Chapter Twelve
The compound breathed around them—generators cycling down a notch, boots moving with purpose instead of urgency, voices low and controlled.
Screens glowed in the command center, maps layered with fresh data, Bravo and Pathfinders stacked on encrypted lines, all of them working the problem that had taken Niko.
Tane wasn’t there.
He was in the camper.
The small space smelled faintly of antiseptic and clean linen.
He’d washed the blood from his hands and from Victor’s skin with care that bordered on ritual, cleaned and dressed the shallow cuts, iced the swelling where it mattered.
Victor had let him. Had gone still when Tane asked, had followed every instruction without protest, the fight finally set aside.
Now they lay together, the early light slipping through the narrow window and striping the wall.
Victor rested on Tane’s chest, weight warm and solid, breath finally even. Tane held him there, one arm firm around his back, the other curved protectively along his spine. Every few seconds, his hand flexed—counting breath, checking presence, reminding himself that Victor was real and here.
Tane hadn’t let himself think much during the night. Not about the site. Not about the empty van. Not about the way the silence had followed them home. Ice did its job when it was needed. Now, with Victor breathing against him, the edges softened.
“You went quiet,” Victor murmured.
Tane dipped his chin, lips brushing Victor’s hair. “Didn’t trust my thoughts yet.”
Victor shifted, careful of his shoulder, and smiled faintly. “I kept thinking ... if I closed my eyes, I wouldn’t open them again.”
Tane’s grip tightened by a fraction. “You did.”
“I know.” Victor’s fingers traced slow paths over Tane’s chest, aimless. “In the room ... I counted everything. Sounds. Steps. Lies. I told myself if I stayed present, they couldn’t break me.”
“They didn’t. But you need to sleep,” Tane murmured into Victor’s hair.
“I know,” Victor said. His voice was tired, but clear. Too clear. “Doesn’t mean my head’s listening.”
Tane huffed a quiet breath. “Mine neither.”
They lay like that for a few moments, the night pressing gently against the windows. Victor shifted slightly, carefully, and Tane adjusted automatically, easing the pressure without waking fully to the movement.
“Niko,” Victor said suddenly.
Tane’s hand stilled.
“What about him?”
Victor stared at the far wall, eyes tracing shadows he couldn’t quite bring into focus. “I keep thinking ... he was always there. In the background. Flying. Watching.”
“He was,” Tane said. “Still is.”
Victor tilted his head just enough to look back at him. “And he is the team’s pilot. Right?”
Tane nodded once. “Yeah, he is, one of the best as far as I can tell.”
“But not just that.”
“No,” Tane agreed quietly.
He shifted closer, pressing his forehead briefly to the back of Victor’s neck before settling again. “When people needed to talk—really talk—it was to Niko. He didn’t push. Didn’t fix. He listened.”
Victor swallowed. “And it never went anywhere.”
“Never,” Tane said. “He has a vault in his head. Iron doors. He always said he could open it if he ever thought he needed to. But loyalty matters more to him than anything else.”
Victor closed his eyes. The image settled deep. “That kind of loyalty can get you killed.”
“Sometimes,” Tane said. “And sometimes it gets you followed into hell by people who won’t leave you there.”
Victor was quiet for a long moment, then, “What will we do to find him?”
Tane didn’t answer immediately. He stared past Victor, through the dim room, into the dark beyond the walls where plans were already taking shape.
“Everything,” he said at last. “We burn routes to the ground. We follow ghosts wherever they lead us and we call in debts that haven’t been spoken out loud in years.”
“And if we can’t find him?” Victor asked.
Tane’s jaw tightened. His arm drew Victor closer, not crushing, but unyielding. “Then we don’t stop, ever. And we don’t pretend it ends clean.”
Victor turned fully then, pressing his forehead to Tane’s. Their noses brushed, breath shared.
“He wouldn’t want us to hesitate,” Victor said.
“No,” Tane agreed. “He’d want us moving.”
They stayed like that, foreheads touching, the weight of what they carried settling between them—not crushing, but real.
“Try to rest,” Tane said quietly. “I’ve got you.”
Victor nodded, finally letting his eyes close.
A soft tone, unmistakable, sounded in the van an hour later.
Tane felt Victor tense. He reached for him immediately. “Stay,” Tane said. “I’ll check it.”
Victor shook his head. “No. You heard Kael. Black Tide reports.”
“You’re not up for—”
“I am,” Victor said, already pushing himself upright with care. “And I’m a member of this team. That doesn’t change because it hurts.”
Tane watched him for a heartbeat longer, then leaned in and kissed him—slow, sure, sealing the moment.
“That you are,” Tane said.
They dressed together, movements practiced and gentle. When they stepped out into the morning, the compound met them with quiet resolve.
The early morning light revealed things the night hid—faces drawn with exhaustion, eyes rimmed red, shoulders tight with the knowledge that this wasn’t over.
The command center was full now. Not loud, not frantic, but dense with purpose.
Bravo filled one wall of screens, familiar faces framed in blue light.
Pathfinders occupied another, Kai’s presence unmistakable even through a feed.
Maps updated in real time, markers shifting as new intel came in.
Tane and Victor took a seat around the table with the rest of their team.
No questions. No hesitation.
Black Tide closed ranks.
And whatever came next, they would meet it together.
****
Victor watched and waited, knowing that information was coming, and with any luck it would mean that they could move.
If they were moving then they had a destination, if they had a destination, then they knew where Niko was.
Screens covered every wall—maps, live feeds, timestamped stills, scrolling data.
The hum of servers and power units threaded through low conversation, voices clipped and purposeful.
Bravo occupied one bank of monitors, Pathfinders another, familiar faces sharpened by exhaustion and resolve.
All of it revolved around a single point of focus.
Victor’s body was still catching up with itself. The ache in his shoulder flared when he shifted his weight, wrists tight and swollen beneath the wraps Tane had secured with methodical care. He ignored it. Pain was something he could live with. Losing a teammate was not.
Luca stood at the center console, fingers flying across keys, eyes red-rimmed but sharp. He hadn’t slept. None of them had, not really. But Luca ran better when he was chasing something.
“We know they took him alive,” Luca said, not looking up. “Which means they wanted him, but they did not want to silence him, so this is no revenge.”
Victor nodded once. That tracked. The Directorate didn’t waste assets. They repurposed them.
Kai’s image flickered on one of the larger screens, Pathfinders’ command center visible behind him. “We pulled municipal CCTV from every major route between the compound and the port,” Kai said. “Ports Authority weren’t thrilled, but we convinced them.”
“Define convinced,” Torch muttered.
Kai’s mouth twitched. “Strongly suggested that they play nicely, or we won’t.”
Victor leaned forward as the screen shifted, footage lining up in a grid—street cameras, traffic intersections, industrial access roads. Luca began scrubbing through them at speed, slowing only when a familiar vehicle appeared.
“There,” Victor said quietly.
The logistics van that now sat outside their garage downstairs.
Time-stamped less than twenty minutes after they’d left the black site, just twenty minutes after they took Niko.
“They doubled back,” Luca said. “Smart, really. They knew we’d assume they’d achieved distance.”
“That’s a warehouse district,” Drew added, his feed splitting to show aerial views of the port-side industrial sprawl. “Low visibility, high traffic. Easy to disappear.”
Victor watched the footage frame by frame as Luca tracked the van’s progress—entering a narrow corridor between shipping containers, disappearing beneath a camera blind.
“Here’s the thing,” Luca said. “We lost them on CCTV for nine minutes, which I am sure was their doing.”
Nine minutes was an eternity.
“But,” Luca continued, voice gaining strength, “they didn’t count on the fact that our man is smart as fuck, and shifty as hell.”
Another feed popped up. This one was different—higher elevation and resolution, sharper angles. Drone footage.
Victor’s breath caught.
“That’s your rig, isn’t it, Luca?” Kael said.
“Yeah,” Luca confirmed. “Before they took him, he launched a pair of my silent micro-drones. Autonomous loop on him with a delayed start. They followed the van once he left, so we have footage of those nine minutes.”
On-screen, the view tilted and adjusted, tracking the logistics vehicle as it rolled into a warehouse complex near the port. The doors opened. Figures moved.
Niko.
Restrained but upright, and no one was surprised that his head was high.
Victor closed his eyes for half a second, steadying himself.
“They didn’t have him out of sight for long,” Victor said.
Luca nodded. “Eight minutes, twenty-six seconds.”
The footage jumped ahead. The warehouse interior emptied quickly. Another vehicle arrived—unmarked, sleek, clearly not meant for cargo.
“Transfer vehicle,” Kael said. “They moved him.”
Victor watched Niko being moved with efficient brutality. No hesitation. No wasted time.
The drone images followed and froze on the outside of a private airport with a jet at the edge of the tarmac, engines already spooling. Not even Black Tide would allow one of their drones in a commercial or private airspace.
“They flew him out,” Luca said. “Less than an hour after taking him.” Luca sped up the imagery until the plane began to taxi to the runway.
Silence settled over the room.
Victor felt it land in his chest—not as panic, but as cold clarity.
“They want him isolated,” Victor said. “And they didn’t want us anywhere near where we might get him out.”
Kael’s voice cut in. “Which means they expected us to find this. Maybe not as fast as we have, but they would want us to know how easy it was to get to one of us and take them.”
Victor nodded. “And they expect us to follow.”
The drone feed cut out as the jet lifted off.
Victor straightened slowly, pain radiating through his shoulder but failing to slow him. He met Tane’s gaze across the room. No words passed between them, but the understanding did.
Wherever they’d taken Niko, Black Tide would follow.
Victor set his hands flat on the table, anchoring himself in the present.
“Tell me we know where the jet landed,” he said.
Around him, the room surged back into motion.
The hunt was on.
But for Victor, the room didn’t surge so much as sharpen.
He stayed where he was, hands braced on the table, letting the noise move around him. Orders layered over each other. Screens split again, new windows opening—air traffic databases, charter registries, satellite overlays.
“Pull private flight plans filed in the last four hours,” Victor said. His voice carried without him raising it. “Anything tagged corporate, charter, medevac, or diplomatic cover. Especially anything that changed tail numbers recently.”
Luca glanced up, eyebrows lifting a fraction. “Already thinking like that?”
“I lived that,” Victor replied. “They don’t reuse clean assets when the clock’s tight. They mask dirty ones.”
Kai leaned closer to his camera. “We’re seeing three possibles already. Two head north. One west, offshore.”
Victor studied the map as routes appeared, thin white lines cutting across blue and green.
He felt the faint echo of restraints in his wrists, the remembered pressure of concrete against his spine.
The drugs they’d used hadn’t wiped memory—they’d dulled edges.
Enough to make doubt creep in. Enough to make time stretch.
Enough to make a man miss a detail.
“They won’t take him somewhere obvious,” Victor said. “Not yet. They’ll stage him. Break pattern. Make us burn hours.”
Tane shifted closer, a solid presence at his side. “Which one would you pick?”
Victor didn’t answer immediately. He tracked one of the routes with his finger—offshore, skirting controlled airspace, dipping low where radar coverage thinned.
“That one,” he said. “Short hop first. Refuel. Then they’ll move him again.”
Torch asked. “Why move him twice?”
Victor’s jaw tightened. “Because he’s not the endgame?”
The word tasted wrong in his mouth.
Images from the drone footage replayed behind his eyes—Niko restrained, head high. Alive. Defiant. The same way Victor had forced himself to be.
“They know we’ll follow,” Victor continued. “So, they’ll keep shifting the board. Make it harder for us to challenge them.”
Silence rippled—not heavy, but attentive.
Victor pushed away from the table and moved closer to the screen showing the frozen image of the jet. He studied the angle of the hangar lights, the shadow under the fuselage.
“They didn’t rush him,” he said. “That tells me that they weren’t afraid of interference at the airport.”
“Meaning?” Luca prompted.
“Meaning this was planned before I was even taken,” Victor said quietly. “Niko was always part of it.”
The truth landed hard.
Victor felt the weight of it press against his ribs, a familiar sensation—responsibility tightening until it bordered on guilt. If he hadn’t been there. If he hadn’t been the priority. If they hadn’t had to move fast.
He forced the spiral down.
That kind of thinking was how men broke.
“Victor.” Tane’s voice was low, pitched only for him.
Victor turned slightly. Tane’s eyes were steady. Not accusing. Not asking him to absolve himself. Just there.
“They made their choice,” Tane said. “So did Niko.”
Victor nodded once. He inhaled, grounding himself in the room—the hum of systems, the presence of people who would not stop.
“Okay,” he said. “Then we don’t react emotionally. We stay ahead.”
Luca snapped his fingers once. “Got something. That offshore route? The jet didn’t file a destination as such—but it pinged a private refueling contract tied to an airstrip outside Jakarta.”
“That is too far for the first leg,” Kai said immediately.
“Exactly,” Victor replied. “Which means that’s not the end. It’s a waypoint.”
The map updated again, the line extending, branching.
Victor felt something settle into place. Purpose slotting cleanly over fear.
“They think time is on their side,” he said. “It isn’t.”
Kael’s mouth curved, sharp and grim. “Then we move.”
Victor straightened fully now, shoulder protesting but holding. He looked around the room—at the faces on the screens, at Tane beside him.
Niko wasn’t gone.
Not yet.
And Victor would not let the Directorate decide the shape of this ending.
The hunt wasn’t just on.
It was personal.