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My vision goes fuzzy, like static, the pattern imprinting on the dark. It’s a harsh, wailing pain in my head, like an alarm that won’t turn off. I want to scream, but the sound gets choked off. No, damn it,no—
Shane, I try to say.
I’m sick on the floor of the SUV instead.
The last thing I hear is Shane. His terse reports are broken up by my failing brain.
“—seizure.” A sound like static. “—at the house before—” More static, and then: “Daisy was the target. Yes. I’m sure.”
Then the darkness closes in.
It’s not a dream.
It’s not a nightmare.
It’s worse than that. It’s nothing, pitch-black nothing, forever and ever and ever.
2
HERCULES
Midnight,we meet again.
There was a time in my life when I slept whenever I could. Thirty minutes in a quiet public park. A nap in class, if I had to be in school. When our apartment was free of the sounds of my mother’s clients.
When I didn’t have to be awake to drag the assholes out by the shirt collar.
My time in the Army only played into the pattern. Boot camp did its best to turn me into a morning person. Ran on that schedule until I joined the Green Berets and parachuted into shitshows all around the globe, and what the fuck do you know? I was right back where I started, sleeping when the opportunity presented itself.
I pull down on the heaviest resistance band that’s commercially available, gritting my teeth against my stubborn shoulder, and keep an eye on myself in the mirror.
My body no longer gives a fuck about conventional sleep schedules. There’s no fighting it, so I have come to the gym in my building to run on the treadmill and zone out to loud music while I complete all the exercise reps recommended for my shoulder.
It’ll never be the same. That’s not what the exercises are for. Their purpose is to head off muscle atrophy and work on my range of motion.
I hate these fucking exercises.Hatethem. But I’ll do them, because I couldn’tdiewhen Ollie and I hit the ground. That would’ve been acceptable. I’d have traded my life for his.
Instead, I got to keep living with a shoulder so fucked up that I got an honorable discharge and a ticket back to the place I was trying to avoid.
My phone rings, cutting off the music in my headphones.
I keep tension on the band and tap my headphones to answer. It doesn’t matter who it is. Nobody calls about anything good past midnight. Best-case scenario, it’s nobody who considers themselves family.
“Hercules.”
“Hey, prick. Do you have to answer my calls like I’m some peon in the mailroom?” No such luck, because the voice on the line belongs to my brother—adoptive brother—Ares.
“What do you want?”
“Listen. Dad’s going to call you. Don’t do your usual thing.”
“Fuck off. I don’t have ausual thing.And—Dad? That’s cute.”
Ares clears his throat. “Right. Zeus, the man who housed us and raised us until we left for—”
“Shut the fuck up. Why are you calling to warn me about a phone call?”
“Because I’m a decent human being, unlike you.” This teasing, dry-humor motherfucker. “I thought you’d want a heads-up, since you’re not going to like—”
