Two years after the massacre.
The cold was razor-sharp that winter in North Haven, a remote border town where people didn't ask questions and bodies often stayed buried under the snow.
Matherson was twenty-three then, and he no longer looked like a boy.
Gone were the smooth cheeks and soft eyes. His face had hardened jaw tight, eyes sharp, movements precise. The innocence died with his family. What remained was raw purpose.
He lived above an old butcher shop owned by a man named Konrad, a former soldier turned fugitive. Konrad had found Matherson half-frozen in an alley one night, bleeding, shaking, starving.
He took him in. Taught him how to survive.
But survival came at a cost.
One night, Konrad returned from a "job" with a bloodied shirt and a fractured wrist. His face was pale. Rage simmered beneath his silence.
"They took her," he finally said. "Nina."
Nina—Konrad's niece. The only light in that frozen town. Sixteen. Quiet. Always reading. She'd disappeared that morning.
"They took her to the Pit," he whispered. "She won't survive the night."
Matherson didn't ask who they were.
He just packed his blade and coat.
"I'm going with you," he said.
Konrad stared at him, uncertain.
"You've never killed a man."
"I've wanted to."
The Pit wasn't a place. It was a name for the filth that ran North Haven four men who trafficked everything from drugs to people. They wore suits in daylight and masks at night.
Their den sat behind a lumber mill disguised, guarded, locked from the inside.
But Konrad knew a way in.
At midnight, they breached the back entrance. Moved like ghosts through the halls. Knifed the first guard without a sound. Reached the cellblock where Nina was chained. Shivering. Blood on her face.
When she saw Konrad, she cried. When she saw Matherson, she flinched.
He looked like death.
Konrad carried her out. Matherson stayed behind.
"I'm finishing it."
Konrad looked at him, surprised. Then nodded once and left.
They came in packs.
Three men first guns drawn, laughing.
"You lost, kid?"
Matherson didn't answer.
He moved. Fast. Silent.
Blade to throat.
Gun to chest.
Two seconds. Two dead.
The third screamed and ran.
Matherson followed him.
Room to room, hallway to hallway, he hunted them like an animal.
They begged.
They offered money.
One even said, "We didn't know she was his niece!"
But Matherson wasn't listening.
He wasn't killing them for Nina.
He was killing them for Ava, his sister.
For Sarah, his sister.
For Miranda, his mother.
For Jayson, his father.
And for the boy who once hid in the toilet, too afraid to move, while his family burned.
That night, he didn't just kill men.
He killed the last part of himself that had ever believed in mercy.
When he returned to the butcher shop at dawn, his hands were stained. His eyes were empty.
Konrad was waiting.
He didn't speak. Just looked at Matherson.
"What now?" Matherson asked.
Konrad lit a cigarette. "Now you know what it costs. You still want this war?"
Matherson's voice was calm.
"It's not a war. It's a reckoning."
Konrad nodded once. "Then we start training for real."
Back to present day…
Matherson stood over the ridge, watching smoke rise from the burned Cerberus compound.
Five years of pain.
Two dozen names on his list.
And only one that mattered now.
Vincent Raye.
The reckoning was almost here.