Chapter 13
Selina
Kruger’s building sat in a corner of Prague’s Karlín district, five flights up, no elevator. The stairwell smelled like cabbage and old smoke. The handrail stuck to my palm.
“Last door on the right,” Kruger said, voice rough from Specter’s grip.
He fished out a key. “May I?”
Specter shifted to take point. Metal scraped in the lock. The door opened on quiet hinges into a dim, narrow hallway. I hesitated at the threshold, stepping into the home of a man who claimed he’d built Specter into a weapon.
“Forgive the accommodations,” Kruger said as he stepped in. “Not what I’m used to, but necessity forces certain sacrifices.”
Specter nudged me aside with a touch and went first. He moved through the space, checking corners and doorways. His hand stayed near his waistband, where he’d tucked a weapon.
The apartment was small and meticulously ordered. Too neat for normal living. Temporary shelter, not a home.
Heavy blackout curtains sealed the windows. Thin strips of afternoon light cut across worn floorboards. Smoke lingered in the air, edged with gun oil.
“Please, sit.” Kruger gestured toward a table with mismatched chairs. Command lived in his tone. His body told the rest, deep shadows under his eyes, a soft gut where muscle once lived, a receding hairline teased forward.
Specter kept moving. In the kitchenette, a dented kettle sat on a hotplate. He opened a drawer, took out a knife, and set it on the counter out of Kruger’s reach.
“Old habits.” Kruger gave a tired smile. “I’d expect nothing less from my finest creation.”
Specter didn’t bite. He checked the sofa, came up with a small pistol, popped the magazine, and pocketed both, separately.
Electrical tape crossed the windowpanes in blast tape. Not paranoia. Preparation.
Kruger eased into a chair, movements restrained. Yellow light from a bare bulb carved deeper lines into his face. Training turned on by reflex: expressions, tells, inconsistencies. The analysis never really stopped.
“So this is what he’s become.” Kruger watched Specter. “Interesting.”
Specter finished his sweep and settled at my side, close enough for his heat to reach me. “Sit.” He nodded at the chair across from Kruger.
I sat, spine straight, hands visible. Specter stayed standing.
“I assume you’ve taken precautions against surveillance,” he said.
Kruger nodded and reached slowly into his jacket. Specter tensed. Kruger froze, fingers visible, then set a small black device with a blinking red light on the table. “Signal jammer. Military-grade. No one’s listening. No one’s tracking.”
His gaze shifted to me. “Dr. Crawford. If you’ve stayed alive this long with him, I suppose you’ve learned how to ride out the conditioning episodes. Dresner would be fascinated.”
“I’m not here for compliments.” I kept my tone flat. “We want answers.”
“Direct. Good.” Kruger nodded. “What do you know about Oblivion’s conditioning?”
“I don’t have time for your games.” Specter’s voice cut like a blade. “The orphanage. St. Elisabeth’s. The children. Tell me what happened.”
Kruger’s face didn’t change, but caution tightened his stare. “To understand St. Elisabeth’s, you need to understand what they did to you first. What they made you into.”
“I know what they did.” Specter’s delivery was even. “Conditioning. Memory suppression. Programmed responses.” Each word landed hard.
“You know pieces.”
Specter’s jaw tightened. He gave me a small nod.
“Fine.” He paced a slow arc around the table, still out of reach.
“They strapped me down. A chair with restraints. Needles. Something cold burning through my veins.” His tone stayed clinical, but his fingers twitched at his side.
“Then the helmet. Current. Pain that swallowed everything. Questions, again and again, until I couldn’t remember my name. ”
“And after that?” Kruger asked.
“Images. Thousands. Too fast to hold.” His eyes narrowed. “And words. Words that branded.”
I filled in the gaps. “The SENTINEL files called it neural pathway reconstruction. Chemicals plus targeted electrical stimulation to reset the brain while preserving muscle memory and skills.”
“You’ve done your homework, Doctor.”
“It wasn’t only about compliance,” I said. “They designed operatives who function within parameters and think they’re choosing for themselves. As if they had any real power.”
“Close.” Kruger’s mouth flattened. “Dresner believed perfection meant breaking the mind completely, then rebuilding it with loyalty at the core.”
Specter mapped the room in tight lines, contained energy. “There’s more. Another operative cracked. He said the trigger words felt like strings. One pull and we move.”
Kruger leaned forward a fraction. “Another operative? Which generation?”
“Prima,” Specter said. “I’m Secunda. Second wave.”
A thin crease appeared between Kruger’s brows. “And he’s found a way to neutralize the triggers?”
“He’s working on it.”
“What did Dresner want with the triggers?”
“Control,” Kruger said. “But more elegant than that.” Detached pride edged his voice. “Imagine a weapon that thinks it’s free while it follows an invisible script.”
My stomach turned. “The trigger words weren’t only for emergencies,” I said. “They were part of the design?”
“Exactly, Doctor.” His smile was thin. “Dresner called it ‘freedom within parameters.’ The operative believes they’re autonomous, adapting, making tactical calls, but certain words, phrases, stimuli, activate subroutines buried so deep they feel like the operative’s own thoughts.”
“Like deciding to kill children?” Specter’s voice went quiet and cold.
Kruger’s expression slipped. “St. Elisabeth’s was… complicated.”
“Explain.”
“The triggers were embedded during programming. Most handlers knew one or two. Enough to direct their asset, not enough to steal someone else’s. Dresner knew them all.”
“And you?” I asked. “How many did you know?”
Kruger looked at him. “Some.”
The room seemed to cool. Specter’s hand inched closer to his waistband.
“But triggers weren’t the worst part,” Kruger said.
“Memory management was. The stronger the original personality, the more thoroughly we broke it. We erased specific memories, kept skills. Invented memories when useful.” He fixed on Specter.
“You were exceptional—highly resistant. Took three times longer than protocol.”
“Is that why I remember fragments?”
“No. It worked too well. The suppression was so complete your brain’s been fighting ever since, creating… fissures.”
Specter planted his palms on the table and leaned in. “What caused them? A flaw?”
“No documented cases like yours,” Kruger said, mouth twitching. “At least, nothing official.”
“Unofficial?”
“Dresner didn’t document failures. Bad for business. Ugly for morale.”
I leaned in. “When did Specter begin to crack? A specific moment?”
“The turning point was the orphanage. St. Elisabeth’s.” He watched Specter. “After that mission, you started changing. Small things at first. Hesitations at briefings. Questions assets weren’t supposed to ask.”
“And afterward?”
“He remained with Oblivion, but something had shifted. Not in an obvious way, but more subtle as if keeping under Oblivion’s radar I think.” Kruger rubbed his jaw where a bruise purpled. “Vanished after that. I heard he was in South America somewhere. Then, no news until now.”
I stitched the threads. “Neurologically, it tracks. Strong emotion or trauma can break conditioned responses. The brain reroutes around blocked pathways.”
“Like water finding cracks in a dam. I think that’s when I decided it had to stop,” Specter said.
“Exactly.” I nodded. “Whatever happened at St. Elisabeth’s started destabilizing you.”
His gaze never left Kruger. “What did they make me do there?”
“They didn’t make you do anything,” Kruger said. “That was the problem.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that for the first time, he chose,” Kruger answered, suddenly careful. “Against protocol. Against programming.”
Specter pushed away from the table and paced again. “Those months after Prague… not clear. Fragments. Assignments. Cities. Targets.” He stopped, staring through a slit in the curtains. “Then it was like fog thinning. Bits of awareness bleeding through. I became more decisive.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Weeks.” The word was flat, but something unsettled shifted beneath it. “I started questioning orders. Quietly. Questioning myself. I wanted to know what they’d done to me. The only way to get answers was to run.”
I watched him, a man caught between versions of himself, rebuilding from scraps.
“That’s when I started digging,” he said. “Found partial answers. Rumors of others who had cracked.”
“The Prima you mentioned,” Kruger said.
Specter nodded. “I found him through a journalist chasing him. She’s the one who somehow triggered his break.”
“If you saw him fighting the programming,” I asked Kruger, “why didn’t you tell Dresner?”
A breath left him that sounded old. He looked toward the curtains like he expected something to tear through them.
“I couldn’t.” Fingers dragged over thinning hair. “I’d been his handler since he left the Farm. I watched him go from half-dead to the most effective operative and hunter Oblivion had.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
He met my eyes, then Specter’s. “I became a handler because there were few places for someone like me after the military. Oblivion offered money, protection, purpose.” His mouth twisted. “And I thought I had no conscience.”
Specter held position, silent.
“Most handlers treated assets like equipment. Expensive, sophisticated equipment. We were trained for that.” Kruger’s fingers tapped once and stilled. “Problem was, I couldn’t quite get there. I couldn’t not see the human.”
“Even after what you did to them?” Specter’s voice cut clean.
“Especially after.”
I leaned forward. “So at the orphanage…”
“I hit my line.” Kruger’s face hardened. “Years with Oblivion, and suddenly I couldn’t step over it.”
“What happened there?” Specter asked again.