Chapter 28
VANGUARD
I surface in pieces.
First thing I notice is the taste: metallic, chemical, coating my tongue like I’ve been sucking on pennies.
Then, the sound, a low hum that vibrates through my skull, familiar in a way that makes my stomach churn even before I’m fully conscious.
And finally, the pressure, restraints at my wrists and ankles, the curved headpiece pressing against my temples, electrodes like cold fingers against my scalp.
The chair.
I’m in the motherfucking chair.
My eyes snap open, and the world swims, too bright, edges blurred.
The ceiling is a wash of white interrupted by harsh surgical lights that make me squint.
I try to move, but the restraints hold firm, tight enough to remind me I’m not going anywhere until someone decides I can.
The irony is, I could break out of them if I wanted to, yet I swear, they’ve put something in me that makes it feel impossible, like my limbs are made of lead.
“Easy.” Julia’s voice, close. Too close. “You’re still coming out of it. Give yourself a moment.”
I turn my head slowly, and it feels like my brain is sloshing around in there.
I wince and find Julia standing beside the chair, tablet in hand, watching me the way a sculptor might watch clay taking shape.
She’s wearing a white lab coat over her usual elegant attire, her silver-blonde hair pulled back, and there’s something soft in her expression I don’t trust, not one bit.
“How long was I out?” My voice comes out rough, scraped raw.
“Four hours. Standard calibration, as I said before.” She sets the tablet aside and reaches for my face.
I flinch before I can stop myself, but she just brushes hair from my forehead, her touch clinical and somehow intimate at the same time.
“A few days early, but you were overdue. Your readings have been so erratic lately.”
Erratic. Right.
The last few days blur in my memory. The helicopter ride back from Montana, Julia so furious that she gave me the silent treatment.
Press conferences and disaster relief and smiling for cameras while thirteen families buried their dead.
And underneath all of it, the ache of not seeing Mia.
Five days since I left her at my father’s ranch.
Five days of phone calls that ended too quickly and texts that said everything and nothing.
Five days of feeling like a piece of me was missing.
“I’m fine,” I say, testing the restraints again. They’re still locked, and I’m still too weak. “Can you—”
“Not yet. We need to discuss some things first.” Julia pulls a stool closer and sits, positioning herself at my eye level.
At this distance, her perfume overwhelms me, cold and floral, making me think of death, like a funeral home.
“Conrad wanted to be here, but he’s in Washington, meeting with the Secretary of Defense. ”
Something in her tone makes my skin prickle. “The Secretary? About what?”
“About you.” She folds her hands in her lap, perfectly composed, while I feel like my stomach is dropping. “About your future. About the role Global Dynamix—and Vanguard—will play in ensuring America’s continued recovery.”
I wait. She wants me to ask, I can tell. She wants me to be curious, eager, the good soldier hungry for his next mission. I give her silence instead.
Her mouth tightens almost imperceptibly. “There are concerns at the highest levels about certain, shall we say, elements within the country. Groups that oppose progress. That want to drag us back to the chaos of the Dark Decade.”
“You mean protesters.”
“I mean domestic terrorists.” Her voice sharpens. “People who would destabilize everything we’ve worked to rebuild. The resistance is growing, Nate. Organizing. There have been threats against infrastructure, against government officials. Even against Global Dynamix facilities.”
“And you want me to…what? Be your attack dog?” I practically growl like I already am one.
“I want you to be what you’ve always been.
” She leans forward, and for a moment, I see something like pride shining in her eyes.
“You’re a symbol, a deterrent. Your presence alone prevents violence.
People don’t riot when Vanguard is watching.
They don’t plant bombs or storm buildings or hurt innocent civilians. You keep the peace simply by existing.”
“I don’t think protesters are doing any of those things. I think they’re just the scapegoats.”
“You are merely uninformed by biased news.” She gives me a tight smile. “And regardless, you are needed.”
“I’m not killing anyone.”
“Of course not. Don’t be silly,” Julia says patiently, like I’m a child who’s missed the point.
“You’re not a weapon. You’re a peacekeeper.
The government understands that. They’re not asking you to hurt people—they’re asking you to protect them, to ensure the recovery isn’t derailed by extremists who would rather burn everything down than let us move forward. ”
The words are smooth, polished, rehearsed. I wonder how many times she practiced this speech before I woke up. I wonder if she wrote it herself or if Marsh handed her a script.
“And if I say no?”
The question hangs in the air between us. Julia just stares at me, doesn’t blink.
“You won’t say no.” Her voice is gentle, almost tender, and somehow, that makes it worse. “You’re Vanguard. You’re here to serve your country. That’s who you are. That’s who you’ve always been.”
It’s not a threat, not even a warning, just a statement of fact, delivered with absolute certainty.
The sun rises. The tides turn. Vanguard obeys.
The worst part is the piece of me that wants to nod, that wants to say yes ma’am and accept the mission and feel the warm glow of purpose flooding through my veins.
They built that into me somehow, this need for approval, this hunger for direction.
Without it, I’m just a man in a fancy tech suit with too much power and no idea what to do with it.
“I need to think about it,” I say, though I already know deep down, I won’t do it.
“Of course.” Julia rises, smoothing her lab coat.
“Take all the time you need. The formal request won’t come for a few weeks—there’s paperwork, protocols, and congressional oversight that needs to be managed.
But I wanted you to hear it from me first.” A pause.
“I thought you’d want to know what’s coming. ”
So I can prepare myself to comply, I think. So I can get used to the idea before I’m expected to perform.
Fuck that.
She moves toward a bank of screens on the wall, and I watch the data scroll across them. My data. Heart rate, blood pressure, neural activity patterns that pulse and shift across a map of my brain, everything I am reduced to numbers and graphs.
“Speaking of what’s coming,” I say, “what happened to Paragon? You mentioned a malfunction.”
Her fingers pause on the tablet, just for a second. “A minor glitch in his response protocols. He’s been recalibrated.”
“Recalibrated how? Like me just now?”
“The technical details wouldn’t interest you.”
“Try me.”
She turns, studying me with those pale eyes. “Why the sudden curiosity about Paragon?”
Because he was supposed to be there when thirteen people died, but instead, he ‘malfunctioned’, which is a pretty weird word to use to describe a person.
“He’s my partner,” I say. “I should know what’s going on with him.”
Julia’s voice is clipped and impatient. “Paragon is functioning within acceptable parameters. That’s all you need to know.”
Acceptable parameters. The same phrase she uses about me.
The restraints click open.
I sit up slowly, rubbing my wrists even though the padding didn’t leave marks. My head is still foggy, thoughts moving through molasses, my body still feels heavy, and there’s a strange taste at the back of my throat that I don’t normally get from these appointments.
“We’re done here,” Julia says. “Danny’s waiting to take you home.
Get some rest. Eat something.” A pause. “And Nate? Think about what I said. About the government contract. About your purpose. You were built for more than publicity appearances and charity galas. It’s time you started acting like it. ”
Excuse me?
I stand and try to say something in response to that jab, but for a moment, the room tilts. I catch myself on the edge of the chair, and Julia doesn’t move to help. She just watches, clipboard in hand, noting my momentary weakness the way she notes everything else.
“I have a question,” I say, steadying myself. “The headaches. Are those part of my ‘calibration’ too?”
She frowns. “What headaches?”
“I had a headache in Montana. Sudden, severe, like someone was driving a spike through my skull. Not too long after that, you showed up. It’s happened before, too. More often lately.” I gesture to the screens. “Seems like something you’d easily be able to see.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. “Stress, most likely,” she eventually says.
“The enhancements put significant demand on your neural architecture. When you’re emotionally heightened, the strain increases.” She makes a note on her tablet. “I’ll have the team look into it, adjust some parameters. It should resolve.”
Adjust some parameters. Like I’m a machine with faulty code.
I walk toward the door on legs that feel steadier than they should, given what just happened. But I stop at the threshold, one hand on the frame, because there’s something else, something that surfaced during the sedation, flickering at the edges of my consciousness like a half-remembered dream.
“There was a man,” I say slowly. “During the procedure. I saw…I don’t know if it was a memory or something else, but there was a man with a mustache.
Grey, I think. Distinguished. He was wearing a white coat, like yours.
And he was—” I close my eyes, reaching for the image.
“He was looking at me, but not like you look at me. He was full of regret.”
When I open my eyes, Julia’s face is carefully blank.
“Sedation can cause hallucinations,” she says. “Fragments of dreams, subconscious imagery. That sort of thing. Nothing to be concerned about.”
“Who is he?”
“No one. A phantom. Your brain filling gaps with random data.” She gestures toward the door. “Go home, Nate. Rest. I’ll see you at the press briefing on Thursday.”
She’s lying. I know she’s lying the way I knew when my parents were lying. When you know someone long enough, you learn their tells. But I also know pushing won’t get me anywhere—not here, not now, not when I’m still foggy from whatever they pumped into my veins.
So, I turn and leave, that bitter taste still in my mouth.