Ghost goes quiet in a way that isn’t relief. His hands stay clenched around his bag of weapons like he’s afraid to put it down. Snow hums once, then stops when Hatchet’s gaze finds him in the reflection of the window. The silence after that feels deliberate.
The coordinates don’t take us to a town.
They don’t even take us to a road.
They take us to a stretch of land that looks like it was forgotten on purpose – trees too evenly spaced, fencing half-swallowed by moss, signage stripped down to posts and bolts. The signal spikes and drops as we approach, like something is aware of us and trying to decide whether to hide.
Valentine doesn’t slow the van. No one suggests it.
The facility rises out of the dark without warning, concrete pale against the trees, lights burning steady and wrong. No perimeter chatter. No response pings. No last-second objections from command.
Just a gate that we blast through that raises no alarms.
That’s when the pressure in my skull changes.
Not pain. Not fear.
Recognition.
She’s here.
LITTLE DISPLAYS OF FAILURE AND POOR DECISION MAKING
Perfection / Wonderland - Natalia Kills
Kookaburra
The doctor’s keycard is warm in my pocket when I step out of the corridor, leaving her to bleed on her little throne after another little visit. The building feels different now – lighter, almost relieved – as if it’s grateful someone finally told the truth with their hands. The hum in the walls has changed pitch; the generator coughs, resets, and the emergency lights flicker, throwing the aftermath into soft, flattering shadows.
I walk through the mess like it’s nothing more than spilled laundry. The bodies are arranged neatly where I left them, little displays of failure and poor decision-making. A few of them twitch as nerves fire postmortem. Even dead, they try so hard to be noticed.
“Good boys,” I murmur as I step over one. “You learned your lesson.”
The not-so-secret office is on the top floor, behind a door that pretends not to exist. I know because I’ve watched Callaway glance in that direction every time she thought I wasn’t paying attention. She never walked there, never even approached the corridor, which is how you know something powerful hides at the end of it. Power is allergic to proximity.
The lift is still operational. Cute. They must not have predicted a scenario where I took control of the building. I press the button and ride up past blackout floors and locked wards, the numbers ticking up like a countdown.
When the doors open, I’m greeted by a hallway too quiet to be accidental. Carpet instead of tile. Art on the walls. The illusion of importance. The kind of space built to soothe the consciences of people who sign terrible things into motion.
This feels like a space the elusive Director inhabits. When he bothers to show up, I expect.
I swipe the keycard. The door clicks open. Of course it does. There’s no system in the world that expects the person holding the master credentials to be bleeding from someone else’s thigh.
The office is immaculate. Not in the sterile way downstairs rooms are – this is curated. A museum of authority. Dark wood. Leather chair. A wall of screens showing patient vitals, corridor feeds, the greenhouse, the kitchen, even the view from the chair where the doctor currently sits dying.
I pause just inside the threshold. The lights flick on with motion sensors, flooding the room in warm gold. They expect visitors to feel welcomed here. Disarmed. That alone is insulting.
I cross to the desk. The computer wakes with a hum, blinking politely. No name is on the screen. Just a departmental login panel asking for Callaway’s details. I enter them, slower thannecessary, testing the responsiveness of the machine. It purrs like a cat. Obedient.
Then the next prompt appears.
ENTER SECONDARY PASSPHRASE
I typeArk Doesn’t Sink.The system unlocks.
The desktop loads in a soft, elegant fade. No clutter. No chaos. Only a series of folders named with clinical precision. One labelledCONTAINMENT / PRIORITY ASSET: KAYLA KINGFISHER. Another labelledLIGATURE PROJECT. A third simply titledTHE DIRECTORY.
The last one makes something cold push under my ribs.
