Cap sat beside me again, calm like always. Not soft. Not kind. Just steady.
“You ready,” he asked.
“I’ve been ready,” I said.
Cap nodded. “Then we go get him.”
The van rolled forward, tires crunching over gravel, the compound gates sliding open ahead of us.
And this time, the fire in my chest had a name.
Scout.
25
WRECKER
The scrapyard smelled like rust, oil, and old rain.
The kind of place that hid sins in plain sight.
We cut the engine a quarter mile out and finished on foot, moving through tall grass and broken fencing like shadows. The night was quiet in the way that made my skin itch. No music. No talking. Just the distant hum of machinery from the legal side of the yard and the soft crunch of boots on gravel.
Ghost’s voice came through the earpiece, barely more than breath. “Jammer’s cycling. You’ve got a three-minute window before the next burst.”
“Copy,” Cap murmured.
I felt it in my bones. The tension. The wrongness. This place wasn’t meant to hold people long. It was meant to break them just enough to move them again.
We reached the perimeter fence and dropped low. Ranger signaled from the far side, Smoke pressed tight to his leg, body rigid, ears forward. He’d gone still in that way that meant he’d picked up something human. Alive.
My pulse kicked.
Brutus leaned in close. “You smell that?”
I nodded. Blood. Fear. Sweat.
Scout.
Cap raised two fingers. Split.
Brutus peeled off left. I went right, skirting the edge of a stack of crushed cars that loomed like a graveyard of steel. My hand stayed tight on my weapon, finger indexed, breath slow and controlled.
Quiet. That was the rule.
No shouting.
No warnings.
No mistakes.
A man stepped out of the back building, cigarette glowing faintly in the dark.
I was on him before the smoke left his lungs.
One hand over his mouth. Knife in. Out. Catch the body. Lower it slow. Lay him flat.
Ghost’s voice again. “Two inside the shell. One stationary. One pacing.”
