I stay with Cal for a long time. Long enough that his skin goes cold under my hand, and the fog starts to lift around the rooftops. I think about his parents—he must have at least one—who don’t know yet. I think about his friends, his colleagues, the life he had before he walked into that hotel room to help a woman he loved, and I’m making up a whole life story about him to fill in the blanks.
I think about Mia, having to watch her lover kill her old friend.
Then I call the only number I can think of—Danny. I tell him to bring the hover car and that I need help disposing of a body and he takes it all in stride because that’s what he does. He does it because it’s his job, but I like to think it’s because he’s my friend.
Maybe the only friend I have left.
The call comes three hours later.
I’m still in my penthouse, sitting in the dark, staring at my hands. Haven’t moved. Haven’t eaten. Haven’t done anything except replay those last seconds over and over—Cal’s eyes going wide, the crack of his vertebrae, the way his body dropped with so much finality. That dark, ravenous evil taking over me like a virus flooding my bloodstream.
My watch buzzes. Julia’s name on the screen.
I almost don’t answer. I want to rip the watch off and fling it off the balcony and fly somewhere far away, somewhere they can’t reach me. Iceland. Antarctica. The fucking moon.
But Mia is out there somewhere, hopefully having made it to her colleagues, hopefully having left the country by now.
And if she hasn’t? If she isn’t safe? If Julia knows who she really is, if Julia is hunting her?—
I answer the call.
No holographic screen comes up, which is curious. It’s just a call.
“We need you at a facility.” Julia’s voice is crisp and professional, like nothing happened, like she didn’t just use me to commit murder. “I’m sending coordinates.”
“What facility?”
“You’ll see when you arrive.”
“Wait, Julia?—”
The line goes dead.
I pull up the coordinates on my watch. New Jersey, industrial district just across the Hudson. A location I’ve never seen in any Global Dynamix documentation, and I’ve seen most of them. It’s a black site, it has to be, and probably underground.
Don’t go, some part of me whispers.This is a trap.
But if there’s even a chance Mia is there—if they’ve found her, if they’ve taken her?—
I’m in the air before I finish the thought.
The facility entrance is a service door behind a condemned meatpacking plant. It’s the perfect place for a post-apocalyptic stroll, all rusted signs, broken windows, and the smell of old blood soaked into concrete. I land in the alley, boots splashing in a puddle of something disgusting, and the door swings open before I can knock.
Two guards appear in tactical gear. No insignias, no names, faces like slabs of meat. They don’t speak, just gesture for me to follow.
Friendly as fuck. If this is how they treat America’s superhero, I’d hate to see how they treat anyone else.
We descend down a flight of concrete stairs first, then a freight elevator that groans and shudders as it drops. The numbers tick down on a panel that looks older than I am, the gears screeching. Five floors, then seven, then eight. The air gets colder, damper, as we drop, while the fluorescent lights buzz and flicker overhead.
When the elevator finally stops and the doors grind open, Julia and Marsh are waiting.
Well, that’s just fucking wrong. They’re rarely in the same place outside of the office unless there’s a camera pointed at them, the kind of public theater that keeps shareholders happy. Julia handles me. Marsh handles the money. Seeing them together down here, shoulder to shoulder in this concrete tomb, makes my gut clench.
Yeah, something is very fucking wrong.
“Nate.” Marsh steps forward with his hand extended, that politician’s smile plastered across his face. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”
I don’t shake his hand. “What is this place?”
