[Ethan’s POV]

I kept the flashlight beam pinned to the floor, tracking the smeared crimson trail across the cracked concrete.

"Stay exactly two steps behind me," I told Claire, my voice barely a whisper over the sound of the rain drumming against the facility’s rusted tin roof. "If we make contact, you drop to the floor and you stay behind cover. Do not try to negotiate. Do not try to talk."

"I’m not leaving this," Claire said.

I glanced back. She was rapidly shoving Jake’s manic, scribbled notebooks and the battered laptop into her reinforced briefcase. Her hands were shaking, but her movements were efficient and precise.

"Claire, leave it. It’s dead weight."

"It’s his mind, Ethan," she shot back, her eyes flashing with a fierce, protective intensity. She snapped the briefcase shut and locked it. "Whatever he’s been doing for the last two years, whatever he’s been trying to rebuild, it’s in these pages. I will manage the data. You will manage the guns. Now keep moving."

I didn’t argue. She was right. If Jake’s intellect was truly fractured, those notebooks might be the only map we had to put the pieces back together.

I turned back to the blood trail. It led away from the makeshift workstation, weaving through a labyrinth of massive, decaying industrial washing machines. The metallic husks loomed in the dark like the skeletons of dead giants. Every dripping pipe, every gust of wind rattling the loose corrugated siding, sounded like a footstep.

My grip on the Glock was white-knuckled.

...

Flashback - Fourteen Months Ago

The air in the Aegis Solutions kill-house was thick with the smell of cordite and sweat.

I was leaning against a plywood wall, my chest heaving, an empty training pistol dangling from my hand. I had just cleared three rooms of pop-up targets, double-tapping each one in the chest and head. I was getting faster. I was getting lethal.

Darius walked through the splintered doorway, his massive frame moving with terrifying silence. He looked at the targets, then looked at me.

"Your mechanics are good," Darius rumbled, his voice echoing in the plywood hallway. "Your aim is steady. But you’re training to fight soldiers, Ethan. You’re training to fight men who think like you do."

"Isabella Vane uses private military contractors," I panted, wiping sweat from my eyes. "I am training to fight soldiers."

"Isabella Vane uses soldiers to hold territory," Darius corrected, stepping closer. "But if you find Jake... you won’t be fighting soldiers. You’ll be fighting whatever is hunting him in the dark. And you might have to fight Jake himself."

I frowned, lowering the training weapon. "What the hell does that mean? Jake is my best friend. He’s our boss."

"Jake was a king," Darius said softly, his dark eyes boring into mine. "He had money, he had leverage, and he had a mind that could out-think supercomputers. But what happens when you strip a king of his crown? What happens when you take away his network, his wealth, and his sanity?"

I didn’t have an answer.

"You get an animal," Darius said, his voice dropping to a grim whisper. "A man who has lost everything doesn’t fight with strategy, Ethan. He fights with pure, unadulterated survival instinct. He fights like a cornered wolf. If you find him, and his mind is gone, he won’t see you as a friend. He’ll see you as a threat. And a feral Jake Hart is the most dangerous thing on this planet."

...

Present Time

The blood trail ended abruptly at a heavy, reinforced steel door leading to the facility’s old boiler room. The door was slightly ajar.

I held up a fist, signaling Claire to stop. She crouched behind a rusted laundry cart, clutching her briefcase to her chest.

I approached the door, pressing my back against the damp brick wall. I listened.

Nothing. Just the steady drip-drip-drip of water leaking from the ceiling, and a low, wet sound that sounded like someone struggling to breathe.

I took a breath, pivoted around the doorframe, and swept the room with my flashlight and the barrel of my Glock.

The boiler room was a cavernous space filled with massive, rusted iron tanks and a maze of thick pipes. But it wasn’t empty.

"Clear," I whispered, my voice tight.

Claire stepped into the room behind me, and I heard her sharp intake of breath.

There were three men on the floor. They wore the same heavy leather jackets as the Lupii thugs we had encountered in the alley.

I kept my gun raised and moved toward the closest body. He was unconscious, his face a ruined mess of purple bruises and lacerations. His right arm was bent at a sickening, unnatural angle.

I moved to the second man. He was awake, but barely. He was propped up against a rusted boiler, clutching his stomach, his breathing shallow and wet. A heavy, iron pipe lay on the concrete a few feet away, covered in blood.

"Ethan," Claire whispered, pointing her own small flashlight at the third man.

He was pinned to the wall. A jagged piece of rusted rebar had been driven completely through his shoulder, anchoring him to the brick. He was unconscious, his head lolling forward.

I stared at the carnage. There were no bullet holes. There were no clean, tactical strikes. This wasn’t the work of a trained Aegis operative. This was raw, brutal, desperate violence. This was a man fighting for his life with whatever he could get his hands on.

I knelt next to the conscious thug, keeping my gun leveled at his chest.

"Where is he?" I demanded in Romanian, my voice a harsh growl.

The thug looked up at me, his eyes wide with a primal, lingering terror. He coughed, a speck of blood hitting his lips.

"The American," the thug wheezed, his voice trembling. "We... we just wanted the computer. He looked like a beggar. We thought he was weak."

"Where did he go?" I pressed, grabbing the collar of his leather jacket.

"He is a demon," the man sobbed, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face. "We stabbed him. We cut him deep. But he didn’t stop. He didn’t even scream. He just... he just looked at us with dead eyes and started f**king us up."

I stood up, sweeping my flashlight across the room. The blood trail—a mix of the thugs’ blood and Jake’s—led toward the back of the boiler room.

I followed it to a rusted fire escape door. The heavy deadbolt had been smashed open from the inside. The door was swinging slightly in the wind, letting the freezing rain blow into the room.

On the edge of the doorframe was a single, bloody handprint.

I stepped out onto the iron landing. The fire escape led down into a maze of pitch-black alleyways that stretched out into the slums of Sector 4. The rain was washing the blood away.

He was gone. We had missed him by minutes.

"Ethan," Claire said, stepping up behind me. She looked at the bloody handprint, her face pale in the moonlight. "He’s bleeding out there. We have to track him, we have to find him before the lupii thugs get him."

"The rain is washing the trail," I said, frustration and fear warring in my chest. "He could be anywhere in this sector by now. Darius was right. He’s not thinking logically. He’s just running."

Before Claire could answer, the heavy steel door at the front of the boiler room slammed open.

"In here!" a voice shouted in Romanian. "I found them!"

More Lupii thugs. The rest of the pack had found their bleeding leader in the alley and followed our trail. Flashlight beams cut through the darkness of the boiler room, sweeping over the bodies of their broken comrades.

"They killed Yuri!" one of them yelled. "Kill them!"

"Go!" I roared, grabbing Claire by the shoulder and shoving her toward the rusted iron stairs of the fire escape.

A gunshot rang out, the bullet pinging off the iron railing inches from my head.

I spun around, raising my Glock, and fired three rapid shots into the boiler room. I didn’t wait to see if I hit anything. I just needed to force them into cover.

I scrambled down the fire escape after Claire, our boots clanging loudly against the wet iron. We hit the alley floor running, splashing through deep puddles of freezing water.

"Which way?" Claire yelled over the sound of the storm, clutching the briefcase to her chest.

"Away from the bullets!" I shouted back, taking the lead and pulling her down a narrow, winding side street.

We were in the dark now. We were in hostile territory, being hunted by a local crime syndicate, searching for a ghost who didn’t want to be found.

The manhunt had officially begun, and we had no idea where to start looking. The feral emperor could be anywhere in this god forsaken town, and the number of people looking for him had doubled.