Ellie
The door to my cell slams open. I flinch before I can stop myself. The sound detonates through my skull like a gunshot.
It's all just one giant, endless day. Or maybe it’s weeks? I don’t fucking know anymore. Time melts into a haze of fluorescent light and darkness. Grace controls everything. The sounds. When I sleep. When I wake. I float in controlled confusion. Nothing feels real. Maybe nothing ever was.
Reed fills the doorway, all muscle and menace, his frame swallowing the light from the corridor.
Those dark eyes crawl over me slowly, lingering on how the oversize t-shirt hangs off my thinning frame like I’m disappearing inside it.
There’s less of me to see every day. I’ve grown used to his leer, the way he undresses me with his eyes.
The tribal ink slithering up his neck looks darker in the fluorescent light.
Or maybe they’re feeding off it, growing more alive while I waste away.
"Time to move," his voice is a familiar rumble that never fails to make my skin crawl.
Something’s different. Grace usually comes herself for the sessions, escorts me personally to whichever room she’s chosen for the day’s torture. Reed’s presence means a change. Changes here are never good.
He’s carrying a set of black restraints. No ratchets, no keys. Just thick, seamless loops of metal that look expensive and inescapable.
Ice water trickles from the base of my skull, running slowly down each vertebra, pulling a shiver I can’t suppress. Whatever Grace has planned, she needs Reed and his particular brand of cruelty. That can’t mean anything good.
I could fight, but Reed outweighs me by over a hundred pounds, and whatever drugs they’re feeding me coat my thoughts in fog. Everything moves through water. When I stand, the room sways, and I catch myself on the wall.
Reed doesn’t move to help. He waits, knowing I have nowhere to go.
He secures the cuffs around my wrists, far tighter than needed. His fingers skim over my skin, lingering where they shouldn’t. I retreat into the blank fog of my mind until his fingers feel like they’re touching a stranger. I’ve learned resistance only makes him touch me more.
He watches me fade into my own head, his mouth curling into a sneer. In my head, his contempt doesn't have a place to land.
The corridor beyond my cell has no windows and no paint. It’s miles of grey concrete and the constant buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead. It smells like a hospital ward, just one where no one ever gets better.
We pass closed doors I don’t remember seeing before. Behind them, I hear electronic equipment humming. How big is this place? How far underground? How many rooms?
How many other prisoners?
The observation room I'm pushed into steals my breath. Darkness, except for monitor-glow. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, displaying street corners, building exteriors, and traffic cameras. My skin crawls seeing the scope of it. She’s everywhere.
Grace isn’t only watching me. She’s watching everyone, everything, mapping the entire city like a spider in the center of a web that stretches endlessly.
Reed’s hand tightens around my arm. He feels me trying to process what I’m seeing, and he enjoys it.
She stands with her back to us, dressed in practical black rather than her usual elegant clothing. Her blonde hair is pulled back severely. When she turns, her smile is cold.
This is Grace without the mask.
“Thank you, Reed.” Her voice is crisp. The voice of someone who owns everything in this room, including me. "Please secure her in the chair."
Said chair is bolted to the floor. Restraint points at arms, legs, and chest.
Reed’s hands are everywhere as he secures me. Wrists first, metal biting into bone. Then ankles, yanking my legs apart wider than comfortable. Each touch makes me want to tear out of my skin. When he tightens the chest strap, his knuckles graze the underside of my breast.
I stay still. Breathing shallow.
You did that on fucking purpose!
When he’s done, I'm completely immobile, nothing more than an audience of one, trapped in a seat I can't leave. I’m forced to face the monitors and whatever nightmare Grace chooses to show me.
"Much better," Grace settles into a wheeled chair beside me and activates a control panel. "Today we move beyond conversation, Ellie. Today you see exactly what you're dealing with."
Monitors flicker to life. Grainy footage, poor quality, but clear enough. Some kind of facility. Concrete walls, industrial lighting, with rows of empty cells.
“Romania, 2009. The Order’s primary training facility. Primitive by today’s standards, but effective nonetheless.”
Training facility.
Oh, God.
A figure enters the frame. Young. Maybe eighteen. Dark hair covers his face. Slender. But his body language is all wrong. His shoulders are hunched, head down, waiting for the next blow. Is he a prisoner too?
Then, he looks up at the camera.
Storm-gray eyes.
No.
"Fascinating subject," Grace continues, her voice taking on the clinical tone of a researcher. "A formidable fighter with natural tactical instincts. Julian saw his potential immediately."
They lead him into a medical room. He’s shirtless. Ribs visible through pale skin. No muscles yet. No scars. Just a boy.
This is before. Before whatever they did stripped away a boy and left behind a man. The man whose hands have killed. He looks so young. So ordinary. The terror on his face makes my chest lock. Each breath comes shallow and completely useless.
"The conditioning process required breaking down existing psychological barriers," Grace explains as figures in military clothing surround him. "Physical pain was merely the beginning."
I want to close my eyes. To look away. As if sensing my shift in breathing, Reed’s heavy hands settle over my collarbones, forcing me to face the screen.
So I watch. They strap young Killian to a metal table. Someone approaches with a brazier of coals. A branding iron glows white-hot in the fire.
"No," I whisper.
"The Order's mark," Grace says with satisfaction. "Burned directly into the chest to ensure permanent ownership. Quite effective, both physically and psychologically."
They bring the iron toward his chest, glowing. Even through silent footage, I see everything. Muscles straining against restraints. Tendons standing out in his neck like cords. Then, the exact moment the metal meets skin.
His back arches off the table. Mouth open in a scream I can’t hear but feel vibrating in my bones.
I can almost smell it. Charred flesh filling my lungs until my throat closes.
“Stop.” The word tears out of me. “Stop, please!”
But they don’t stop. They hold the iron there, burning deeper. Making sure the mark takes. Making sure it scars.
Branding him. Like cattle. Like property.
Like a thing they own.
“This is what made him.” Grace doesn’t look away from the screen, watching young Killian scream.
“We broke him. Piece by piece. Then we built something new from the ruins. The man who touches you so gently? We taught him that. Every tender gesture, every moment he makes you feel safe? That’s ours.
We own every part of him, including the parts you think are real. ”
The footage continues, showing the aftermath. Killian unconscious on the table, chest rising and falling shallow. The Order's mark, the infinity symbol, burned into the flesh above his heart.
I’ve seen that scar. I’ve traced it with my fingers. I never understood what it meant. Now I do.
"Why are you showing me this?"
"Because you need to understand what you're dealing with," Grace replies. "Reed, start the operational footage."
Reed moves to another control panel, and new monitors light up. This footage is more recent and of higher quality. It shows various operations, buildings being infiltrated, targets being killed.
A throat strike in a Moscow office, arterial spray painting concrete walls. A garrote in a Prague hotel hallway, the woman’s legs kicking until they don’t. A snapped neck in a Berlin parking garage, the body positioned behind the wheel like he had fallen asleep.
Building after building. Body after body. Each kill carried out by the same hands I’ve felt gentle on my skin.
“Your Killian. Working as the Ghost. Notice there's no hesitation. No remorse.”
This is nothing like the man I know. Nothing like the guilt I’ve seen eating him alive. Watching the screens, I realize the terrifying truth: the guilt isn't an act. But neither is the Ghost.
“Impressive,” Reed’s voice rumbles with genuine admiration.
“Reed appreciates craftsmanship,” Grace remarks with amusement. “He’s studied Killian’s techniques extensively.”
“Clean.” Reed leans closer, his breath hot on my neck. "Look at the snap on that neck. Didn't even let the bastard twitch before he dropped him. Ruthless motherfucker."
Their casual discussion of murder as the footage continues makes bile rise in my throat. I recognize these operations. News reports I’ve seen. Mysterious deaths. Perfectly executed assassinations.
"How many?" I ask shakily.
"Documented kills? One hundred and forty-seven over his career with us. Though that doesn't count the training eliminations in Romania, or the casualties from operations where multiple targets were eliminated simultaneously, or those after. The actual figure is likely to be double that."
One hundred and forty-seven documented people. One hundred and forty-seven families destroyed. They never saw him coming.
"The psychological conditioning was quite thorough; he underwent specific tests of loyalty.
" Grace continues. "Fear, pain, and reward carefully calibrated to create absolute obedience.
By the time we finished with him, he would have killed anyone we designated.
Family, friends, innocents. The programming was complete. "
"Then why did he leave?" I manage to ask.
Grace's smile turns cold. "An excellent question. Reed, show her the Tehran operation."