Chapter 41
Kill the Devil
Ghost
The Summit compound was dying around us.
Steel screamed somewhere deep beneath the harbor foundations while fire rolled through the lower cathedral levels fast enough to turn entire corridors into furnaces.
Smoke poured thick through the containment wing ceiling as emergency lights flashed violently red across shattered walls and blood-streaked floors.
I kept one arm wrapped tightly around Mira while forcing us through the collapsing corridor toward the extraction routes above.
She stumbled hard beside me.
“Easy,” I muttered automatically.
“I’m fine.”
Complete bullshit.
Her breathing already sounded wrong. Too shallow. Too uneven. Bruises darkened near her temple beneath drying blood, while days of torture and exhaustion visibly dragged at every step she took.
And still she kept moving.
Another explosion ripped through the harbor beneath us, hard enough to throw both of us sideways against the wall. Concrete cracked overhead while part of the corridor ceiling collapsed behind us in a shower of sparks and twisted metal.
“Hurry!” someone shouted through comms.
Reaper probably. Hard to tell over the gunfire.
We finally reached the upper cathedral junction, where Havoc fighters regrouped in fractured clusters throughout the burning structure.
The entire Summit operation had now collapsed, with Syndicate personnel scrambling to reach evacuation routes while Havoc pushed surviving fighters toward extraction points amid smoke and active firefights.
Saint stood near the central stairwell, coordinating movement with terrifying calm despite the chaos detonating around him. Blood soaked one sleeve of his black shirt while he redirected teams through the lower harbor exits like the entire cathedral wasn’t actively trying to bury us alive.
“West tunnel’s gone!” Brick yelled over the noise.
“Use eastern loading access,” Saint answered immediately. “Move wounded first.”
Tank emerged through the smoke, carrying two injured Havoc fighters at once — like their combined weight meant nothing — massive shoulders blackened with soot and blood, while gunfire chased him through the corridor behind us.
One Syndicate operative tried pursuing the retreat before Tank turned and put the man directly through a support beam hard enough to fold him in half.
“Path’s clear!” Tank roared.
For about three seconds. Then, more gunfire exploded from below.
Mouse sprinted past us next, carrying medical supplies and fresh comm relays, hands visibly shaking from adrenaline, while he helped another wounded fighter limp toward the extraction routes. The kid looked terrified out of his mind, but still didn’t stop moving.
“Mira needs Eden now,” I snapped toward Saint while shifting her weight higher against me.
Saint’s eyes swept over her injuries once before his jaw tightened hard. “Dock extraction. Go.”
I started moving immediately.
Mira grabbed my arm hard enough to stop me halfway down the corridor. “No.”
I looked down sharply. “What?”
“Lucien.”
The name hit like a blade. Smoke curled thick around us while the cathedral groaned again beneath another distant detonation somewhere below the harbor.
“He’s still here,” Mira said, breathing rougher now. “He stayed behind.”
Of course he did.
Lucien built Summit into a monument to Syndicate expansion. His ego would never let him flee quietly while Havoc burned it down around him. Not after all this. Not after me.
Mira must’ve seen the realization land because her grip tightened painfully around my forearm.
“No,” she said immediately.
“Mira—”
“You leave now, and you don’t come back.”
The words cut harder than the explosions that shook the cathedral around us. But somewhere deeper in the burning harbor structure, I could practically feel Lucien waiting.
And the horrifying part?
I knew he expected me to find him.
Eden nearly lost her mind the second she saw Mira. “What the actual fuck happened to you people?”
The shout echoed through the lower harbor extraction point while Havoc fighters flooded injured personnel toward the emergency med station they’d established beneath one of the surviving dock overhangs.
Rain hammered the concrete outside while fire reflected orange across the black harbor water behind us.
Mira immediately tried to push away from me. “I’m fine.”
“You are visibly leaking blood,” Eden snapped back while carefully grabbing her arm to guide her toward the triage setup anyway. “Sit down before I sedate you out of spite.”
“Mira stays with you,” I said.
Her eyes snapped toward mine instantly because she already knew what that tone meant. “No.”
Saint appeared through the smoke beside us before she could argue further. His expression darkened immediately when he looked at me. “Don’t.”
I ignored him.
Reaper caught on half a second later and swore viciously under his breath. “Absolutely fucking not.”
“He stayed behind,” I said flatly.
“That’s not your problem anymore,” Reaper shot back.
Yes, it was. We all knew it.
Lucien wasn’t some surviving Syndicate lieutenant hiding in the wreckage. He was the foundation underneath all of this. Ironhand. Summit. Syndicate expansion. The bastard built the machine and trained monsters to keep it running.
So long as he breathed, this war survived with him.
Mira grabbed my wrist hard despite Eden trying to keep pressure against one of her injuries. “Aiden.”
The way she said my name nearly stopped me.
Almost.
I crouched briefly in front of her anyway, fingers brushing carefully against bruised skin beneath her jaw while chaos exploded around us. “I’ll come back.”
Fear flickered visibly across her face. Not for herself. For me.
That hurt worse than anything else tonight.
Then I stood and walked back into Hell before anyone could physically stop me.
The lower cathedral access tunnels now looked like the inside of a collapsing furnace. Fire surged through broken corridors while harbor water flooded in through cracked foundations, transforming entire sections into waist-deep, black currents littered with debris and bodies.
Every alarm in Summit screamed at once, then abruptly died, sector by sector, as power failures spread deeper underground.
I kept moving.
Smoke burned my lungs as old memories clawed at the edges of my mind. The deeper I descended into the foundations beneath the cathedral, the more the memories resurfaced. Not Summit memories — older ones.
Training corridors. Blood on concrete. Lucien’s commanding voice instructing boys on how to survive by turning pain into instinct.
You hesitate; you die.
You care; you lose.
I shoved the thoughts down violently and kept moving through another flooded corridor when static crackled suddenly through the overhead speaker system.
Then Lucien laughed softly. “You always were predictable.”
My grip instantly tightened around the weapon in my hand.
The comm system crackled again while flames reflected off rising harbor water around my boots.
“You know why Saint failed to stop you?” Lucien asked calmly through the dying speakers. “It’s because part of him understands this, too.”
“Show yourself.”
A faint hum of amusement echoed through the tunnel. “You were always meant to come back to me.”
Rage hit hard enough to sharpen everything.
I followed the sound deeper beneath the collapsing cathedral while Summit burned itself apart overhead and the foundations flooded steadily around me.
Toward Lucien. Toward the man who built me into what I am, long before Sanctuary ever tried teaching me how to become something else.
I found Lucien in the drowned heart of Summit.
The final chamber sat beneath the cathedral foundations, where harbor water flooded knee-deep across cracked concrete floors while fire burned through broken support beams overhead.
Emergency lights flickered weakly, casting a dim, red glow through thick smoke that stung my eyes.
The entire underground structure was bathed in the color of fresh blood.
Lucien stood waiting near the center platform beside the ruined control systems that oversaw Summit’s operations.
Of course he did.
Even now, with the compound collapsing around him, he still looked composed. His coat was discarded somewhere upstairs. White shirt streaked with soot and blood. One hand rested calmly against the grip of a pistol already drawn at his side.
“You came alone,” he observed.
I didn’t answer and didn’t stop moving either.
The first shot cracked through the chamber before he fully finished speaking.
I instinctively twisted sideways as the bullet tore past my shoulder and slammed into the concrete wall behind me. I immediately returned fire as I crossed the floodwater, sending dark spray exploding around my boots.
Lucien moved smoothly despite his age, diving behind one of the fractured support pillars while rounds ripped chunks of concrete apart around him.
Then he smiled again. “You still lead with anger.”
I slammed into the pillar hard enough to shake it before thrusting my knife toward his ribs.
Lucien caught my wrist instantly.
Fast. Still too fucking fast.
He twisted sharply, redirecting the blade while driving his elbow into my throat hard enough to stagger me backward through the rising water. Pain shot down my neck as he immediately followed up with a gun strike aimed at my temple.
I barely blocked it.
The pistol discharged between us, deafeningly loud. Then we crashed into each other fully.
No more distance. No more strategy. Just violence.
Lucien fought exactly the way I remembered — efficient, precise, and brutal in ways designed to dismantle rather than overpower. Every strike targeted weak points: joints, airways. He buried a knife in my side. Blood spilled hot through my shirt before I could wrench it free.
“You were unstoppable once,” he hissed while slamming me against a support beam hard enough to crack my spine painfully against steel. “Before Sanctuary filled your head with attachment and guilt.”
I drove my forehead directly into his nose.
Cartilage crunched.
Lucien staggered backward into the floodwater with blood pouring down his face, but the bastard still smiled through it.
“Mira made you reckless,” he spat.
I hit him before he finished the sentence.
The impact sent both of us crashing through one of the ruined control consoles while sparks exploded violently around us.
Lucien recovered first, his knife flashed upward fast enough to slice across my ribs again before I caught his wrist and smashed it repeatedly against the broken console edge until the blade clattered away into the water.
“You could’ve ruled beside me,” he snarled suddenly, composure finally cracking. “Syndicate would’ve been yours!”
Rage burned white-hot through my chest. Not because I wanted it, but because once upon a time, part of me probably would have.
That was the truth Lucien understood better than anyone else alive.
He built the version of me capable of becoming exactly what he wanted.
But Sanctuary rebuilt the rest. Saint, Reaper, and Mira didn’t weaken me.
They gave me something Lucien never understood in the first place — a reason to stop surviving like a weapon.
Lucien lunged for the fallen pistol near the flooded platform. I caught him halfway there.
My hand locked around his throat hard enough to slam him backward beneath one of the collapsing support columns while harbor water surged violently around us. Fire roared overhead. Concrete cracked somewhere above.
Lucien still laughed, even choking. “You’ll always be mine,” he rasped.
“No,” I said quietly.
Then I drove the broken steel rebar beside us straight through his chest.
Deep.
Violent.
Final.
Lucien jerked hard on impact. First time since I’d walked into Summit, a shocked expression showed on his face.
Blood spilled hot across my hands while the harbor water around us darkened instantly beneath him.
I held him in place while Summit groaned itself apart overhead.
And slowly, finally, Lucien Draven stopped moving.
Silence enveloped us afterward, broken only by the sound of collapsing steel and the distant fire consuming what remained of Summit.
I stared down at the body pinned beneath the ruined support beam while blood and seawater soaked through my clothes. The man who made me dies here.
By the time I emerged from the crumbling harbor foundations, Summit was engulfed in flames.
Fire rolled through the cathedral roof while smoke consumed the skyline above Pier Nine, turning the storm itself orange. Havoc fighters moved wounded personnel toward extraction vehicles through the chaos outside, but my eyes instantly found Mira.
She stood beside the dock barricades, wrapped in one of Eden’s blankets, bruised and exhausted and barely staying upright. Then she looked at me — really looked at me … and immediately understood Lucien wasn’t walking out behind me.
No words passed between us after that. Just exhaustion. Relief. Grief. Survival.
I crossed the distance and pulled her against me while the empire Lucien built burned into the harbor behind us.
It’s finally over.