GAGE
My night visionpainted everything in sickly green, like I was swimming through toxic waste instead of moving through abandoned mining tunnels.
My left hand trembled against my rifle grip, worse than it had been in weeks. The biohacking always flared under stress, but tonight it felt like my body was staging its own private rebellion. I flexed my fingers, trying to force the tremor into submission.
Didn’t work.
Never did.
I kept moving anyway, each step taking me deeper into the facility and further from direct orders. Ethan was going to have my ass for this.
If I lived long enough for it to matter.
But fuck it. I wasn’t officially a member of Edge Ops. They’d found me in California after the earthquake, hiding from my former employer.
Halston Security Solutions wasn’t what the glossy recruitment brochures promised. It looked legitimate on paper—a private military contractor with government contracts,corporate security, and high-end protection details. The reality was something closer to organized crime with tactical gear.
I’d signed on after three tours in Afghanistan, lured by the promise of good money and meaningful work. Instead, I found myself doing jobs that made my military operations look like church picnics. Wetwork. Intimidation. “Asset retrieval” that was really just kidnapping with fancier terminology.
Then came Project Catalyst.
The tremor in my hand spiked at the memory, gold fractal patterns flaring beneath my skin. I paused, pressing my palm against the cold stone wall until the patterns faded.
They’d selected twelve of us. The best operators. Most loyal. Most effective. We thought it was for some elite team, maybe presidential protection or high-value extraction. Instead, Halston and Innovixus strapped us to tables and pumped us full of experimental nanotech designed to enhance human capabilities. Strength. Speed. Sensory perception. Reaction time.
Nobody mentioned the side effects. The pain, like your bones were being carved from the inside out. The way your thoughts sometimes weren’t your own. The tremors that started small and got worse as the tech burrowed deeper into your neural pathways.
Six died during the initial integration phase. Another three lost their minds, becoming violent, uncontrollable. They were “decommissioned.” That’s the euphemism Halston used. Like we were equipment, not people.
Only three of us survived with our minds intact. For a while, anyway.
And then there was only me.
I pushed the memories down and focused on the mission, adjusting my path around a fallen support beam, ducking under a tangle of exposed rebar. The tunnel narrowed, forcing meto turn sideways for a stretch before opening into what had once been a natural limestone cavern. Dutch’s maps had been accurate so far, every turn matching my memorized route.
Static crackled in my earpiece, followed by Kate’s voice, tense with worry. “Gage, I’m tracking you. Your vitals are spiking. The tremor in your left hand is at forty-seven percent above baseline.” A pause. “You need to slow down.”
I didn’t respond, just kept moving, boots silent on the rough-hewn floor. Kate couldn’t see what I could. Couldn’t know what I knew about Innovixus and Halston and their fucking “research.” The surveillance feeds at the cell tower had shown it all—the monitoring equipment, the medical restraints, the specific arrangement of electrode placement on subjects’ temples. Exactly the same setup they’d used on me two years ago in that underground lab outside Minsk.
The tunnel forked ahead. I paused, orienting myself against Dutch’s map, which I’d committed to memory before the op. Left for the main facility entrance, heavily guarded. Right for the service tunnels that would take me deeper, to the medical wing. I went right.
“Talk to me. Please.” Something in Kate’s voice made me pause. It wasn’t the professional tone she normally used. It was softer, more personal. Worry, maybe fear.
I sighed, pressing my back against the cool limestone wall, giving myself thirty seconds to recover. My heart rate was too high. It drummed against my ribs. The metallic taste in my mouth meant the biohacking was releasing its chemical cocktail into my bloodstream, the combat enhancers Innovixus had pumped into me starting to surge.
“I’m fine.” My hand tremor intensified, little lightning bolts of pain shooting up my arm. Not a good sign. When the pain started, the control issues usually followed. Then the rage. Then the blackouts. I pressed my trembling palm against the roughstone, using the texture to ground myself in physical sensation. An old trick I’d learned after escaping Innovixus. Sometimes it worked.
“You’re a fucking liar, is what you are,” Kate muttered, and I exhaled a soft laugh. Only she could get a laugh out of me in this situation.
The tunnel began to change around me. Bare rock gave way to reinforced sections. Modern steel beams replaced old timber supports. The air changed, too. Less dust, more of that clinical antiseptic smell that haunted my nightmares. My boots, which had been moving across packed dirt and loose stone, now clicked softly against concrete flooring.
I killed my night vision, no longer necessary as recessed lighting began to appear overhead, casting pools of sterile white illumination at regular intervals. Security cameras nestled in ceiling corners, their red activation lights blinking steadily.
My earpiece crackled again. “Your heart rate just jumped,” Kate said.
“Keep telling me about my heart rate,” I muttered, “and I’ll rip off the bio sensors.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
