Chapter 40
NIKOLAI
Iwatch Jenna through the rearview mirror as she cradles the six-year-old girl who finally fell asleep in her lap.
The kid’s been whimpering for three hours straight—soft, broken sounds that make violence twist in my chest. But Jenna just keeps singing under her breath, some half-remembered lullaby, her hand smoothing circles on the girl’s back.
Eight children in this transport van. Ages five to twelve.
All of them broken in ways that will take years to fix, if they ever fully heal.
The oldest boy sits rigid against the far wall, eyes tracking every movement I make through the mirror.
He knows what I am—recognizes the predator even when I’m trying to be gentle.
The convoy splits at the Illinois border.
Raphael takes the second group—the operatives we pulled from Prague—to the compound in Wisconsin; Marcus heads to Michigan with the third.
We’re bound for the summer camp facility outside Springfield—converted two years ago by Dr. Sarah Parker after we funded her research into trauma recovery. Fifteen of the kids will end up there.
“Almost there,” Jenna murmurs to the children, though most don’t respond. The girl in her arms stirs but doesn’t wake. “You’re safe now. I promise.”
I want to believe we pulled these thirty-seven kids out of hell in time for it to matter. But I’ve seen what happened to the ones we couldn’t save—subjects who made it to eighteen only to eat a bullet or hang themselves with bedsheets because the conditioning never really ends.
The safe house appears through the trees, warm lights glowing in windows.
Dr. Parker’s team is waiting—former child psychologists, trauma specialists, people who understand what these kids survived because they lived through their own versions of it.
Parker herself escaped a different program in the ‘90s, before Project Architect refined their methods.
“Alright,” I tell the transport team as we pull up. “Same protocol as always. Medical assessments first, psychological evaluation second, placement decisions third. No one forces anything.”
Unloading takes forty minutes. Each child has a color-coded file—red for severe trauma, yellow for moderate, green for stable.
Most of these files are red. The six-year-old girl who won’t speak gets carried by Raphael like she’s made of glass.
A nine-year-old boy with broken legs from a “training session” won’t let anyone but Damon touch him—something about Damon’s controlled physicality calms him when everyone else triggers fight-or-flight.
Jenna refuses to leave her six-year-old until the girl is settled. When they try to separate them for the medical exam, the kid goes feral—kicking, screaming, clawing at anyone who gets close.
“Let me stay,” Jenna tells Dr. Parker. “Just until she’s checked out.”
I watch from the doorway as Jenna sits beside the examination table, holding tiny fingers while Dr. Rodriguez checks for injuries.
The girl’s eyes stay locked on Jenna’s face like she’s the only safe thing in the world.
When the doctor finds old fractures, infected wounds, signs of systematic abuse, Jenna’s jaw goes white with rage.
The boy who’s been watching me finally speaks when Dr. Parker approaches him. “He’s one of them,” he whispers, pointing at me. “He’s dangerous.”
Parker follows his gaze, takes in my tactical gear, the controlled way I move. “He’s the one who got you out,” she says gently. “All of you. He and his team risked their lives to save you.”
The kid shakes his head. “Men like him hurt us. Every day. I know what they look like.”
Cold settles in my stomach. He’s not wrong—I am exactly like the men who tortured him. Made by the same program, conditioned with the same methods. The only difference is I chose a different target for my violence.
I back away from the group and step outside into the night air. My phone buzzes—updates from the other safe houses. Marcus reports that the Michigan facility is successfully handling ten children. Raphael confirms thirteen kids at the Wisconsin location are being processed.
All thirty-seven accounted for. All thirty-seven alive.
Jenna finds me twenty minutes later, standing in the parking lot staring at nothing. Her face is streaked with tears, exhaustion written in every line of her body.
“What is it?” she asks.
“That boy. The one who was afraid of me.” My voice sounds rough even to my own ears. “He saw what I am. What I was made to be.”
“He saw an adult in a mask who reminds him of his captors because they are all he knows,” she corrects, stepping closer. “He’ll learn the difference. They all will.”
“Will they?” I turn to face her. “Because he’s not wrong, Jenna. I am like them. Same program, same conditioning, same fundamental rewiring. The only difference is who I choose to hunt.”
She reaches up, touches my face. “That difference is everything.”
We return inside, and I stop in my tracks when Lucien enters, and a thirteen-year-old girl who’s been completely nonverbal suddenly speaks when she sees him.
“You survived,” she whispers.
She recognizes the damage in him—the hypervigilance, the controlled violence, the way he moves like death is always one step behind. She knows he came from a program like hers.
Lucien kneels in front of her, and for the first time since I’ve known him, his expression goes soft. “Yes,” he tells her quietly. “And so will you.”
By the time we finish and head back to Chicago, the sun is rising. Thirty-seven children safe. Twenty-three Project Architect operatives dead. One facility destroyed, all evidence of their experiments turned to ash.
Jenna starts crying in the passenger seat—silent, devastating sobs with her hand pressed over her mouth. The reality of what those children endured has finally crashed over her. The adrenaline crash is catastrophic. The systematic torture of nearly forty kids who never had a chance.
I pull over at a rest stop and hold her while she breaks down in my arms.
“I keep thinking about their faces,” she whispers against my chest. “That little girl, how she just… clung to me like I was salvation. And that boy with the broken legs, how he flinched every time someone moved too fast. How many more are out there right now, Nikolai? How many more children are being—”
“We saved thirty-seven today,” I interrupt. “Thirty-seven who won’t become what we became. Thirty-seven children who get a chance at a more normal life.”
She pulls back to look at me. “What about the ones we killed? The adults running that place?”
My expression goes cold, predatory. I can’t help it—it’s what I become when I think about the people who choose to torture children for money. “They knew exactly what they were doing. Every single one of them made a conscious choice to torture kids for a paycheck.”
“How many more facilities?” she asks.
“Ezra thinks there are at least fifteen active sites in North America alone. Maybe more internationally.” My jaw tightens. “We’ll burn them all down. Every single one.”
“And save every child we can,” she adds.
“Every single one.”
She’s quiet for a long moment, staring out at the highway. “I’m terrified,” she admits. “Of bringing a child into a world where Prague, Oklahoma can exist. Where almost forty children can be tortured in secret while everyone else just… goes on with their lives.”
I don’t offer false comfort. Instead, I tell her things I’ve never shared with anyone—details about the program, about watching other children die during conditioning.
About the subjects who killed themselves years later because the damage went too deep.
About the ones who didn’t make it out with us during the escape.
“But we did make it out,” I say finally. “And we turned our abuse into retribution, vengeance meted out for each and every child. We hunt them now. We save the ones who can be saved.”
She leans against my shoulder. “Do you think we’ll be good parents? If I am pregnant?”
The question hits me harder than I expected.
I think about Jenna with that six-year-old girl, the gentleness in her voice, the fierce protectiveness in her eyes when the doctor found evidence of abuse.
I think about her sitting through that medical exam just so a traumatized child wouldn’t be alone.
“You’ll be an incredible mother,” I tell her honestly. “You already were today—to kids who weren’t even yours.”
“And you?”
I consider it. “I’ll probably fuck it up sometimes. I don’t know how to be gentle without conscious effort. But I’ll die before I let anyone hurt our child the way we were hurt.”
She nods, satisfied with that answer. Because she understands—being a good parent isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being willing to learn, to change, to put your child’s safety above everything else.
We drive home in comfortable silence, both lost in our own thoughts.
When we reach the outskirts of Chicago, Jenna’s phone buzzes with updates from the safe houses.
The seven-year-old girl is finally sleeping peacefully.
The boy who wouldn’t talk has started whispering to one of the teenage survivors.
The thirteen-year-old who recognized Lucien is eating solid food for the first time since her extraction.
Thirty-seven children are beginning to heal.
“We should go home,” I say quietly.
Home. Back to The Nexus, to my brothers, to our life. Back to find out if we’re bringing our own child into a world we’re actively trying to make safer, one facility at a time.
Jenna reaches over and takes my hand. “Ready?”
I realize I am. Ready to face whatever comes next—more facilities to destroy, more children to save, more monsters to hunt.
Ready to build something good in the middle of all this darkness.
“Yeah,” I tell her, squeezing her fingers. “I’m ready.”