completely fucking unhinged.
Jackson looks up from his bank of monitors, the blue light of the screens casting shadows under his eyes.
"Got something," his fingers fly across multiple keyboards. "Same pattern, referring to 'the asset' being moved again."
I'm across the warehouse before he finishes speaking. On the screen, lines of encrypted text scroll past in real-time. Jackson's broken their heavily encrypted communications, but the key intel remains frustratingly vague.
"Third move in nine days," I observe, studying the timestamps. "Julian is paranoid, but this is excessive even for him."
"Unless he's not calling the shots," Kai suggests in a tone he uses when he’s working a problem. "Movement patterns suggest someone else's methodology."
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood, using the pain to maintain focus.
For days, I've been trying not to analyse what Julian might be doing to Ellie based on my knowledge of how he operates.
Broken bones. Electric shock. Waterboarding.
The man has no imagination, just an endless appetite for causing pain.
"This is your Trial of Oblivion, Killian. You’ll stay here until you prove your worth. Remember, it’s not about how long you last. It’s about how you last." Julian makes a point of emphasising the last part.
The box is tight, with barely enough room to move an inch.
My chest presses against the lid, the wood rough against my skin.
The darkness is absolute, suffocating. I can already feel the weight of the earth above me.
Tons of it. Pressing down. My breathing grows shallow and uneven, and I can feel the panic clawing at the edges of my mind.
I hear the scrape of more dirt being shoveled onto the wood, somewhere down near my feet, the sound muffled but unmistakable.
My heart hammers against my ribs, each beat a reminder of how fragile life is.
I try to focus, to control my breathing, but the air is already thinning, growing heavy with the scent of soil and decay.
Hours pass, or maybe it's minutes; it could even be days. Time becomes meaningless in the utter darkness. My body contorts with agony from the cramped position, my muscles seizing and shivering beneath my skin. The pain becomes a living entity, crawling through every inch of me.
I start to hallucinate, or I hope that’s what’s happening.
The blackness shatters into vivid apparitions of my victims. They materialize with terrifying clarity, faces frozen in their final moments of terror, blood pooling around their collapsed bodies, their screams echoing in this wooden prison.
Eyes, accusatory and hollow, follow me through the darkness.
This is fitting, I think. This buried box is the perfect metaphor for my sins.
This is the penance I've earned after taking so many lives already.
But Julian doesn't care about penance. He doesn't want my guilt or my remorse. He wants something far more valuable. My complete, unquestioning obedience to him. To The Order.
I channel my scattered consciousness to center on one thing I can still control, the rhythmic pounding of my heart.
I focus on each beat, willing it to remain slow, even as my lungs scream for fresh air and my mind grips onto the edges of sanity.
A mantra forms in my thoughts, quiet at first, then growing stronger with each labored breath: You will not break.
You will not fail. You will survive this.
You must survive this. I know they are watching me; the blinking red light of a camera rigged in the bottom corner tells me so.
When the box finally opens, the flood of light is blinding. I throw my arm over my eyes, the glare stinging like needles through my lids as I inhale deeply, gulping down air like a drowning man. Julian stands above me, a faint smile on his lips.
“Good,” he says. “You’ll do.”
The memory has fangs. It sinks in deep, injecting a cold venom into my central nervous system that I haven't felt in seventeen years. My hands shake, but I ball them into fists until my nails press crescents into my palms. I was seventeen. They dug me out after thirty-two hours. Some didn’t last eight.
I can still feel it. The oppression, the darkness, the certainty I’d die in that box.
My hands curl so tight that my knuckles crack. Ellie's in that same darkness. In that box. Or worse, in whatever hell he has designed specifically for her.
The thought of her in that dark makes my—
"Here," Jackson says, pulling me from my thoughts, highlighting a section of code. "This anomaly I've been tracking… it's not random data corruption."
Gabe crosses his arms. "What kind of anomaly?"
“These messages about the asset?” Jackson’s finger stabs at the screen. “They’re being routed through completely different infrastructure. There are multiple bounce points… wrong encryption. Wrong everything.”
My pulse kicks up. “Meaning?”
“Meaning Julian’s not the one moving her.”
"But?" I prompt, seeing the tension in Jackson's shoulders.
The warehouse falls silent except for the hum of equipment. Gabriel goes perfectly still, his eyes tracking between me and the screen.
"Show me," I demand.
Jackson's fingers fly across the keyboard, pulling up communication logs from the past week.
“Look at this,” Jackson brings up two messages side by side. “Yesterday’s logistics report mentions ‘special guest requiring enhanced medical protocols.’ Standard Ross network encryption.”
“And?” Gabe prompts.
“Today’s update.” Jackson highlights the text. “Mrs. Ross requests daily pharmaceutical resupply for guest processing. Different encryption. Different server routing.”
The words don’t register at first. Then they do.
Mrs. Ross.
The floor feels like it’s shifted two inches to the left. I have to brace a hand against the desk to keep my balance.
“Could be a clerical error,” Kai offers.
“Or code,” Jackson says. “Or—”
“It’s not an error.” The words scrape out of me. “Julian’s fucking married.”
Nobody moves. The air goes dead. Like someone sucked all the oxygen out of the warehouse and left us choking in a vacuum.
“Grace,” I spit out. “Grace Ross.”
Gabe’s hand drops to his weapon. An unconscious movement that means his combat instincts just kicked into overdrive. “Julian’s wife has Ellie?”
“Julian’s wife has been breaking Ellie for nine fucking days while we chased our fucking tails.”
Everything we thought we knew. Everything we’ve been preparing for. Wrong. All of it is wrong.
"How the fuck did we miss this?" Gabe's voice sounds like it's coming through water.
Because I was so fucking consumed by visions of Julian torturing her, that I never considered other possibilities, Gabe. I let my head get in the way. We've been tracking the wrong fucking Ross.
The fluorescent lights buzz louder. Or maybe my hearing's been stripped raw after running on fumes and rage. Everything's too bright. Too loud. My skull feels like it's splitting.
"Jackson," I say, my voice deadly quiet. "Search everything you've got for Grace Ross."
His fingers freeze over the keyboard. "What do you know about her? I can't say I ever had much to do with her. I think I only met her once."
“She worked Order psych ops before Julian married her. She breaks minds.”
“You know her?” Gabe asks carefully.
“I know what she does.” Too fucking well. My throat feels like it’s closing. “I know what she's capable of. Julian will destroy your body, but Grace... Grace will make you forget you ever had a soul."
Silence. The kind that feels like freefall.
"What's her M.O?" Gabe demands.
I close my eyes, making myself go back to those memories I’ve spent years trying to bury. Everything I know about Grace.
"Her guards are her puppets. They do her dirty work for her. She runs a full medical torture facility. Surgical suites. Restraint chairs. She straps you down and pumps you full of drugs while she rewires your brain. By the time Ellie realizes what's happening…"
I bite down hard on my lip. I can’t let myself picture Ellie strapped to one of those medical chairs, Grace standing over her with a syringe.
“Fuck.” Gabe’s fist slams into the table. The entire surface shakes. He doesn’t apologize or explain. He stands there, breathing hard.
Jackson doesn’t move either. His fingers hover over the keyboard, poised, not typing. He stares at his screens as if they’ve personally betrayed him.
Kai’s the one who breaks first. “We need to find her. Now. We studied her methods in resistance training. She’s—” He stops himself, glances at me.
He doesn’t say anything else. His silence tells me everything about how bad this is and confirms everything I thought I managed to forget about Grace.
Gabe’s quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is rough.
“The Doc’s strong. Stronger than most.”
“Grace breaks people trained to resist interrogation. Ellie’s a therapist. She understands minds, but she’s never been on that side of it. Grace will…” My hands are shaking. I shove them into my pockets before anyone notices.
"What kind of timeline are we looking at?" Gabriel asks, already knowing he won't like the answer.
“Working on it.” Jackson’s already pulling up search programmes, but his hands aren't steady on the keyboard.
"This long with Grace..." I trail off, the implications crushing. "She'll have Ellie in advanced psychological interrogation by now. Breaking down her sense of reality, corrupting her relationships, making her question everything she believes about herself and her sanity."
Jackson's computer chimes with incoming data. "Got hits on Grace. Holy shit, Killian. This woman is a ghost, no official records, but intelligence chatter going back more than fifteen years. Multiple psychological operations across three continents."
"Known facilities?" I ask.
"Working on it. Her operational pattern suggests isolated properties with specific security features. High-end residential appearance masking sophisticated containment capabilities."
"How do we fight someone who specializes in mind games?" Gabe asks.
By playing her at her own fucking game.
"Carefully," I admit. "Grace doesn't just torture, she reconstructs personalities. Her subjects don't escape; they're released as completely different people who serve her purposes."
Kai looks up. "Recovery protocols for psychological torture victims are completely different. I'll need specialized equipment, pharm interventions for induced psychological trauma."
"How long before permanent damage?" Gabe asks what I've been afraid to voice.
Kai’s jaw works. “Two weeks is..." He doesn't finish the sentence.
Jackson’s computer beeps urgently. “Got something. Cross-referencing Grace’s history with recent property acquisitions in the region.”
Three satellite images appear on the screen. Isolated estates that look more like million-dollar mansions than prisons. Pristine grounds, elegant architecture, the kind of places where screams would never be heard.
My vision tunnels. Everything outside that screen blurs.
“All three show Grace’s signature,” Jackson says, fingers flying between screens. “Isolated, high-end, sophisticated security.
“We need more intel.” I state.
“Agreed,” Gabe says. “Last thing we need is to hit the wrong location and spook her into moving Ellie again.”
“I’ll keep monitoring communications,” Jackson offers. “See if we can narrow it down.”
“Whatever it takes,” I say finally. “However long it takes. We find her. We bring her home.”
Gabe nods. “Then we start planning. Properly this time.”
I turn back to the screens, to the satellite images of Grace’s possible locations. Somewhere in one of those pristine estates, Ellie’s fighting for her sanity. Fighting to hold on to herself while Grace systematically dismantles everything she is.
“Killian, if Grace has had Ellie for this long, we might not be rescuing the same woman who was taken."
Gabe’s warning makes me feel physically sick. I make myself think. Not feel. Just think.
Grace doesn’t interrogate. She rebuilds you from the ground up, makes you forget who you were and remakes you into whatever she needs. The woman we rescue might look like Ellie, sound like Ellie, but trust no one, remember nothing accurately, and respond to triggers we can't predict.
"It doesn't matter," I say finally. "Whatever Grace has done to her, whatever she's made Ellie believe about herself or about me, we bring her home."
Grace may have twisted her memories, corrupted her sense of reality, made her question everything she felt, and I’ll drag her back to the surface no matter how deep Grace buried her.
I’m coming for you.
I don’t know if you’ll even be you when I find you. Don’t know what Grace has done, what she’s broken, what she’s twisted.
Maybe you’ll look at me and see a stranger. Maybe you’ll hate me for not getting there sooner.
I don’t give a fuck.
You can be shattered into a thousand pieces, and I’ll spend the rest of my life finding every single one. You can wake up not knowing my name, and I’ll teach it to you again. I’m still coming. I’m still dragging you out of whatever nightmare Grace has built.
And if you hate me for the rest of your life, at least you’ll be alive to do it.