I stepped inside, scanned the control panel with its innocuous numbered buttons, and pressed my palm against it on instinct. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the panel illuminated beneath my touch, displaying floor options that shouldn’t exist in a two-story commercial building: B1 through B5, color-coded by security clearance.
The elevator descended into darkness, carrying me deeper into enemy territory. Each meter downward increased the weight of what awaited—Brock, Xavier, and somewhere in this labyrinth, Maeve. Maeve, who touched parts of me I didn’t know survived conditioning. Maeve, whose life depended on the very skills programmed into me to end it.
For five years, I’d been their perfect weapon—the Reaper. But now, the irony didn’t escape me. Every skill they drilled into my fractured mind, every technique they forced me to master through endless conditioning—I was about to turn it all against them. Not just disobeying orders, but weaponizing their own creation against its makers. The ultimate betrayal they never programmed for.
I could only hope I’d reach her in time—to pull Maeve from the edge of the same dark fate I had once barely escaped. The very thought of her in that place, in their hands, sent a cold weight crashing through my chest. I knew what waited for her. I had lived it.
And yet, for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, I was no longer numb. I was alive—burning with purpose. With feeling. With rage and hope intertwined. I was a man again, not just a construct following orders. A man with thoughts, with convictions. And Maeve was at the center of all of them.
I didn’t just want to find her.I needed to.
I wanted to pull her into my arms, to feel her heartbeat against mine. To tell her that she’d been right all along—that somehow, despite everything, she had found the pieces of me I thought were lost forever. She had reached into the voidwhere I had hidden everything human, and she had touched it. Brought it back.
And now, no one—not even they—could take that from me again.
The fire in my chest twisted, turned molten with the memory of Brock. Once, we had fought side by side, bled on the same ground. But whatever that had been, it was long gone. Shattered. Yes, betrayal had been entangled between us, embedded deep into everything we’d shared.
But even so… what he had done—what he had allowed—was beyond that.
And Brock would pay for it.
As the elevator slowed, I readied my weapon, checking the magazine and chamber with practiced efficiency. The doors opened with a soft pneumatic hiss, revealing a sterile corridor bathed in white light.
The architecture spoke to me in a language I never learned but understood perfectly—primary corridor with defensive choke points at fifteen-meter intervals, recessed lighting creating shadow pools for surveillance advantage, brushed metal walls preventing handholds during potential combat.
“Standard T-class transitional facility,” I muttered to myself, the knowledge surfacing unbidden. “Minimal staffing. Mainly automated. Guards on four-hour rotation patterns.” This wasn’t a permanent site. It was a waystation. A processing facility. My stomach tightened at the implication—they were preparing to move her somewhere worse.
I moved with lethal efficiency, reading the facility’s layout through subtle markers most would miss—color-coded pipe work running along ceiling edges, the specific width of corridors designed to disadvantage multiple attackers, the placement of security cameras with interlocking fields of vision. My mind mapped everything automatically, constructing a three-dimensional blueprint.
I’d never been in this facility. Yet I knew every inch of it.
The antiseptic smell hit me with visceral force—industrial cleaners, medical-grade disinfectants, and beneath it all, something that made my heart race with primal fear. My body recognized this environment on a cellular level. This was where people were unmade.
Footsteps approached from around the corner—single guard, approximately eighty-five kilograms based on impact resonance, casual stride pattern indicating routine patrol. I flattened against the wall, calculating his timing based on acoustics bouncing through the corridor.
Three seconds.
Two.
One.
As he rounded the corner, my hand clamped over his mouth while my other arm locked around his neck in a choke hold. His body tensed briefly before going slack as carotid pressure cut blood flow to his brain. Fifteen seconds of pressure, then release—unconsciousness guaranteed without permanent damage. Icouldhave easily killed him—I had been trained to do that—but I was no longer Reaper. I was…me. Whomever that may be. My focus was Brock, not the irrelevant guards around me. I’d deal with all of that later.
I dragged his body to a maintenance alcove, positioning him to delay discovery. His security badge and keycard disappeared into my pocket. His weapon remained holstered—gunfire would alert the entire facility. For now, silence was my ally.
A security terminal sat embedded in the wall fifty meters ahead. I approached it with peculiar certainty, fingers navigating the interface before conscious thought completed. The security grid manifested on the screen, revealing guard positions throughout the facility.
Two more patrol units on this level. Four security technicians in the central hub. Minimal staffing confirmed this was a transitional facility, not a permanent site. They weren’t expecting trouble here. This wasn’t where they brought their assets for reconditioning.
I navigated deeper through the corridor network, neutralizing a second guard at junction C4 with pressure to the carotid artery. When he slumped to the floor, I arranged him in a sitting position against the wall, head positioned to suggest sleep. A third guard fell silently near Section D, unconscious before he registered my presence.
An administrative section branched off the main corridor—the nerve center for facility operations. I slipped inside, finding computer terminals and data storage systems. My hands moved to specific cabinets without conscious direction, extracting hard drives. I didn’t know what information they contained. I knew they were important. Istashed them in my pack. There would be time to research them later once I had Maeve by my side.
The central security hub appeared ahead—a glass-walled command center with a panoramic view of monitor arrays. Four technicians inside, all focused on their screens. No one was watching the door. Sloppy operation. If Brock were here, heads would roll for such negligence.
I entered like a ghost, employing pressure-point strikes to render each technician unconscious in seconds. Four bodies slumped over consoles without raising an alarm. The facility’s surveillance system now answered to me alone.
I accessed the central terminal, navigating to facility mapping. Familiar patterns emerged on screen—I knew these layouts intimately. Scrolling through the facility subsections revealed what I needed: medical sublevel, containment wing, and room M-7—isolation chamber.
