Chapter 14
Clare
The industrial complex stretched before us, all rusted metal and broken glass glittering under freezing rain.
Twenty-two hours after the call. We’d followed every instruction: deleted the post, smashed the laptop with a brick behind a dumpster, packed what little we owned into a single backpack currently digging into my shoulders. The burner phone felt like a live grenade in Xavier’s jacket.
Five PM. Gray afternoon light barely made it through the sleet hammering down.
The docks spread out to our left, skeletal cranes reaching into low clouds. To our right, abandoned warehouses huddled together like rotting teeth. Everything slick and soaked, the kind that went straight through clothes and turned concrete into ice.
Perfect place for an ambush. Obviously.
“This is a terrible idea.” I kept my tone low. “Just putting that out there.”
Xavier positioned himself half a step ahead, body angled to shield me from the long shadows pooling between buildings. His palm stayed near the knife we’d bought at a sporting goods store. Twenty euros, terrible balance, but better than nothing.
He nodded once. Agreed. Going anyway.
Yeah. That summed it up.
We’d argued this morning. Well, I’d argued. Xavier had written three words on the notepad: Only option left.
Hard to counter that when he was right.
The complex drew closer. Chain-link fence torn open, graffiti covering every surface that would hold paint. Shipping containers stacked like building blocks, doors hanging open on darkness.
My skin crawled.
Xavier walked differently today. I’d noticed it during the two-hour trek from our abandoned hideout. Something off in the fluidity, tension riding his shoulders that went beyond normal vigilance.
His fingers flexed. Opened, closed. Repeat.
“You okay?”
He glanced back. Nodded.
Liar.
But I didn’t push. We had bigger problems than whatever was making his jaw tight.
The sleet turned vicious, ice needles stinging exposed skin. I pulled my hood tighter, squinting through the downpour.
No movement. No sound except weather battering metal and our footsteps echoing on wet pavement.
“If this is a trap, I’m going to be really annoyed. Posthumously annoyed, but still.”
Xavier’s fingers found mine. Squeezed once.
With you.
Right. We were in this together. Had been since that alley. No backing out now.
The entrance gaped ahead. Darkness and rain and the weight of every terrible decision that had led us here.
Xavier checked the perimeter one more time. His palm settled against the small of my back, steadying, protective.
Then we stepped inside.
The man materialized from the shadows.
One second, the warehouse doorway was empty, sleet cutting through the gap in gray sheets. The next, he stood there.
Tall, wearing a dark peacoat that probably cost more than my entire nursing school tuition, breaking the cardinal rule of this neighborhood: don’t look worth robbing.
Except no one with a functioning survival instinct would try.
He held himself with the same coiled stillness I’d spent the last week watching in Xavier.
The resemblance was terrifying. Not in the face. This guy had darker eyes, sharper angles, a cruelty to his mouth that Xavier’s lack of memory seemed to have softened. But in the build. They were cut from the same cloth.
Xavier reacted instantly.
His arm shot out, a hard bar of muscle across my ribs, shoving me behind him. The blur was so fast I barely registered it. His other palm went to the pathetic knife in his pocket, his body dropping into a combat crouch that screamed violence.
My pulse hammered. Great. Another one.
“Relax, Blackout.” His accent was American, bored, and carried effortlessly over the sound of the rain. “If I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t have heard me approach.”
Xavier didn’t flinch at the name. Didn’t blink. He stared with the flat focus of a predator.
“Who are you?” I stepped out from behind Xavier’s human shield.
He immediately shifted to block me again. His grip tightened on my hip, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. Stay back. The command was silent, desperate.
The stranger’s gaze, cold and mechanical, slid to me, then back to Xavier’s palm on my waist. He tilted his head. Genuine surprise cracked his boredom.
“Well. That’s new.”
“Answer the question.” I tried to project Emergency Room Charge Nurse authority while standing in a freezing alley with a fugitive. “Who are you, and how do you know...” I stopped myself from saying Xavier’s name. “Him.”
“I’m the guy risking his neck to keep you two from ending up as lab rats.” He took a step forward.
Xavier let out a low, warning sound. Not a growl, exactly. A vibration that traveled through his back into mine. He drew the knife.
The stranger stopped. Examined the three-inch blade, then Xavier’s face. A smirk touched his lips. “A serrated fishing knife? Really? Budget cuts hitting the department hard?”
“He’ll use it.” My words shook just a little. “He killed two cops with his bare hands. I don’t think he needs the knife to hurt you.”
The amusement sharpened. “I know exactly what he can do, nurse. I watched him clear a room of cartel enforcers in Bogota in under forty seconds. But usually, he doesn’t stand in front of the civilians. Usually, he is the threat.”
He locked onto Xavier. “Status report, Blackout. You’re off-mission and your signal is broadcasting to every hunter in a five-hundred-mile radius. Explain.”
Xavier didn’t answer. Didn’t even look confused. He tracked the man’s center of mass, calculating the most efficient way to stop his heart.
I watched the stranger wait. The silence stretched, thin and agonizing.
“I asked for a report.” The tone cooled. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone rogue like Reaper. One defector is a tragedy, two is a statistical anomaly, three is just poor management.”
“He can’t answer you.”
The gaze snapped back to me. “He’s refusing orders? That’s... disappointing. I had fifty bucks on him being the loyal one.”
“No.” Frustration overrode fear. “He can’t speak. Literally. Physically. He doesn’t have a voice.”
For the first time, the mask slipped. He studied Xavier, really studied him this time, scanning with that terrifying competence.
“Mute? Since when?”
“Since I fished him out of the river four days ago. He was half-dead. Hypothermia, blood loss, multiple lacerations. He doesn’t remember you. Doesn’t remember Bogota. Doesn’t remember being called Blackout.”
The stranger stared. Xavier stared back, hate radiating off him in waves.
“No memory.” More to himself than us. “And the vocal suppression... that’s crude. Even for them.” A short, sharp laugh that sounded like dry leaves crunching. “It’s starting to fall apart. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men...”
“Who are ‘they’?” I stepped forward again.
Xavier’s arm blocked me instantly, his body heat a barrier against the freezing drizzle.
He was shivering, subtle tremors I only noticed because I knew his body better than my own by now.
He shouldn’t be out here. He needed antibiotics and warmth, not a standoff with a sociopath in a designer coat.
“Call me Havoc. And you need to put the knife away, Blackout. We have maybe four minutes before a satellite sweep flags your heat signatures. If you want to live, you’ll stop acting like a feral dog and start thinking like the asset you were built to be.”
Xavier didn’t lower the blade. If anything, his grip tightened.
Havoc rolled his eyes. “Stubborn. You were always stubborn. It was the only personality trait they couldn’t scrub out of you.” He looked at me. “Your post on the forum. You asked about the chip.”
“You told us to delete it.”
“I told you to delete it because you were basically lighting a flare and waving it at the Death Star. Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with? You think this is about the police?”
“Two dead cops usually bring the police.”
“The police are irrelevant. They’re ants.” Havoc waved a dismissive gesture. “You’re worried about jail. You should be worried about vivisection.”
A chill that had nothing to do with the wind crawled up my spine. “What are you talking about?”
“Oblivion. That chip isn’t a medical device. It’s a leash. And the man holding the other end, Tobias Dresner, wants his favorite toy back. He doesn’t handle loss well.”
Xavier’s head cocked to the side at the name Dresner. Something crossed his face. Not memory, but reaction. A flash of pain. His palm went to his head for a split second before he forced it back to the knife.
“He recognizes the name.” Clinical again. “Good. The conditioning is breaking down. That’s... messy. But useful.”
“Conditioning? You mean brainwashing?”
“I mean complete neural restructuring. We aren’t born, nurse.
We’re made. Stripped down to the studs and rebuilt.
New names. New purpose. No past.” He gestured vaguely at Xavier.
“Blackout was the stealth model. Ghost in the machine. And Reaper...” A pause, dark humor lighting his features.
“Reaper was the first to crack. He found a girl, too. Something about you women disrupts the programming. It’s annoying. Same for Specter. Damn it.”
He spoke about them like they were iPhones. Different models. Different specs.
And Xavier...
I watched the man beside me. He was reading Havoc’s lips, trying to understand, frustration tightening the corners of his jaw. He was a person.
“He’s not a machine. He’s a human being.”
Havoc met my stare with something almost like pity.
“He’s a Quinta generation operative. He has a kill count higher than some plagues.
He no longer has a childhood, he has a codename.
The fact that he’s currently playing bodyguard for you is a malfunction according to protocol. A fatal one, if Dresner catches him.”
“Why are you helping us?”