Epilogue
The first thing Niko became aware of was the vibration.
Not the violent jolt of takeoff—not yet—but the steady, muted hum that traveled through metal and bone alike.
He was strapped down, arms secured at his sides, legs locked straight, body immobilized on a narrow medical bed bolted to the floor of the aircraft.
A restraint crossed his chest, firm enough to keep him from moving, not tight enough to bruise.
Sedated.
Enough that his body felt distant, heavy, like it belonged to someone else.
Not enough to touch his mind.
That, at least, they had misjudged.
Niko kept his eyes closed, lashes resting against his cheeks, breathing slow and shallow the way they expected. He listened instead.
“Pressure’s holding,” a male voice said somewhere to his left. Calm. Professional. “We’re clear to climb once we hit the corridor.”
“Route’s approved,” another replied. “Refuel’s already arranged. Jakarta won’t ask questions.”
Jakarta.
Niko filed it away without reacting.
A third voice cut in, closer this time. “And the asset?”
“He’s stable,” the first man said. “Drug’s clean and his cognition will be suppressed.”
Niko almost smiled.
They were wrong about that too.
The aircraft shuddered as engines spooled higher. He felt it through the bed, through the straps, through the hollow space just beneath his ribs where adrenaline used to live. Somewhere above him, something clicked into place.
“Once we’re airborne,” the second voice said, “we notify command. They’ll want confirmation we have him.”
Him.
Not this one. Not the prisoner.
Him.
They really did think he was Luca.
The thought slid into place quietly, without panic. It explained everything—the care, the lack of violence, the way none of them had raised a hand to his face. Luca was too valuable to damage. Too important to rush.
Niko let the sedative pull his muscles slacker, sold the illusion completely.
The plane began to move.
As the wheels left the ground, his stomach dipped, the familiar sensation grounding him despite the circumstances.
Flight school muscle memory kicked in automatically—the angle of climb, the timing, the feel through the frame.
He’d flown enough missions, enough hours in enough cockpits, to recognize the cadence instantly.
So, where are you taking Luca? he wondered.
That was the part he didn’t understand yet.
He didn’t know why the Directorate wanted him. Didn’t know what they thought Luca had that was worth this kind of operation. Control? Access? Or something deeper—something Luca himself might not even realize he carried.
Or maybe, Niko thought bleakly, they just want the man who keeps making them look stupid.
His mind drifted back despite himself, slipping through time as easily as breath.
The van.
The moment they pulled him out, hard and fast, when the world narrowed to noise and motion, he realized—instantly—that this wasn’t about Victor anymore. That this grab had been opportunistic, yes, but also precise.
And the second he saw the tablet ripped from his hands, saw the flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes as Luca’s interface lit the screen, he understood what mistake they were making.
He hadn’t corrected them.
He’d waited.
He’d let them leave the van first.
That was the key.
No witnesses. No eyes. No thermal sweep.
Only then had he pressed the hidden strip sewn into his sleeve, the motion invisible beneath the sedative-induced slack of his wrist.
Delayed launch.
Forty seconds of nothing.
Then two silent micro-drones slipping free beneath the van, lifting into shadow and static like they were never there at all.
Luca had designed them that way. No emission spike. No signature worth noticing unless you were looking for absence instead of presence.
Follow, Niko had thought then. Show them where I went.
Now, strapped to a bed in the belly of a private jet, he wondered how long it would take for the truth to surface.
Minutes? Hours?
The moment someone compared biometrics. The moment someone asked him a question only Luca would answer without thinking.
And then—
Bang.
The image came unbidden. Quick. Efficient. A bullet behind the ear once his value evaporated.
Niko didn’t flinch.
He wasn’t afraid of dying.
What twisted in his chest instead was regret.
Ethan.
The last time he’d seen him, they’d been cold. Sharp words. Distance where warmth should have been. Two men too proud, too careful, pretending it didn’t matter.
God, he thought, I should have fixed that.
He imagined what might have been—something quiet, solid. A future that looked a little like Kael and Drew, a little like Tane and Victor. Chosen family. Partnership. Time.
He swallowed, the movement barely noticeable beneath the restraints.
I would have liked that, he admitted to himself. I would have liked us.
The plane banked slightly, engines adjusting as they levelled out. Somewhere, a voice murmured confirmation codes.
Niko kept his eyes closed.
Let them think he was Luca.
Let them carry him wherever they believed power lived.
Because until they realized their mistake, he was alive.
And when they did—
Well.
Black Tide would already be moving.
And Niko would have done his part.
****
Ethan Rhodes lay on the carpet because that was where his daughter wanted him.
She sat cross-legged a few feet away, tongue caught between her teeth in fierce concentration, a rainbow of crayons scattered around her like treasure. At three, she took coloring very seriously. Every line mattered. Every choice of color was deliberate.
“No, Daddy,” she told him solemnly. “The whale is pink. Not grey.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ethan said, hands up in surrender. “My mistake.”
She giggled, utterly delighted with having corrected him, and went back to her work.
Ethan watched her for a long moment, the quiet domesticity of it settling deep in his chest. The house was small, but warm.
Sunlight streamed through the windows, catching dust motes in the air.
A half-packed flight bag sat abandoned near the door—habit more than intention.
He was grounded.
By choice.
The phone rang.
The sound cut through the room like a snapped cable.
Ethan didn’t move immediately. He stared at the device where it lay on the counter, vibrating insistently, a number flashing he didn’t recognize, but felt compelled to answer.
His daughter looked up. “Daddy?”
Ethan forced a smile and pushed himself to his feet. “Hey, bug. Keep coloring, okay? I’ll be right back.”
He stepped into the kitchen, putting the phone to his ear before it could ring again. “Who is this?” he said quietly. “I don’t recognize this number, and if I don’t know who you are, I will be hanging up.”
“It’s Surge.”
Ethan froze. Kael Makani. Leader of Black Tide. And brother to—
“Ethan,” Kael continued. No preamble. No small talk. “We need a pilot.”
Ethan closed his eyes. “I’m out. I don’t do covert missions anymore.”
A pause. Not surprise. Calculation.
“This isn’t for Bravo,” Kael said. “This is for Black Tide.”
“That doesn’t change my answer.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“They took Niko.”
The words landed with surgical precision.
Ethan’s grip tightened on the phone. Somewhere behind him, a crayon clattered to the floor.
“Niko?” he said, voice carefully neutral.
“Yeah, they took him,” Kael continued. “They had a private aircraft waiting and off-grid routing. We need to follow without being seen, and we do not have time for Hogan to get here and fly for us.”
Ethan’s gaze drifted back toward the living room. His daughter had switched colors again, humming softly to herself, oblivious to the way the world had just tilted.
“How long ago did they leave?” Ethan asked.
“Four hours and change,” Kael said.
Ethan exhaled slowly, every instinct he’d spent years suppressing snapping back into place.
“I’ll need transponder spoofing, passive tracking, and a clean tail,” he said, already running through the checklist. “You’ll need eyes in air traffic control, not just feeds. And I’m not flying blind.”
“We’ll get you everything you need,” Kael said.
Ethan opened his eyes. “I have access to the plane we’re going to need. I’ll be wheels up in thirty minutes.”
“We have a plane, we can—” Kael started, but Ethan cut him off.
“No, I said the plane we are going to need. I’ll be with you in less than two hours, be on the tarmac, loaded with what you need, and have a flight plan lodged.
Kael didn’t thank him.
He didn’t need to.
Ethan ended the call and stood there for a moment longer, hand resting on the counter, grounding himself. Then he turned back into the living room.
His daughter looked up again. “Daddy, are you going bye-bye?”
He crossed the space in two strides and knelt in front of her, brushing a smudge of blue from her cheek. “Yeah, bug,” he said softly. “I have to help a friend. I’m going to let Aunty Lucy know that I have to go, and she’ll look after you, okay?”
She considered that, then nodded with solemn acceptance. “Okay. Bring him home.”
Ethan swallowed.
“I will,” he promised.
He rose, heading upstairs for his flight bag, and true to his words, just under thirty minutes later, Ghost was wheels up.
And somewhere in the sky ahead of him, Niko was counting on him to follow.
The End