How did I get here?
The last thing I remembered clearly: Hellhound driving. The escape vehicle tearing through Geneva’s streets, sleet hammering the windshield. Havoc in the passenger seat, fingers flying over his laptop, cracking encryption. My head pounding like someone was taking a sledgehammer to my skull from the inside. The world tilting sideways. Consciousness sliding away like water through my fingers.
After that... nothing. A blank space where memory should be.
Hours gone. Erased.
Fantastic. At least I was getting practice at losing time. Maybe I’d get good at it eventually.
Tried to sit up. My body protested, every muscle sore, joints stiff like I’d been locked in one position too long. But I managed it, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
The room spun briefly, then settled.
Looked down at my palms. Resting on my thighs. Still.
No tremor.
Stared at them for a long moment, waiting for the familiar shaking to start. The left especially had been getting worse, the tremor spreading from fingers to wrist to forearm.
Nothing.
Flexed my fingers. Steady. Controlled.
First time since the pumping station.
The pressure behind my eyes, that constant vise squeezing my skull for weeks, was gone too. Absent, as though someone had opened a release valve I hadn’t known existed.
The recollections were still there. All of them. Integrated. Heavy. Real.
Special Forces. Master Sergeant Xavier Hale. The fabricated arrest. Eighteen months of conditioning in Dresner’s facility. Strapped to chairs, electrodes firing, chemicals burning through my veins, my identity stripped away piece by piece until nothing remained but obedience.
You are Blackout. You have no past.
Fifty-five missions. Fifty-five kills.
The folder from Dresner’s office sat like lead weight in my mind. Every name. Every target. Every life I’d ended.
But the fragmentation was gone. The recollections didn’t feel like someone else’s anymore. They were mine. All of it. Thesoldier, the prisoner, the weapon, the man trying to crawl back from the void.
Didn’t know if that was better or worse.
Movement beside me pulled my attention away from the spiral.
Clare.
She was curled on top of the covers, still fully dressed. One hand resting near mine like she’d fallen asleep reaching for me. She’d turned toward me, exhausted even in sleep. Dark circles under her lids. Tear tracks dried on her cheeks.
She’d stayed.
Watched over me while I was unconscious. However long that had been.
My ribs tightened.
Tested my voice carefully, feeling the words form in my throat. Still rough. Still damaged from the conditioning and the seizures. But functional.
“Clare.”
The word came out as a rasp. Barely audible. But real.
