Chapter 43
VANGUARD
I carry Cal’s body to the roof of the hotel.
It’s the only place I can think of where no one will see us. The rain continues to fall, steam rising from vents, the skyline blurred with fog. I land on the gravel near the water tower and lay him down as gently as I can, like that matters now. Like anything I do matters.
His head is at the wrong angle. I can’t stop looking at it.
You did that. Your hands. Your choice.
I kneel beside him. He’s still warm. His eyes are open, staring at nothing, and I reach out to close them because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? That’s what they do in movies. Give the dead some dignity. I’ve never given any of the dead dignity before, but I should have. I should have.
My fingers are shaking and his eyes won’t stay shut.
“I’m sorry.” The words come out broken. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
He doesn’t answer, he’ll never answer, not me, not anyone.
He’s dead because I killed him, and no amount of apology changes that.
He came back to bring her earrings. Replacement comms. He was doing his job, being her friend, loving a woman who couldn’t love him back, and I snapped his neck like it was nothing.
Because Julia told me to.
No. That’s the coward’s answer and I know it. Julia sent the footage. Julia wound me up like a toy soldier. But I’m the one who flew to that hotel room. I’m the one who let jealousy chew through my insides until there was nothing left but teeth. I need to be held accountable.
This is what you are, Mia said.
Maybe she was right. Maybe this darkness isn’t programming at all. Maybe it’s just me—the thing I’ve been running from my whole life, the violence that felt good when I was a Green Beret, the cold satisfaction I felt in Red Hook when I killed those men.
Maybe they didn’t put the monster inside me.
Maybe they just took the leash off.
I stay with Cal for a long time. Long enough that his skin goes cold under my hand, and the fog starts to lift around the rooftops.
I think about his parents—he must have at least one—who don’t know yet.
I think about his friends, his colleagues, the life he had before he walked into that hotel room to help a woman he loved, and I’m making up a whole life story about him to fill in the blanks.
I think about Mia, having to watch her lover kill her old friend.
Then I call the only number I can think of—Danny. I tell him to bring the hover car and that I need help disposing of a body and he takes it all in stride because that’s what he does. He does it because it’s his job, but I like to think it’s because he’s my friend.
Maybe the only friend I have left.
The call comes three hours later.
I’m still in my penthouse, sitting in the dark, staring at my hands.
Haven’t moved. Haven’t eaten. Haven’t done anything except replay those last seconds over and over—Cal’s eyes going wide, the crack of his vertebrae, the way his body dropped with so much finality.
That dark, ravenous evil taking over me like a virus flooding my bloodstream.
My watch buzzes. Julia’s name on the screen.
I almost don’t answer. I want to rip the watch off and fling it off the balcony and fly somewhere far away, somewhere they can’t reach me. Iceland. Antarctica. The fucking moon.
But Mia is out there somewhere, hopefully having made it to her colleagues, hopefully having left the country by now.
And if she hasn’t? If she isn’t safe? If Julia knows who she really is, if Julia is hunting her—
I answer the call.
No holographic screen comes up, which is curious. It’s just a call.
“We need you at a facility.” Julia’s voice is crisp and professional, like nothing happened, like she didn’t just use me to commit murder. “I’m sending coordinates.”
“What facility?”
“You’ll see when you arrive.”
“Wait, Julia—”
The line goes dead.
I pull up the coordinates on my watch. New Jersey, industrial district just across the Hudson. A location I’ve never seen in any Global Dynamix documentation, and I’ve seen most of them. It’s a black site, it has to be, and probably underground.
Don’t go, some part of me whispers. This is a trap.
But if there’s even a chance Mia is there—if they’ve found her, if they’ve taken her—
I’m in the air before I finish the thought.
The facility entrance is a service door behind a condemned meatpacking plant.
It’s the perfect place for a post-apocalyptic stroll, all rusted signs, broken windows, and the smell of old blood soaked into concrete.
I land in the alley, boots splashing in a puddle of something disgusting, and the door swings open before I can knock.
Two guards appear in tactical gear. No insignias, no names, faces like slabs of meat. They don’t speak, just gesture for me to follow.
Friendly as fuck. If this is how they treat America’s superhero, I’d hate to see how they treat anyone else.
We descend down a flight of concrete stairs first, then a freight elevator that groans and shudders as it drops.
The numbers tick down on a panel that looks older than I am, the gears screeching.
Five floors, then seven, then eight. The air gets colder, damper, as we drop, while the fluorescent lights buzz and flicker overhead.
When the elevator finally stops and the doors grind open, Julia and Marsh are waiting.
Well, that’s just fucking wrong. They’re rarely in the same place outside of the office unless there’s a camera pointed at them, the kind of public theater that keeps shareholders happy.
Julia handles me. Marsh handles the money.
Seeing them together down here, shoulder to shoulder in this concrete tomb, makes my gut clench.
Yeah, something is very fucking wrong.
“Nate.” Marsh steps forward with his hand extended, that politician’s smile plastered across his face. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”
I don’t shake his hand. “What is this place?”
“A research facility,” Julia says. She’s watching me the way she always watches me—like I’m a specimen, something to be studied and measured. “One of several. You’ve never needed to know about it.”
“And now I do?”
“Now circumstances have changed.”
They turn and start walking and I follow.
The corridor stretches ahead of us, pale green walls that looked like they were painted in the 1970s, lined with reinforced doors.
Through narrow windows, I catch glimpses of what’s behind them: a room full of screens showing brain scans, waveforms pulsing like heartbeats; a surgical suite with robotic arms folded like sleeping spiders; a chamber with a chair in the center, wires and tubes trailing from it like veins ripped from a body.
I swear I’ve seen that chair before. In my nightmares, in the fragments that don’t feel like memories.
“Have you seen Mia?” I ask, because I have to ask.
Julia doesn’t break stride. “Why do you ask?”
“You sent me surveillance footage of her hotel room last night. You sent me that footage on purpose. You wanted me to…to…” I can’t make myself finish the sentence and I catch Marsh giving Julia a sidelong look.
“I sent you information I thought you’d want to know.” She glances at me over her shoulder. “What you did with that information was your choice.”
“My choice.” I want to laugh. I want to scream. “You wound me up and pointed me at an innocent man like a weapon.”
“Did I? Or did I simply show you the truth and let you respond according to your nature?”
Marsh clears his throat. “Perhaps we could discuss this somewhere more private—”
“Where is she?” I ask again.
“Come along now, Vanguard,” Julia says, snapping her fingers like I’m a fucking dog.
I stop walking.
They take a few more steps before they realize I’m not following, then turn back. Julia’s expression is carefully blank; Marsh looks annoyed, like I’m a child throwing a tantrum, although there’s a part of him that seems a little apprehensive.
Deep down, way deep down, he’s afraid of me.
“I’m not moving until someone tells me what the fuck is going on.”
“Nate—” Marsh warns.
“Red Hook,” I say.
Julia’s shoulders tighten. Just a fraction, just for a second, but I catch it.
“I know what happened there,” I continue. “I know you were there, Marsh, meeting with a human trafficker.”
My words bring silence. Marsh and Julia exchange a look—quick, loaded with meaning I can’t decipher.
“You’ve been busy,” Marsh says finally. “We knew you were there, of course. How else do you explain all those dead men? No one else could kill so many trained thugs in minutes flat, without being seen. The question was whether you’d bring it up.”
“Consider it brought up. What are you doing with the people you’re trafficking, the ones that Kozlov is selling you?”
“Research.” Julia starts walking again, slower this time. After a moment, I follow. “Global Dynamix has always been at the forefront of human enhancement. You’re proof of that. But enhancement requires…raw material.”
“You’re experimenting on trafficked people,” I manage to say, my throat feeling thick as rage starts to build.
“Innocent people, parents, grandparents…children! After everything this country has gone through, after the people rose up and said no more, you decided to dehumanize these communities yet again. These are the people I am supposed to fucking save and you’re killing them! ”
“We’re advancing the science of human potential.” She says it like she’s reading from a brochure. “The subjects are volunteers from difficult circumstances. They’re compensated. Their families are compensated.”
Compensated with death.
We pass another door, another window. Inside, something that looks like a body floats in a tank of blue liquid, wires connected to its skull, its chest, its spine. I force myself not to look too long.