Chapter 18 Lucian
LUCIAN
The first flicker comes like a warning. A shiver in the wires. The lights stutter once, twice, then they die.
There’s five minutes of black. Five minutes where Ford Penitentiary stops breathing. The dark isn’t empty; it’s alive. It hums with every man’s hunger, their rage pressing against the silence like fists on glass.
Then the world erupts.
Sirens scream. Red strobes burst to life, cutting the dark into blood and bone. Metal groans, bolts snap, doors slam open. Men roar like they’ve been starving for this moment. For them, it’s chaos. For me, it’s scripture. The dark baptized me. The fire will crown me.
This isn’t a riot. It’s resurrection.
I move fast, but not frantic. Measured. Silent. A shadow carving through smoke. Around me, the herd stampedes—fists flying, boots thundering. They fight for freedom. I fight for precision.
A guard stumbles into my path. Sweat slicks his face. His eyes widen in recognition as he mouths my name.
Ghost.
He opens his mouth to call it out. I silence him. My hand clamps around his throat, slamming him into the wall. Bone cracks under my grip. His body twitches, kicks once, twice, then stops moving.
When he drops, I take his keys before his head hits the floor.
The air tastes like copper and smoke. The block shakes under an explosion, fire tearing through the east wing.
Guards scream. Inmates howl. The noise becomes one long, endless wail. I don’t hear it anymore.
The corridor ahead glows red and white; my path, my pulse.
A pack of inmates drag a guard past me, knives flashing, laughter manic. They don’t see me. I’m not part of their chaos. Their vengeance is blind. Mine is focused.
The infirmary door bangs against its hinges. I push through. Wanda waits. Her face is pale, eyes sharp. A folded uniform sits on the counter like salvation.
“You’re late,” she hisses.
I don’t answer. I strip fast, the fabric sticking to my skin, sweat smearing dark on the fresh shirt.
She chews her lip raw, trembling but not stopping. Smart woman.
“Laundry corridor,” she whispers. “Van’s waiting.”
We move.
The hall ahead burns red, alarms howling. A guard rounds the corner, shotgun raised. His eyes flick to the badge on my chest - confusion, then recognition. Too late. I wrench the weapon from him, swing hard. The butt cracks his jaw. Teeth scatter across concrete. One more blow caves his skull.
Wanda flinches but keeps moving. She knows better than to speak.
The corridor shakes beneath our boots, the air thick with smoke. Sparks rain from above, burning tiny holes into my skin.
“This is it,” she says, voice shaking as she hands me the badge.
I nod.
There are no words left. Only freedom.
I shoulder through the south dock door. Cold air hits me like a blade. The first breath of freedom in ten years burns my throat raw. It tastes like smoke. Like blood. Like the death of everything I used to be.
Behind me, Ford Penitentiary burns - steel screaming, men wailing, the monster that caged me collapsing into ash.
Ahead, a van idles, its engine purring. The door is open. That’s my escape. I don’t look back.
Lucian died a long time ago.
Ghost burned with the prison.
And what walks out of that fire, is something far worse.
I slide into the back of the van. The metal floor rattles under my boots.
Wanda climbs in after me, slamming the doors shut. The echo sounds like a gunshot.
A second later, the engine growls, low and steady, and the vibration rolls through my bones. The tires screech, rubber burning as we lurch into the night.
For the first time in ten years, there are no bars. No guards. No walls closing in like a coffin. Just motion. Forward. Away. Freedom.
I lean back against the steel wall. The metal bites through my shirt, cold and grounding.
I draw in a breath to steady myself. Across from me, Wanda sits rigid, knees drawn tight, knuckles white.
Her shoulders locked. Her eyes anywhere but on me.
She’s not afraid of the sirens fading behind us. She’s afraid of me. And she should be.
Up front, the driver handles the wheel like he was born for it. Big guy, masked, silent. The kind of man who doesn’t need orders to know where to go. He never turns around.
I don’t ask his name. The Gatti family doesn’t hire amateurs. Whoever he is, he’s here for one purpose - to deliver the package that is me.
The van moves forward, steady as a heartbeat. Wanda breathes like she’s holding in a scream.
And I sit in the dark with blood drying on my hands, smoke burning in my lungs, free but still haunted.
The city slips past in fragments; factories collapsing into rust, streets slick with rain, neon signs bent like broken halos. I watch it through the window, detached. It’s someone else’s world now.
The safe house waits. We descend into the basement like a tomb. The air is heavy, wet, reeking of iodine and mildew. Fluorescents buzz overhead, their light too white, too cruel. Stainless steel counters. Trays of scalpels and sutures. Tools of precision. Tools of erasure.
In the center of the room, there’s a chair bolted to the floor, cuffs spread wide like open arms. It doesn’t look like salvation. It looks like execution. Because that’s exactly what it is. The execution of Ghost. The monster they turned me into.
Ghost dies here. Cut apart, carved clean until nothing remains but the shell.
I lower myself into the chair. The leather straps bite into my wrists, cold and unyielding. Buckles snap shut, one after another.
Wanda hovers near the wall, pale beneath the lights, her lips trembling with something like pity. But she doesn’t speak. The silence feels sacred. Funeral silence. And I welcome it.
The surgeon enters without a word with his mask on and his gloves snapping. He looks at me once - just once - then looks away. That’s fine. His job isn’t to see me. It’s to end me.
The sting of antiseptic hits the air. Then the needle pierces flesh. Cold fire floods my veins. White, sharp, merciless. The room wavers. Voices blur into static. And through the haze, she appears.
Billie.
Her hair fanned around her head like a halo. Her lips parted, chest still.
The night she died, she buried me with her. She left behind only this curse, this ghost. But tonight, I finish it. Tonight, I bury Ghost.
The drugs pull me under, dragging me down through black water. And I welcome them. When I wake, the face staring back won’t be mine. It won’t be anyone’s. A man without a face. A man without a name. A shadow without a past. And the world - the world won’t be ready for what crawls out of this grave.