26. Killian
KILLIAN
Twenty-six days since they took her.
That's all we have. Six fucking seconds of grainy shit.
We moved operations here after the attack. Industrial wasteland. Empty buildings and nobody who gives a fuck what happens inside them.
The guys move around me like I'm a bomb. Keeping their distance. Waiting for the fuse to blow.
They aren't fucking wrong. I'm already gone.
They're breaking down too. Gabe's exhausted. Jackson stopped joking. Kai has given up trying to make me sleep. They want her back, too.
On the second monitor is the footage of the guy we caught. A low-level cleaner, Jackson found hiding in a dumpster at the pier. I spent hours breaking his hands, and all he did was laugh until his lungs filled with blood. I’m staring at his face, trying to figure out what was so fucking funny.
The screen blurs, but I stare anyway. Looking away means accepting she might already be gone, destroyed. Grace has had enough time to—
No.
I rewind the footage.
“Nothing,” Gabe says from across the room, his voice carefully neutral. “The contact in Minneapolis was another dead end.”
I don’t answer. If I open my mouth, I’ll start screaming and won’t stop.
Instead, I rewind the footage again, watching the Order’s operative’s face crumple under pressure.
Twenty-six days of blood and broken bones.
Twenty-six days of interrogation that ended in body bags.
Each one more brutal than the last, but the information remains frustratingly sparse.
Even torture has its limits.
I’m reaching mine.
The warehouse door slams open, and Jackson strides in carrying a tablet, his usual calm cracked by excitement.
“Got something,” he announces. My pulse jumps. It’s a fast, frantic rhythm that I haven’t felt in weeks. I’m finally breathing, and the air tastes like fucking payback.
“Satellite imagery,” Jackson continues, spreading digital files across the table. “Pattern recognition software finally found a match. A remote estate, about three hundred miles north. Security procedures are familiar.”
I lean forward. My vision narrows. Everything else falls away except the satellite feed and the woman it might lead me to. The property looks ordinary enough from above, a large mansion surrounded by landscaped grounds, but something about the layout triggers recognition.
“Thermal imaging shows unusual patterns,” Jackson adds, zooming in. “Domestic layout, but with security measures that don’t match residential use. Basement levels extend deeper than architectural records show.”
My mind clears. After weeks of chasing our fucking tails, we finally have something solid. Something I can kill.
“Grace,” Kai says quietly, joining us at the table. “It has to be.”
His medical bag is open. Sedatives lined up next to the analysis tools.
He’s preparing for what we’ll find.
What she’ll be like when we get her back.
Kai spreads files across the table. Previous victims. Women who survived Grace’s facilities. Most of them, anyway.
“Twenty-six days,” Kai says, pulling up a decrypted file.
A woman from Grace's Berlin site. Her photo fills the screen—eyes vacant, fixed on something none of us can see.
“This was an eighteen-day exposure. If we’re lucky, Ellie will just be catatonic.
If we aren't...” He taps the vial of antipsychotics.
“She might not recognize us. Fuck, she might not recognize herself.”
I force myself to look at the photos. Women with empty eyes. Thousand-yard stares. The ones who made it out still look like they’re trapped inside.
“We bring her home,” I say. My voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere far away. “Whatever state she’s in. We bring her home.”
Kai nods. He starts packing trauma meds alongside the sedatives. Antipsychotics. Dissociation prescriptions. Chemical restraints in case she’s violent. In case she thinks we’re the enemy.
Gabe returns from checking perimeter security, a detailed floor plan in his hands.
He taps a signature on the map. "Didn't that cleaner give up the rotation schedule before you killed him? Midnight. That means we have around a ninety-second window." He pulls his rifle from the table, checking the action. "We’re in and out in six minutes. We get her and we leave."
I stare at the floor plans until I could navigate Grace's basement blind. Everything else—the exhaustion, the hunger, the twenty-six days of failure—it all falls away into the static. There is no more thinking. Just the mechanics of the breach and the cold weight of the rifle in my hand.
“Gabe,” I say.
He looks up. Knows what's coming from my tone alone. “Nobody gets out of that house alive.” My voice drops to a whisper I haven’t used in years. The one that used to make grown men piss themselves. “Complete wipeout. Grace dies slowly.”
Gabe’s jaw tightens. “Killian, your emotional state—”
"My emotional state is the only thing keeping me functional. Every minute we spend debating my stability is another minute she spends erasing what’s left of Ellie’s mind. There is no version of this that ends in a 'recovery.' I’m going there to wipe that facility from the map."
Silence.
Gabe and I lock eyes. We've been here before, that moment when the mission becomes personal. When professional becomes obsession.
He knows what I’m not saying: This rescue will destroy my relationship with Ellie. When she learns the truth about her father, she’ll hate me.
His single nod says: Do it anyway.
The words come out quiet. Each one more painful than the last.
“She’s going to find out I killed her father. She’s going to hate me for it. Every minute. Every day. For the rest of her life.” I pause. “But I’ll take her hatred. I’ll take her screaming my name in rage. I’ll take anything except silence. Except never hearing her voice again.”
Gabe nods once. The simple gesture containing volumes of understanding and support.
Three hours of prep. Nobody talks about what happens if we're too late.
We focus on the mission.
It's the only thing keeping us sane.
As darkness falls, we load the van. Words aren’t needed.
Just loaded weapons and the weight of what’s coming.
Gabe, Jackson, Kai—they’ve walked through fire with me before.
But this time, the fire is personal. This time, if I fail, I don’t just lose the mission.
I lose her. And if I lose her, there’s nothing left of me worth saving.
It’s a four-hour drive north to Grace's compound. Gabe drives. Jackson and Kai try to sleep in the back. I sit passenger seat, watching the black road scroll past. The only sound is the roar of the tires on the asphalt.
Four hours to think about what I'm walking into. Four hours to remember every conversation with Ellie, every touch, every moment before this nightmare began. Four hours to imagine what Grace has done to her.
I don't sleep. Can't sleep.
By the time we reach the compound, I'm not Killian Blackthorn anymore. I'm not the man Ellie knew, the one she might have loved.
I'm the Ghost.
And the Ghost doesn't save people.
He kills them.
We approach in darkness. Jackson’s stealth tech—I don’t ask where he got it. Better not to know.
The compound sits dark against darker woods. No lights except for a single lamp over the main entrance. Grace's mansion looks like a postcard. You'd never know there's a torture facility in the basement.
The air smells of pine and earth. Cold enough to see my breath. Quiet, except for the wind through the trees and the distant sound of running water.
Perfect killing weather.
The shift happens as we move. My body remembers what my mind spent years trying to forget.
We cut the perimeter sensors. The bypass indicator blinks green on Jackson's tablet.
I'm already moving.
The first perimeter guard dies before he registers movement. A silenced round through the temple. He drops. We position him against the fence, head tilted like he’s sleeping.
Second guard. Third. Fourth.
Eight bodies in total by the time we reach the main entrance. All arranged in natural positions. Men taking a break. Guards who’ll never wake up.
Thermal imaging shows heat signatures in the basement. Multiple figures. I can’t tell which one is hers from here, but one of them has to be. She has to be alive. What I can see is an elaborate network of rooms below ground.
Now I crouch at the edge of the compound, studying the mansion’s layout through my tactical scope. The underground prison is a hidden labyrinth of horrors. Grace’s playground.
Jackson's voice comes through the comms, barely a whisper.
"Sensors are looping now. You have ninety seconds."
I study the mansion one last time through my scope. Somewhere in that labyrinth of rooms, Ellie is waiting.
If she's still Ellie.
If she's still alive.
I'll know in ninety seconds.
I move.