I see it.
Brooke alone somewhere in the dark. Calling my name and getting nothing back. I see a tiny heartbeat on a monitor flicker once, twice, and then nothing. I see a casket lowered into the ground while I stand behind glass, shackled, unable to move. I see myself rotting in a cell while dirt hits a coffin lid.
My breath hitches and stutters. The rage drains out of me. In its place comes something colder.
Not anger.
Certainty.
Certainty that maybe this is the pattern. That maybe Luke is right. That maybe I am the common denominator.
The nurse’s hands are still on my arm, applying pressure. The agent is saying something about psychiatric evaluation.
The room is there again.
But the future Luke paints doesn’t fade.
I lie back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling, chest rising too fast, feeling the weight of a future where I fail her.
Not fighting.
Not winning.
Just watching everything I love die because I’m not enough to stop it.
Chapter 12
The man in scrubs moves through the hospital as if he clocked in hours ago.
The fabric hangs over a body that doesn't belong in a hospital uniform. His shoulders are broad, his chest thick and powerful, and his arms fill the sleeves with the dense muscle of someone built for violence rather than medicine.
The surgical mask covers the lower half of his face, but his eyes are impossible to ignore. They hold a cold focus, the kind of steady attention that makes people instinctively uneasy without understanding why.
A clipped ID badge swings lightly against his chest, catching the harsh hospital lights as he moves.
No one questions him.
Nurses hurry past with charts clutched in their hands. Orderlies push gurneys down the corridor without looking up. Doctors speak into phones while walking quickly between rooms, too distracted by their own urgency to notice the danger moving calmly among them.
He slips into the rhythm without hesitation.
That is his talent.
He can mimic any environment, match its pulse, and disappear inside it.
He steps into the elevator and presses the button for the third floor. The doors close behind him with a soft hiss, sealing him in with his reflection. Sun-warmed skin. Eyes calm and undisturbed by the violence he is minutes away from unleashing.
He rolls his shoulders once, muscles shifting beneath the scrub top, and adjusts the extra set of scrubs in his hands.
The doors slide open.
The third-floor hallway is quiet except for the soft beeping of monitors behind closed doors. Two FBI agents guard the room at the end of the corridor.
The intruder approaches with a clipboard tucked under his arm, posture loose and unbothered.
“Wound check on the detainee,” he says, muffled through the surgical mask.
One of the agents steps in his path, eyes hard. “Bullshit. We didn’t authorize shit.”
