Every wall I’d built started crumbling in that moment.
She stirs against my chest. Makes a small sound—not quite awake, not quite asleep. Her fingers curl tighter against my skin, like she’s holding on even in dreams.
“What time is it?” Her voice is rough with sleep. Warm.
“Early. Go back to sleep.”
“Can’t.” She tilts her head up, green eyes finding mine in the darkness. They’re unfocused at first, soft with lingering dreams, but sharpening as consciousness returns. “Too much in my head.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not yet.” She shifts, propping herself up on one elbow. Her hair falls across her face, and I brush it back without thinking—the gesture automatic now, intimate in a way that still surprises me. “I want to see your world first. The rest of it. Not just the operations center.”
“There’s not much to see. Armory, training facilities, the vehicular bay. It’s an airstrip with some planning rooms and compass rings. Not a tourist attraction.”
“Show me anyway.” She kisses my jaw, soft and unhurried. No urgency. No desperation. Just warmth. “I want to understand where you come from. Who you are when you’re not running from kill teams.”
Who I am?
Six years ago, I would have said: nobody. A ghost. A weapon that walks and talks and follows orders.
Now I’m not sure anymore. Cassie cracked something open in me—something I thought was dead and buried in a canyon in Colombia. And I don’t know what’s growing in its place, but it feels less like a ghost and more like a man.
“Okay. I’ll give you the tour.”
Cerberus HQ is a maze of concrete and steel, built into the bones of an old shipping warehouse.
The upper floors are camouflage—dusty offices, broken equipment, the detritus of a logistics company that went bankrupt a decade ago. Spider webs in the corners. Water stainson the ceiling tiles. The kind of benign neglect that makes people look away, convinced there’s nothing worth seeing.
The real facility starts two levels underground and extends three more below that.
I show Cassie all of it.
The armory first. We descend a staircase marked with warnings about biometric verification, pass through a reinforced door that weighs more than a car, and enter a space that makes her eyes go wide.
The walls are a study in lethal efficiency. To the left, sidearms are racked by frame size and caliber—9mm Glocks, .45 Sigs, all maintained to a mirror finish. The center racks house the primary platforms: suppressed submachine guns for close-quarters work, and modular carbines configured for various mission profiles. On the far wall, the ‘black’ inventory—EMP emitters, thermal-imaging optics, and acoustic dampening arrays that can turn a room into a vacuum of sound.
“This is insane,” Cassie breathes, turning in a slow circle. “This is like something out of a movie.”
“Movies get it wrong. They make everything loud and dramatic. The real stuff is quieter. More precise.” I pull a weapon from the rack—a compact Glock 43, lighter than my 19, better suited to smaller hands. “This one’s yours. Whether I’m here or not.”
She takes the weapon like it might bite her. Holds it at arm’s length, barrel pointed safely at the floor—not trained, but smart enough to know what she doesn’t know.
“I’ve never fired a gun.” She studies the polymer frame. “And quite frankly, I prefer pepper spray.”
I laugh. “You were certainly effective with it. But pepper spray doesn’t work at fifty meters. I’d rather you know how to defend yourself and not need it, than need it and not know.”
“Fair point.”
“I’ll teach you the basics before I leave. Fuse will continue the training while I’m gone. By the time I get back, you’ll be hitting center mass.”
“The basics being … Don’t shoot myself?”
“The basics being grip, stance, sight alignment, trigger control. Don’t worry about accuracy yet. Worry about not flinching when the round goes off.” I adjust her hold on the weapon, repositioning her fingers. “The instinct is to anticipate the recoil. Fight that instinct. Let the gun surprise you.”
“Let the gun surprise me.” She repeats it like she’s filing it away. “What else?”
“The safety is here.” I show her the switch. “Red means dead. If you see red, the weapon is hot. When you’re carrying, keep the safety on until you’re ready to shoot. When you’re ready to shoot, you’ve already decided to kill whatever’s in front of you.”
