Chapter 21
Specter
I woke with my head splitting and copper on my tongue. Blinking hurt. A water-stained, unfamiliar ceiling slid into view. Hotel room. Zagreb. I tried to put last night in order, but the pieces wouldn’t fit.
I shifted. Pillow under my head, a blanket over me. My body felt heavy, disconnected. Bits of last night surfaced: the warehouse. Files. A photograph.
A name.
Pain jabbed my temple, duller now. Manageable.
Movement drew my focus. Selina sat on the floor, cross-legged, papers in neat stacks around her. She hadn’t noticed me yet. Hair tucked behind one ear. Brow tight in concentration. Shadows under her eyes. She hadn’t slept.
I tried to sit up. Muscles protested; the rooftop chase and the seizure had left their mark. The movement made her look up. Papers slid as she abandoned them and crossed to me in three quick strides.
She looked me over. “Hey. How’re you feeling?”
I let her check me, remembering how she’d kept me grounded through the collapse. When her cool palm touched my forehead, I leaned into it before I could stop myself.
“Like someone took a hammer to my skull. How long was I out?”
“Almost six hours. It’s almost morning.” She grabbed a glass from the nightstand. “Here. Drink.”
I tried to take it, but my hands didn’t track right. She slid an arm behind my shoulders and helped me up. The water cut the dryness in my throat. She stayed close, shoulder against mine, steady as I drank.
She took the empty glass. “Better?”
I nodded. Last night flashed through my mind: her holding me while I seized, refusing to step back even when I told her to.
I nodded toward the stacks. “The files. Did you find anything?”
“First things first.” She pressed a protein bar into my hand. “Eat. Then we’ll talk.”
I didn’t argue with her doctor voice. The food cleared some of the fog. She watched me like she was tracking symptoms.
She studied my face. “No more headache? No nausea?”
“Residual pain. Bearable.” I crumpled the wrapper. “Now tell me what you found.”
She sat beside me on the bed, close enough that I caught her shampoo. “Not as much as I’d hoped. I’ve been going through everything you brought back. Most of it’s bureaucratic paperwork—operational reports, conditioning protocols.”
“And about me? About… Wolfe?”
Her expression eased at my tone. “The photograph, that partial report, that’s all we have. Honestly, I was hoping for more.”
I leaned back against the wall, the disappointment settling hard. “So we’re not any closer.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” She nodded toward the stacks. “I learned more about their conditioning techniques, and that chemical they referenced might be our best lead. I sent the compound info to Mattie already. If they can develop a counteragent…”
I rubbed my temple. “What about trigger words? Anything on those?”
She shook her head. “Nothing specific to you or any operative. That info must be stored elsewhere.”
“Could my name be one? When you said it…”
Her answer was gentle but sure. “No. What happened last night wasn’t a trigger response. That was your real self colliding with the persona Oblivion implanted. Different mechanism.”
“So if someone used actual trigger words on me…”
“They’d still work. We just don’t know how far it can go.”
The headache faded to a dull throb behind my brow. I pressed my palms to my thighs, focusing on the rough denim. The room felt off-kilter, like it might tip if I moved too fast.
Selina shifted off the bed to sit cross-legged on the floor. “We should talk about what happened.”
I slid down to the carpet too. Our shoulders almost touched as we leaned against the couch.
She hesitated, twisting her fingers. “How much do you remember from your seizure?”
I held her gaze. “Enough.”
Teeth set, I let the fragments come. “I was a contract killer. Professional. Expensive.” I watched her, looking for disgust. Or fear. “The best at what I did. That’s why they wanted me.”
She didn’t look away. A small nod. Go on.
My voice flattened. “There was blood.” My spine straightened on its own. Hands went still on my knees. “I remember the satisfaction of a clean job. No witnesses, no evidence. Target removed exactly as specified. How well I tortured them. How I made them bleed out.”
Cold method. Calculated violence that fit too easily in my hands.
I looked past her. I didn’t want to see her face while I said it.
“And even Oblivion. Before Prague, before the orphanage…” My voice went blank. “I eliminated targets in Budapest. Paris. Berlin. Countless…”
I turned away from her fully. “I see their faces now. People I killed as Wolfe and as Specter. A businessman in Tokyo. A politician in Madrid. A woman in Stockholm who begged for her children.”
My teeth pressed together between sentences. My fingers curled, then I smoothed them flat on my thighs. Every word pushed us farther apart.
The admission scraped my throat. “I wasn’t forced to become this. I chose it. Long before Oblivion found me. I was already an assassin.”
Saying it felt like slipping back into an old skin.
I kept going, voice hollow. “I remember being proud of my reputation. Of what people would pay.” I stared at the wall. “That’s who I was, Selina. That’s who I am.”
The words came out clipped. “They didn’t need to create a killer. They just needed to control one. Or more accurately, Dresner did.”
A memory shoved in: an expensive suit, cold eyes measuring me like I was a product. I bit down against it.
“You remember Dresner? From before?” she asked.
“A meeting.” I gave her nothing extra. “He made threats. I refused. He probably had me kidnapped soon after.”
She waited. I let the silence sit, then broke it because I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I stood, needing space from her steadiness, from the pull of it. The glass drew me forward. I eased the curtain back and watched dawn lay pale grays and washed-out yellow over Zagreb.
I spoke as if distance could help. “Wolfe Lennox was a monster by choice. Specter was engineered. Neither deserves saving.”
Behind me, her tone went clinical. “What you’re describing is a trauma response. Identity fragmentation after severe psychological manipulation. And the neurological impact of your seizure…”
I gave the smallest nods, eyes on the empty street below. A cat slipped between parked cars. No surveillance vans. No pedestrians.
She kept going. “The memories aren’t complete. You’re getting fragments, worst moments first. That’s how trauma recall works.”
I let the words go by. “It’s enough to know what I was.”
“Remember what you did at St. Elisabeth’s.” Her voice softened but held. “You chose to save those children. That wasn’t Specter’s programming. That was you.”
My grip on the curtain loosened. I met her eyes for a second. Small bodies pressed to me. The choice that almost broke me.
I closed it off. “One decent act doesn’t erase a lifetime of blood.”
She pushed to her feet, tension tightening her shoulders. “What’s happening right now? Why are you shutting down on me?”
The direct hit knocked my retreat off balance. I kept my eyes on the glass. My molars ground. Last night rose up again: me warning her to get away when I lost control, her refusal. I knew what I had to do.
“After everything we’ve been through, you don’t get to just check out. Not like this.” Raw edges in her voice scraped at my control. She reached for my arm, ignoring everything I’d already telegraphed.
Her fingers brushed my sleeve and I jerked away. Sharp. Too fast. We both felt the shock of it. Her hand hung there, then she withdrew. The hurt showed before she masked it. The rejection sat between us, plain, the opposite of last night when I’d held on to her through the worst of it.
“We need to move.” My voice came out flat, automatic. “Contact SENTINEL. Get to a safer place.”
Her expression shifted from shock to hurt to professional distance. She straightened and stepped back. “I see.” The tone matched mine. Not the woman who’d slapped me and then kissed me back into myself.
“Fine. Contact Damon. I’ll grab coffee from the machine in the lobby.” Her voice stayed controlled, though it wasn’t steady underneath. No argument. No plea.
At the door, she paused. Hand on the handle. Half-turned. For a second, I thought she’d say more, challenge me again, remind me she hadn’t left me alone in it. The words didn’t come. What we didn’t say sat between us, weighted with what we’d shared and what I was breaking.
The moment passed. Her face shut down and she slipped out. The latch clicked, small and final in the quiet. Not like last night, when she’d clung to me and said we’d find a way.
As the door closed, my shoulders dropped. I braced a hand on the window frame.
I stared at the door. Before her footsteps faded, I took one step toward it without thinking. I lifted a hand, then stopped. I let it fall.
I turned back, jaw set against the urge to say her name.
If there was anything decent left in me after all of it, it was knowing when to let her go.
I picked up the phone to call Damon, but my eyes stayed on the door.
She’d promised we’d figure it out together, and I was breaking that for both of us.
“This is the only decent thing Wolfe Lennox has ever done.” The empty room took it. Using my name left a dull ache. For now, I needed to keep her alive. Everything else could wait.