09:46 PM – NPU Headquarters, North Metro, Helipad
The helicopter rotors beat the air into submission. The sound wasn't just noise it was a physical thing, a pounding in the teeth and a vibration in the chest that made your organs remember they were mortal.
Above, the sky was a soup of light pollution and cloud, the moon just a greasy smear behind the haze.
Romantic,
Like a tumor with mood lighting.
Garrick hung out of the cockpit like a puppet with its strings cut, his silhouette jagged against the cockpit lights. His headset was hooked over one ear, the other side dangling free, and his grin was a white gash in the dark. It was the grin of a man who found panic mildly amusing and death moderately hilarious.
"Try not to make me save your ass next time," he bellowed. The rotor wash stole half his words, but the sentiment landed.
Adrian stepped onto the helipad, his shoes crunching on grit and old rain. The wind was a cold, wet hand slapping his face. He took his time adjusting his jacket collar, a slow, deliberate performance of nonchalance. "Maybe you should try flying smoother."
"Bold of you to think I wasn't already doing that." Garrick's smile widened, showcasing teeth that looked like they could strip wire. "That was my A-game, sweetheart."
"Terrifying."
"I know." Garrick looked genuinely proud.
Adrian mustered a smirk. It felt stiff on his face, an old costume pulled from the back of the closet. "Well. Consider it my way of repaying you for the commentary. Ciao."
"Ciao, you menace." Garrick shook his head, the picture of theatrical disappointment. "Try not to die between now and tomorrow. I've got a reputation to maintain."
"I'll pencil in 'survive' on my calendar. Right after 'existential dread.'"
The heavy door sighed shut behind Adrian, swallowing the rotor scream and replacing it with the hum of cheap electricity and the smell of concrete dust. He took the stairs. The elevator was for people who trusted the world not to let them down.
Adrian wasn't one of them.
Also, exercise. Very healthy. My therapist would be proud.
10:00 PM – NPU Headquarters, Captain Elias's Office
The office was a monument to quiet desperation. The furniture was gray. The walls were gray. The light from the single desk lamp pooled on the wood like tired honey, failing to reach the corners where shadows clung like mold.
Interior decorator must've been going through something.
On the desk lay the artifacts of bureaucracy: a thin folder, a black data drive no bigger than a thumbnail, a stack of glossy photographs. They were arranged with a sterile precision that felt accusatory. Elias slid them across the polished surface with one finger. The gesture was flat, final, like a judge passing a sentence.
Elias's voice was a low rumble, worn smooth by too many late nights and too much bad coffee. His eyes, however, were live wires. "Reckless as hell."
The words dropped into the quiet room and just sat there, ugly and undeniable.
"Pull another stunt like that," Elias continued, not blinking, "and I will bury you under paperwork so dense and so pointless you'll have to file a form in triplicate just to remember your own name. Close calls aren't exciting, Adrian. They're obituaries waiting for a name."
Adrian crossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe. The wood was cool through his jacket. "What, are you my mother now?"
"Your mother would've had better sense than to send you into that mess."
"Debatable." Adrian shifted his weight. "Just take the recording. If you actually want this circus to move to the next town, I need real intel by tomorrow. Founders. Structural blueprints. The secret recipe. Something I can't use as a coaster."
Elias was silent for a heartbeat. Two. It wasn't hesitation; it was calculation. Adrian watched the tiny muscle twitch in his captain's jaw. "We're close. Don't push it." His eyes flicked to the digital clock on his desk. Its numbers glowed a sickly, acidic green.
"And it's past ten-thirty. Go home. Try to sleep. Or just lie in the dark and contemplate the void. Whatever passes for self-care in that haunted head of yours."
Adrian's smirk was a reflex, a tired ghost of expression. "Wow. That's almost touching. Did you practice that in the mirror?"
"Get out of my office."
"See, now that's the Elias I know and tolerate." Adrian pushed off the doorframe. "Nice to know my boss is so eager to kick me out. Ciao."
"Ciao."
As Adrian's fingers curled around the cold door handle, Elias's voice came again, softer, stripped of its official bark. "Take care."
Adrian froze. Just for a second. A full, thick second where the only sound was the distant whine of a floor polisher.
Oh great. Now he's getting sentimental.
Next he'll be asking about my feelings.
He didn't turn. He just let the two words hang in the stale office air, a small, fragile thing in a room built for hard truths. Then he opened the door and stepped back into the fluorescent wilderness of the hall.
10:37 PM – North Metro, Highway 27, En Route to Safehouse
The Lamborghini was a slice of obsidian and fury. It didn't drive; it whispered threats to the asphalt.
And occasionally to other drivers who can't merge properly, Adrian thought, glaring at a minivan that had just cut him off.
The city at night unspooled before him a riot of neon signs bleeding color onto wet streets, of dark windows that hid secrets or emptiness, of the occasional sodium-vapor streetlamp casting its jaundiced glare over empty sidewalks. The rain had stopped, leaving the world gleaming and treacherous.
Adrian guided the car with one loose hand on the wheel. In the other, a cigarette glowed like a dying star. He took a drag, the ember flaring, and exhaled a stream of smoke out the window. It was instantly ripped away by the slipstream.
The city blurred into a watercolor of loneliness and light, but the movie behind his eyes played in perfect, painful clarity.
Coming soon to a theater near you: 'Adrian Makes Bad Life Choices:
The Extended Cut.' Runtime: his entire goddamn life.
No speed was fast enough to outrun the film reel in his head.
10:54 PM – North Metro, Adrian's Safehouse
The safehouse wasn't a home. It was a storage locker for a person who was temporarily between disasters.
Very temporarily, at this rate.
The electronic gate recognized his fingerprint with a grudging beep. The reinforced steel door buzzed open, its sound the mechanical equivalent of a heavy sigh.
The air inside was a layer cake of smells: the top note of stale cigarette ash, the middle note of old Chinese takeout fermenting in its container, the base note of dust and solitude.
Eau de Depression. Very chic.
The living room was a landscape of gentle decay. A single couch, its fabric worn shiny in the shape of a slouching body, faced a blank television screen. Every flat surface was colonized by leaning towers of case files, manila folders swollen with paper, and empty coffee mugs sporting continents of brown stain.
Really should clean.
Add that to the list right after 'don't die' and before 'learn to cook something other than disappointment.'
Adrian went through the locking ritual. Main deadbolt. Secondary deadbolt. Steel chain. The final, custom-mounted bolt he'd installed himself after an incident involving a crowbar and a man with too many opinions. Each clunk and click was a stanza in a psalm of paranoia.
He fell onto the couch. It exhaled a puff of dust. A silver lighter appeared in his hand. A flick of the thumb, a small, desperate sun, and the end of a cigarette was consumed. He inhaled, the smoke filling his mouth with the taste of burnt leaves and quiet resignation.
Home sweet tomb.
The phone on the cluttered side table screamed to life. The shrill ring was an act of violence in the quiet room.
Elias.
"File's in your inbox." The captain's voice was sandpaper on stone. "Informant's willing to talk. Read it. Ciao."
"Your bedside manner is improving. Very maternal. Ciao."
Adrian stabbed the cigarette into an overloaded ashtray and picked up his personal tablet. The screen blinked awake, painting his tired face in a cold blue light. He tapped the encrypted icon. The file opened without fanfare, a digital curtain drawing back on a stage set for tragedy.
WITNESS-FILE // ACCESS GRANTED
⚠ WARNING: CONTENT ADVISORY
This file contains whistleblowing testimony, documented corporate corruption, high-risk exposure, and impending mortality. Proceed at your own discretion.
FILE: SUBJECT OF INTEREST
[SC] - MARCUS VARIAS
Age: 36
Profile: Born in Canada. Current position: low-level data analyst at Nexo Pharmaceutical. Gained irregular access to high-clearance logs and classified archives through a system flaw that remains, troublingly, unexplained.
Personality: Quiet backbone. Burdened by guilt. Reluctantly brave in that awful, tragic way people get when they know they're running out of time. Knows his life expectancy is short. Suffers from chronic restlessness and severe insomnia.
Appearance: Brown hair. Green eyes. Tanned skin. Slight build. Nervous gait the kind that makes you think he's always looking over his shoulder. Because he probably is.
Languages: English (native). Italian (partial, conversational). Russian (semi-fluent but fractured, learned under circumstances unknown).
STATUS: Active employee at Nexo Pharmaceutical. Potential informant. Risk level: EXTREME.
NOTES:
Marcus claims, and I quote: "I can't stomach what they're doing anymore."
Driven less by survival instinct, more by an overwhelming need to confess. He has hinted at hidden projects, experimental programs running off the books, and executive-level corruption that reaches higher than anyone wants to admit. He hasn't revealed hard data yet, just keeps saying that "it runs deeper than anyone imagines."
SURVIVAL ODDS: <7%
Trust level: Unstable, but appears genuine.
TRANSMISSION END.
Adrian leaned back. The tablet's light lit the underside of his chin, carving his face into a mask of stark angles and deep hollows.
Seven percent.
Great.
Love those odds.
Practically a sure thing.
The words from the file didn't just sit in his mind they took root. They felt like cold stones in his gut.
He hated it.
He hated that words on a screen could still have weight, could still make his breath catch in that old, familiar way. Like he hadn't learned better by now.
Marcus Varias. Another dead man walking who doesn't know he's already a ghost.
He tossed the tablet aside. It skidded across a pile of papers. He ground the cigarette butt into the ashtray with more force than necessary, twisting it into a crumpled, black corpse.
He shucked off his jacket, his holster, his day, and changed into soft, worn cotton pants and a t-shirt so thin it was practically a memory of fabric. He moved through the small space, killing lights. The desk lamp died with a click.
The kitchen light winked out. The ambient glow from the city bled around the edges of the blackout blinds, painting the room in stripes of faint, ghostly gray.
He stood in the dark. It wasn't peaceful. It was a waiting room.
Sleep. Right. That thing normal people do.
I should try that sometime.
Sleep was a clever story he told himself each night, a fairy tale for the guilt-ridden and the hunted.
07:09 AM – Adrian's Safehouse, North Metro
The shower was a baptism in regret. The water was as hot as he could stand, scouring his skin, turning it pink. Steam billowed, fogging the mirror and the glass door, creating a warm, white cocoon that almost felt like privacy.
Almost.
He stood under the punishing spray, head bowed, forehead pressed against the cool, slick tiles. He waited for the water to wash something more than grime away.
It never did. All he got was clean skin and pruned fingers.
And a water bill. Can't forget that.
He emerged dripping onto the bath mat. The air in the bathroom was thick and humid, smelling of soap and damp tile. Through the steam, the clock on the wall was a blurry green eye. It came into focus.
He was late. Again.
Fashionably late.
There's a difference.
He dressed with the efficient, joyless speed of a soldier. Dark jeans, a charcoal-gray shirt, the shoulder holster embracing him like a leather lover. He shrugged into his jacket, the weight of it familiar, almost comforting.
In the kitchen, he poured the last of the old coffee into a chipped mug and microwaved it. The microwave hummed its judgment. The first swallow was a punishment. It tasted of bitterness and yesterday.
Breakfast of champions. Or idiots. Hard to tell the difference anymore.
The file on Marcus was there, in the front of his mind. It had a taste, too. Metallic. Coppery. Like the first drop of blood from a fresh cut.
07:42 AM – North Metro, Arterial Road, En Route to NPU
The Lamborghini nosed into the morning traffic, a panther sliding into a herd of sheep. The commute was a slow-moving river of sedans and hatchbacks, their windows fogged, their drivers sipping from travel mugs in a daily trance.
Living the dream. All of them. Just... living it so hard.
Adrian's eyes were never still. They danced from the rearview mirror to the side mirror, a continuous, practiced scan. He watched the world in fragments. The bumper sticker on the van ahead ("My other car is also disappointing"). The flick of a turn signal two lanes over. The way the delivery truck hugged the shoulder.
And then he saw it.
A black sedan. It was two cars back, in the same lane. It wasn't following too close, wasn't driving erratically. It was just… there. Its windows were tinted a perfect, impenetrable onyx, reflecting the gray morning sky like polished coal. It held its position with an unnerving steadiness.
The driver was invisible, a ghost behind the glass.
Oh good. Company.
Adrian felt it first in his chest a single, hard thump of his heart, a drumbeat of alarm. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel, the leather creaking softly.
Could be nothing.
Could be someone who just really likes this lane.
Could be a hitman. Fifty-fifty, really.
He took the next exit, a clean, casual maneuver. Just a guy changing his mind about his route. Nothing suspicious here, officer.
The sedan didn't follow. It continued straight on the arterial, its dark form swallowed by the flow of traffic. Gone. As if it had never been.
Adrian eased to a stop at the top of the exit ramp. The traffic light ahead was green. The road was clear.
He didn't go.
He sat, the engine murmuring softly, and stared at the empty road where the sedan had disappeared. Five seconds. Ten.
Paranoid? Me? Never.
A horn blared behind him, long and impatient, a rude noise tearing the morning quiet.
He jolted, his heart now hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs, so loud he could hear it in the silent, expensive cave of his car.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm going," he muttered, pressing the accelerator.
But his hands were shaking.
Just a coincidence. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.
Yeah.
The city was watching. And it had just made very, very sure that he knew it.
Great. Just great. Add 'potential tail' to today's agenda.
He merged back onto the arterial, eyes flicking to the mirrors every three seconds.
The black sedan was gone.
But Adrian couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't really gone at all.
It was just waiting for a better moment.