Silas Vane POV
My eyes snapped open, but I didn't see the ceiling of the room. I saw fire. I saw the green light of the forest at night. I heard the screaming of the metal birds in the sky. I felt the hot wind of the explosion that took everything away from me.
I tried to sit up, but my body felt like it was made of heavy lead. My left arm wouldn't move. My face felt like it was being poked by a thousand hot needles. I forgot where I was. I forgot who I was. All I knew was that I had to fight. I rolled off the bed, crashing onto the cold floor with a loud thump.
"Stop! Please, stay still!" a voice cried out. It was a woman's voice, soft and kind.
I didn't listen. My brain was still in the forest. I reached out with my good hand and grabbed the leg of a metal chair. I dragged myself across the floor, my breath coming in short, painful gasps. I was a soldier. I was a Major. I was a Raven. I couldn't just lie there.
"You are safe," the voice said again. A pair of hands touched my shoulders.
I growled and pushed them away. I managed to pull myself up against the wall. My vision was blurry. My left eye was covered by a thick bandage. With my right eye, I saw a small, white room. There were no trees. There were no helicopters. There was just a small TV hanging on the wall and a window that showed nothing but gray clouds and tall, snowy mountains.
"Where... where am I?" I croaked. My throat felt like I had swallowed a bag of dry sand.
"A clinic in the mountains," the woman said. She was a nurse with gray hair and eyes that looked like she had seen a lot of sadness. "You have been asleep for a very long time, Silas."
"How long?" I asked. My heart started to beat faster.
"One year," she whispered.
One year. I felt like the floor had opened up to swallow me. I had lost an entire year of my life. While I was sleeping, the world had kept moving. While I was dreaming of fire, the people who hurt me were probably laughing. I thought of Jax and Leo. They didn't get a year. They didn't even get a second.
"I need to see," I said, pointing at the TV.
The nurse looked worried, but she picked up the remote and turned it on. I didn't care about the shows or the music. I waited for the news. It didn't take long. A picture of a man in a handsome military uniform appeared on the screen. It was me. But the words under my face made me want to scream.
MAJOR SILAS VANE: THE TRAITOR OF KARSAK VALLEY.
The news reporter talked about how I had stolen a secret hard drive and betrayed my own team. They said I had worked for the enemy and led my brothers into an ambush. They said I was dead, and that the world was safer without me.
I watched as General Marcus Sterling appeared on the screen. He looked like a hero. He was wearing medals on his chest. He told the world how sad he was that his favorite student had turned into a monster. He lied with a smile on his face.
I turned the TV off. My hand was shaking, not from fear, but from a cold, sharp anger. I wasn't a traitor. I was the one who was betrayed. The General had erased me. He had taken my name and turned it into trash.
"I have to get out of here," I said.
"You can't," the nurse said. "Your legs are weak. Your face is scarred. You need to rest."
"No," I told her. "I've rested for a year. Now, I work."
The next few months were the hardest thing I had ever done. It was worse than any military training. Every morning, before the sun came up, I would crawl out of bed. I started by just trying to stand. My legs would shake like jelly, and I would fall down. I fell a hundred times. I fell a thousand times. But every time I hit the floor, I thought of the General's smile. I thought of Jax's machine gun. I thought of Leo's medical kit.
I would get back up.
I found an old, rusty pipe in the back of the clinic. I used it to do pull-ups. At first, I couldn't even do one. My left arm was so weak it felt like a wet noodle. I would hang there, sweat dripping into my bandages, screaming silently as I tried to pull my chin above the bar.
One, I would tell myself. Do it for Jax.Two. Do it for Leo.
Three. Do it for the truth.
I didn't use the fancy machines the clinic had. I did my own brutal, self-imposed training. I ran up the snowy paths of the mountains until my lungs felt like they were on fire. I lifted heavy rocks until my hands bled. I did push-ups until I collapsed in the dirt. I was rebuilding my body from the ground up. I wasn't just Silas Vane anymore. I was becoming something else. Something harder.
One night, while I was sitting in the dark, my laptop which the nurse had helped me hide made a soft ping sound. I had been trying to find a way to contact the only person I could trust: a hacker named Maya "Mouse" Lin. She had been kicked out of the military by Sterling, too. She knew what it was like to be burned.
A message popped up on the screen. It was just a picture of a black raven feather.
I found you, Ghost, the message said.
My heart leaped. Maya was alive. She was my eyes in the sky. With her help, I could finally start my real mission. I wouldn't just be a man in a hospital room. I would be a hunter.
"It's time," I whispered to the empty room.
I stood up and walked over to the small mirror in the corner. I hadn't looked at myself in a year. I was afraid of what I would see. Slowly, I reached up and unwrapped the bandages from my face.
The cloth fell to the floor. I looked into the glass.
The man looking back at me wasn't Silas Vane. The left side of my face was covered in thick, silver scars that looked like lightning bolts. My left eye was a different color now, cold and stony. I looked like a monster. I looked like a ghost.
I didn't cry. I didn't even flinch. Silas Vane was the man who had been betrayed. Silas Vane was the man the news called a traitor. That man was gone.
"I need a new name," I said to the mirror. "A name that can walk through the city without being seen."
I remembered an old story my grandfather told me about a man named Elias Thorne. He was a man who lived in the shadows and never left a footprint.
"Elias Thorne," I whispered. It felt right. It felt like a mask.
I packed a small bag with the few things I had. I put on a dark hoodie that covered my face. I looked out the window at the mountains. The sun was starting to come up, turning the snow into a bright, blinding white.
I walked out of the clinic without saying goodbye. I moved quietly, like a shadow moving across the grass. I wasn't the youngest Major in the Ravens anymore. I was a low-level security consultant named Elias Thorne.
I headed toward the city. I was going to find the people who took my life. I was going to find every officer who helped the General. I was going to leave a black raven feather on their doorsteps so they would know I was coming.
But as I reached the main road, a black car pulled up beside me. The window rolled down. I reached for the knife I had hidden in my belt, my heart racing. Was it Sterling's men? Had they found me already?
A woman with short, purple hair and big glasses looked out at me. She wasn't holding a gun. She was holding a tablet.
"Get in, Silas," she said. It was Maya. "We have a problem. The General isn't just selling guns anymore. He's building something much worse. And he's using your name to do it."
I looked at the car. I looked back at the mountains. My journey was just starting, but the stakes were already higher than I ever imagined.
"My name is Elias now," I said, stepping into the car. "And the General is about to find out that ghosts don't stay buried."
As we drove away, Maya turned the tablet toward me. On the screen was a live video of a high-security bunker.
"He knows you're alive, Elias," Maya whispered. "And he's not waiting for you to come to him. He's already sent 'The Hounds' to find the clinic".
My blood ran cold. The nurse. She was still back there. I looked out the back window and saw a helicopter a Black Hawk flying low over the trees toward the building I had just left.
"Turn the car around," I growled.