7. Justin
JUSTIN
My father once told me you can’t kill an idea—only the people who carry it.
That was his version of wisdom. Old-school. Practical. Bloody.
But ideas are dangerous when they feed off the truth. They burrow. They cling. They multiply until they don’t need a mouth anymore—until they become a disease you can’t cauterize fast enough.
And this one? This one is spreading.
The shit has not just hit the proverbial fan - it’s been launched into orbit. Every screen, every panel, every smug talking head suddenly has an opinion about vigilantism, about justice, about whether the law is still doing its job or if someone else should start finishing it for them.
All because of one article. One anonymous fucking voice that decided to say the quiet part out loud.
I sit in my office with the city bleeding neon beneath the windows, hands braced against the wood of my desk hard enough to ache. My phone won’t stop vibrating. I stopped answering five calls ago. Now I just let it scream itself hoarse against the desk.
Anonymous.
No face. No name. No history.
A name, a title, that could do some real serious damage.
The article went viral overnight - national, then international. Panels. Think pieces. Academics nodding along like this wasn’t the exact kind of exposure we’ve spent years suffocating. And now that the spotlight’s been turned on, people are digging.
Which is the logical next step, of course. It just doesn’t suit our agenda.
I swipe through the writer’s archive again, jaw locking tighter with every scroll.
Six articles in a single year. That alone should have raised alarms. No wasted words.
No erratic swings. Just a steady escalation, each piece sharper than the last. But the most prominent—the one that detonated everything—is the latest. The article on vigilantism.
It didn’t just outperform the others; it dragged them all back into the light and set them on fire.
The first dissects sentencing disparities with surgical precision.
No emotion. Just numbers and outcomes laid bare.
The second questions prosecutorial misconduct without ever raising its voice, letting the implications do the damage.
The third doesn’t accuse - it points a careful, accusatory finger at high-profile government officials—never naming them outright, but making it impossible to pretend they aren’t complicit in judicial cover-ups.
The timing couldn’t be worse.
Now someone has linked Harrold Jacobson’s disappearance to that article. Maybe they’re fishing. Maybe they’re guessing. But somehow they’ve hauled up a rainbow trout of a conclusion, bright and unmistakable, and the world is staring at it.
Still, it’s the vigilantism piece that makes my teeth grind.
It doesn’t glorify. It doesn’t condemn. It frames vigilantism as a social response to institutional failure—a symptom, not a sickness.
A mirror.
By the end of the article—the one pulling the most eyes, the most heat—the conclusion is impossible to miss: when the law protects the powerful, something else will rise to correct the balance.
Something like Goliath.
My phone lights up again. This time, I look at the caller ID and answer the call I’ve been waiting for.
“Find him,” I snap, not giving the caller a chance to speak as I pace the length of my office. “I don’t care what you have to do, but you find this fucking writer and get me a name as soon as possible.”
There’s a pause on the other end that drags on too long.
“Justin,” Evan says carefully, “this isn’t -”
“Don’t,” I bark. “Don’t explain. Don’t qualify. I want a name.”
“We’re trying. But whoever this is, he’s covered himself well. There are no metadata trails, no social bleed. We can’t find a footprint; it’s like he doesn’t even exist.”
That stops me cold.
“Run it again,” I say, quieter now. Calmer. “Every article. Every edit history. I want an IP address. Tear it apart of you have to.”
“We already did.”
“And?”
“And it’s like chasing smoke.”
The rage crests, hot and blinding.
“Then you’re not digging deep enough,” I roar, slamming my fist into the desk. “People don’t just wake up invisible. Someone taught them how to disappear.”
The line goes silent.
“Find him,” I say again, my voice going cold. “This is what you’re paid to do.”
I hang up before he can answer.
My father’s name flashes across the screen seconds later. I don’t answer. I don’t need to hear his voice to know what he’ll say.
Shut it down. Make it go away. This isn’t how we operate. You’re letting it get sloppy.
Titan’s call comes in next. I let it ring out too.
I don’t know what I could say to him that I haven’t already said, or what I could do to make this move faster—to get inside that fucking writer’s head and erase everything they know before it spreads any further.
This anonymous writer isn’t just poking the bear - they’re mapping its skeleton. Every article peels back another layer of the lie we’ve spent years perfecting. Goliath thrives in shadow. In silence. In the spaces the law pretends not to see.
This person is dragging all of that into the light.
And the worst part? They’re not wrong.
That truth coils in my chest, poisonous and unwelcome. I crush it down where it belongs. Truth is irrelevant. Control is what matters now.
Whoever Anonymous is, they’ve crossed a line they don’t know exists.
And when I find them - because I will - I won’t waste time debating theory or trading philosophy. I won’t argue with their ideas. I’ll put them in the only place ideas like that belong.
I’ll see how well their convictions hold when they’re no longer words on a page, when the distance disappears and the consequences become immediate. Because anyone can write about vigilance and justice in the abstract.
What matters is what you do when you’re forced to live inside it.
If evil hides behind faith, then maybe justice hides there too.
I read the line once.
Then again—slower this time. Like if I take it apart carefully enough, it might stop feeling like it was written for me.
It doesn’t.
This particular article cuts closer than the others.
It doesn’t rant. It doesn’t accuse. It catalogs.
Disappearances that never quite added up.
Inconsistencies buried in police reports.
Patterns that only show themselves if you’re already looking for them.
Rumors of off-book enforcers crossing state lines to finish what the justice system quietly abandons.
There’s no mention of Goliath. No names. No proof.
But it skirts the perimeter so closely I can feel heat licking at my skin.
The writer doesn’t know it—but they’re staring straight at us.
And I know better than most that curiosity is a gateway drug to death in my world.
Instead of anger, something else settles in my chest. Slower. Heavier.
Admiration.
It’s been a long time since anyone wrote about monsters like they might still be human. Like they weren’t myths or symbols, but men shaped by failure and necessity. Like the line between justice and sin wasn’t clean, but intentional.
Clara catches me still reading when she walks back into my office. She arches a brow, unimpressed.
“You planning to send a cease-and-desist,” she asks dryly, “or a thank-you note?”
“If I knew where to send it,” I say without looking up.
“Well, you’re in luck, because I have a name for you.”
That gets my attention.
My chair creaks as I lean back, then forward again, slow and deliberate.
I lift my head and really look at her. Clara doesn’t bluff—not with me.
And she doesn’t exaggerate. I’ve had my best people buried in this for days, tearing through firewalls and dead ends, and they came up empty-handed.
There is no version of this where she casually has the answer.
Unless she does.
“You can thank me later,” she adds, already reaching for a pen.
She scribbles quickly on a Post-it, her handwriting neat, controlled. When she’s done, she sets the pen aside with maddening calm and slides the pad across the desk toward me—then stops it with one finger, pressing down hard enough to wrinkle the paper.
Her gaze lifts to mine. The humor drains from her face.
“Before I give you this,” her voice is steady, “I want your promise that you’ll give me a chance out in the field.”
I exhale through my nose and pinch the bridge of it, already tired of where this is going.
“Clara…”
“No,” she cuts in, not raising her voice, but not yielding an inch either. “I already had this conversation with Titan. I get that you guys worry about me. And I understand my value as an assistant.” Her chin lifts slightly. “But I want more, Justin.”
My eyes drift—traitorous—to the Post-it. To the one thing my tech team couldn’t crack. The one ghost that’s been laughing at us from behind a screen. If Clara has actually done the impossible, she’s a fucking genius.
She notices immediately. Her finger curls, drawing the Post-it back toward her chest, guarding it like a secret she knows I’ll bleed for.
“Promise me, Justin.”
“Let me see it.”
Her brows arch. “Justin…”
“I promise,” I say, already calculating the damage. “But first, you get training. A year of it, at the very minimum. No shortcuts.”
She studies me for a beat—measuring, weighing. Then the corner of her mouth lifts, slow and satisfied. A smug little smile she doesn’t bother hiding.
“You have a deal.”
And only then does she slide the name across the desk.
Rowan Hale.
The name settles deep in my marrow. Not because it’s familiar—but because it feels like it should be.
“How did you get this?” I ask.
Clara smiles, sharp and knowing. “You forget who you’re talking to. There’s a reason you kept me here when Titan left.”
She’s right. Clara is the best at what she does—smart, resourceful, impossible to corner. She doesn’t wait for answers to surface. She chases them.
“I’ve done my part.” Clara looks at me one last time, already turning toward the door. “You’ll have to run the background yourself. And I think I’ve earned an early finish.”
“There’s no need for a background,” I tell her. She pauses. “I’m going to meet him.”
Clara turns back slowly. Blinks once. “That’s a bad idea.”
“You know me,” I say. “Bad ideas and I have a long-standing relationship.”
“Massery wouldn’t approve.”
“Which is why,” I reply evenly, “you won’t tell him.”
She folds her arms. “You’re asking me to keep secrets from your father.”
“I’m asking you to trust me.”
Her gaze sharpens. “You know what they say about curiosity.”
I lean back in my chair. “Curiosity is due diligence, Clara.”
She snorts. “That’s not what it looks like from where I’m standing.”
Maybe not.
But whatever Rowan Hale has started—whatever fire he’s poking with words he doesn’t yet understand—I’m not going to watch it burn from a distance.
I’m going to step right into it. And see if he still believes in his ideas when he’s standing face to face with the monsters he’s been dancing with.