Chapter 5
Selina
His stare scraped over me, testing for weakness.
“You keep saying you want to help me, but you’re hiding behind that clipboard like it’s body armor.
” Specter leaned forward, elbows on the steel table between us.
“Tell me, Doctor Crawford, how the hell are we supposed to make progress when you’re afraid to look inside my head? ”
Our first official session was going sideways, and we’d barely begun.
“I’m not afraid of what’s in your head.” I met his stare without flinching. “I’m trying to establish a baseline for your memory retrieval. Standard protocol.”
“Nothing about me ’s standard.” His voice dropped a notch. “Or haven’t you figured that out yet?”
The briefing room felt too small in face of his focus.
“Let’s try something else.” I set down my clipboard. “Tell me about the first thing you remember after Oblivion took you.”
His fingers tapped a rhythm against the table. One-two-three. Pause. Again.
“Pain.” The word sat between us. “Not physical. More like… absence. Like someone cut pieces from me and I could feel the empty spaces where they should be.”
I leaned forward. “That’s good. That’s…”
“You think that’s progress?” He let out a short, humorless sound. “You want to know what I remember? I remember killing a man who begged for his life in three languages. I remember the weight of a knife and exactly how much pressure it takes to slice through a carotid artery.”
My pulse quickened, but I kept my expression neutral. “Those are Oblivion memories. I’m looking for something real.”
“Who says those weren’t real?” His gaze thinned. “Maybe that’s who I was before Oblivion. Maybe they just pointed me in a new direction.”
A line pulled tight between us. Not just the danger of his past, but something more immediate—the pull between us that neither acknowledged but both felt.
“Fine.” I changed tactics. “Close your eyes.”
His brow lifted. “Getting personal, Doctor?”
“Just do it.”
After a long moment, he complied, his lashes dark against his cheeks. Without his gaze pinning me, I could study the lines of his face—the scar at his temple, the tension in his jaw.
“Now, I want you to think about a smell or taste that feels familiar. Not from a mission. Something older.”
His breathing slowed. For several heartbeats, nothing happened. Then his fingers twitched.
“Snow.” The word came out as a breath. “Wind. And… something burning.”
“Good. Stay with that.”
“An old building. Night. Fire.” His voice grew distant. “Someone screaming.”
I watched his face change—softening around the edges. Whoever he’d been before Oblivion, that person was still in there.
“Can you see who was screaming?”
His forehead tightened. “A woman. Dark hair. She’s saying something about—” He jolted, eyes open. “No.”
“What happened?”
“Wall.” He pressed his palms against his temples. “Hit a fucking wall.”
“That’s normal. Memory recovery isn’t linear.”
“Nothing about this is normal.” His eyes locked on mine, pupils dilated. “They put walls in my head, Doctor. And when I try to climb them…” He swallowed hard. “It hurts.”
The use of my title didn’t escape me. Nor did the genuine pain in his expression.
“We’ll try again. Different approach.”
“No.” He stood abruptly, pacing to the wall and back. “This isn’t working.”
“We’ve barely started.”
“And already failing.” He stopped, towering over me. “You want to know what’s in my head? Let me show you.”
Before I could react, he took my hand and pressed it to his temple. His skin was warm against my palm.
“What are you doing?” I kept my voice steady despite the shock of contact.
“Making you feel it.” His other hand covered mine, holding it in place. “The walls. The gaps. Right here. Where they unmade me.”
His pulse hammered under my fingers. A raw note flashed, then was gone.
I should have pulled away. Maintained boundaries. Instead, I let my fingers curl just enough against his skin.
“Tell me what you need.”
His eyes hardened. “I need you to…”
The world exploded.
A thunderous blast rocked the room. The reinforced glass viewing window rattled in its frame as my pen skidded across my notes. Alarms shrieked to life, piercing and urgent, as the overhead lights cut out and crimson emergency beacons washed the room in red.
“What the hell?” I pushed back from the table.
Another detonation vibrated through the floor—deeper in the facility this time.
The concrete beneath us hummed, metal groaning somewhere far below.
Specter was already up; the patient was gone, the operative back.
His body tensed as he scanned the room, checking exits with a stillness before violence.
“They’re here.” He said nothing else, his face gone to stone.
“Who’s here?” I stood, reaching for my tablet.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he caught my upper arm. “Stay behind me. Move low.”
“Wait…” I tried to pull back. “The security protocols…”
“Won’t help if they’ve already breached this level.” His eyes locked on mine for a split second, and I caught something I’d never seen in him before, a flash of fear, gone fast. “Trust me or die. Simple choice.”
Another blast rocked the corridor, closer this time, the concussion shoving us both forward.
Specter slid to the door, pressed his ear against it, then eased it open an inch.
The corridor outside was chaos: gray smoke hung in thick clouds, emergency lights cutting through the haze in strobing flashes.
The distinctive pop-pop-pop of gunfire rattled from somewhere ahead, punctuated by shouted commands.
“Keep your head down. Stay on my six.” He glanced back at me. “If I go down, run toward the central security hub, not the exits. They’ll have those covered.”
“They who?” I kept pace, but he was already moving.
We slipped into the corridor, hunched low. The smoke stung my throat, acrid and chemical. Three SENTINEL operatives ran past, tactical gear gleaming in the emergency lights, weapons drawn. None even glanced our way, focused on whatever threat lay ahead.
“This way.” Specter moved, guiding me in the opposite direction.
I followed closely, keeping his shoulder within reach. “We’re going deeper in,” I said, keeping to his shadow.
“Trust me.”
We crept forward through the thickening smoke. Muzzle flashes strobed from an intersecting hallway: quick bursts of white light followed by the thunder of automatic weapons. Specter’s left arm extended back toward me, blocking me in place behind his larger frame.
The shouting grew louder, SENTINEL operatives barking orders I couldn’t understand through the noise of alarms and gunfire.
Each step we took deeper into the smoke felt like moving through a nightmare.
My clinical mind tried to catalog what was happening: attack patterns, entry points, tactical objectives, but my thoughts kept stuttering.
Specter moved like he’d trained for this hallway, navigating the smoke-filled corridor by instinct. His body telegraphed each decision a split second before he made it, the slight shift of weight before changing direction, the tensing of muscles before pulling me down lower.
“Wait.” His forearm hit my chest, barring me.
We froze as boots thundered past our position. Three figures in tactical gear swept through the intersection ahead, their faces obscured by masks. Not SENTINEL uniforms. These were sleeker, darker, built for stealth rather than overwhelming force.
“Oblivion,” I whispered, close to his shoulder.
He went still beneath my hand. “Yes.”
Cold hit hard. “They’re here for you.”
“Not just me.” He looked at me through the red haze, steady. “Remember that woman I almost remembered? Dark hair? I think… I think she might be important. To both of us.”
Before I could process that, gunfire erupted from the hallway ahead. Specter grabbed my hand and yanked me toward a maintenance alcove as bullets punched into the wall where we’d been standing.
“Stay close,” he said, voice clipped. “And whatever happens next, remember, I need you alive. You’re the only one who can put me back together if we survive this.”
The smoke thickened as we pressed forward, emergency lights casting shadows that jumped across the walls. Specter navigated through half-collapsed ceiling panels and chunks of concrete, his movements sure despite the chaos around us.
“This way,” he guided, tugging me toward a maintenance shaft where the lights flickered and died.
I stumbled over debris, each breath rough. “Do you even know where we’re going?”
“Away from gunfire is a good start.” He paused at an intersection, head tilted slightly, listening beyond the wail of alarms. “The structural integrity is compromised on the other side. If we can reach the central security hub, there may be a…”
“How do you know that?”
His mouth quirked once. “Educated guess. Standard defensive architecture. I never got the facility tour.”
We pushed forward, ducking under hanging electrical wires and stepping over fallen support beams. The facility was coming apart around us, whether from the initial explosions or some structural weakness, I couldn’t tell.
Specter slowed abruptly, his hand snapping back to block my forward momentum. I nearly collided with his palm, the sudden stop jarring.
Smoke curled from the intersection ahead, red emergency lights pulsing through the haze in uneasy waves. The distant drum of gunfire had faded to irregular pops, somewhere far away from us.
Specter shifted, easing me behind his right shoulder without breaking eye contact with a newcomer. His posture changed, not hesitation, but something heavier, older. Recognition.
The man stopped about ten paces away. He carried no visible weapon, showed no urgency. His gaze traveled past Specter, landing on me with unsettling focus.
I studied him through the smoke and strobing lights. Military build, rigid posture. His face was emotionless—clinically blank in a way that raised every professional alarm bell in my mind. Not angry, not determined. Empty.