Memories of motherhood clung to Noel like restless phantoms, whispering regrets into the quiet corridors of her mind. As she stood before her son, his skull split open to reveal a labyrinth of cables and flickering circuits, she searched for the pride she had once imagined she would feel. But there was no triumph in the sight—only an aching void where love should have been. This was the dream she had chased, the revolution she had fought to birth, yet with every step closer to success, the hollow pang of loss deepened.
Her husband's words surfaced like an echo from a long-buried past: I hope you get what you want, and want what you get. His voice had always carried a wry certainty, a knowing inflection reserved for fleeting ambitions. Was this fleeting? Had her desires betrayed her?
A chill wrapped around her as she turned inward, confronting the specter of a man she had once known—his laughter, his warnings, his warmth. But even memories were fragile, prone to distortion, slipping through her grasp like sand through trembling fingers.
Tyson was the embodiment of duty—his movements sharp, his loyalty unwavering. A soldier through and through, a Marine who never questioned the weight of an order. He had lived the life Noel was meant to inherit, yet it had never been hers to claim. She was no warrior, no soldier—only a scientist, bound to reason, not to battle.
Now, as she wrestled with his life and death, guilt festered in her chest, expanding like a slow, suffocating poison. She traced the moments backward, unraveling the threads of fate: If she had been home that day, if he had been out running errands instead, would he have fought? Would he have surrendered? Would he have disappeared into another life? The answer twisted in the shadows, taunting her. But why wouldn’t he have left?
It hadn’t been her family’s legacy that had sealed his fate—it was hers. She had cradled the grenade, felt the cold weight of it pressed into her palm, and when the moment came, she had pulled the pin. Not by accident, not in ignorance. And Tyson, her closest friend, had been the one to bear the blast.
Noel’s eyes burned, swollen and raw, as silent sobs shuddered through her frame. Tears spilled down her cheeks in relentless streams, yet no amount of weeping could drown the tide of memories crashing through her mind. They came in fragments, sharp and unstoppable—Tyson’s laughter on the day they met, the chaos of their escape from Beirut, the vows whispered between them, the scent of birthday candles, the sticky sweetness of melted ice cream, the hum of PTO meetings, the clipped exchanges of parent-teacher conferences. Arguments. Regret. Love. Family.
Family—always overshadowed by legacy, always sacrificed for something greater. She had spent years running, believing distance might dull the edges of her choices. But now, with nowhere left to flee, the truth loomed before her, monstrous and inescapable. She had forged the beast. Molded it. Fed it. And in the end, it wasn’t some faceless horror she had to confront. It was herself.
Noel forced herself to steady her breath, dragging her focus back to the present. Her son’s terminal pulsed with flickering lines of code, struggling against the weight of its malfunction. The reboot was sluggish, far too long—evidence of a severe crash—but only Jax could decipher the depth of its failure. Nolan ran on Jax’s OS, built upon his genius, yet Jax himself was absent, lost somewhere in the chaos of unfinished tasks.
She had meant to thank him earlier, had even begun to shape the words in her mind when they stepped into the hallway. But the moment slipped through her fingers, drowned in the fevered urgency of data analysis—then the crash, then Nolan flatlined. And just like that, gratitude was swallowed by crisis, lost to the storm that had consumed them all.
Now, with the silence pressing in around her, she felt the weight of it—the strain she had placed on Jax, on the team, on herself. They were all pushing against the inevitable, fighting ghosts of failure before they could manifest, before they could bury them completely.
Nolan’s heartbeat drummed in rhythmic defiance, each pulse carving out the seconds between Noel’s unraveling thoughts. What if he can’t be turned? The question had long been a parasite in her mind, burrowing deep, festering. It was not new—no, this fear had been with her since the beginning, a shadow stitched into every decision. The possibility had always existed: that she would stand in this very room, staring down at her son, and be forced to undo him. Mother. Creator. Executioner.
She had entrusted too many hands with choices that should have been hers alone. But not this time. No one else would bear the weight of this decision. Noel refused sympathy, discarded remorse like an old relic—useless, irrelevant. Tyson’s voice stirred from memory, cool, knowing, unshaken by regret. The chickens have come home to roost. It rang true now more than ever.
The EKG emitted its steady, merciless beeps—each one carving into the silence like a ticking clock counting down to something inevitable. Noel barely registered the sound anymore. Her tears had dried, leaving a raw tightness in her throat, her face hot and swollen from grief. Propping her head on her fist, she willed her mind to drift, to find solace in anything beyond this moment. But it refused. It stayed locked on Nolan.
Even if she could pull him back from the brink, what then? What kind of life awaited him beyond these walls? There was nowhere safe, no haven untouched. He would be hunted, just as she had been, his every breath stolen beneath the suffocating grip of pursuit. A life not lived—just endured.
A bitter thought curled around her, tightening its grip. Maybe neither of them would leave this place. Maybe this room, humming with machinery and regret, would serve as their tomb.
Jax’s return shattered the stagnant air, shifting the room’s energy in an instant. Noel wiped her face quickly, concealing the remnants of her grief as she stepped behind him. His focus was sharp, his fingers moving with precision as he scanned the feeds, hunting for something specific. “There. That’s them.” His voice was tight, urgent. “They’re danger-close.”
Noel followed his gesture as he pointed to the screen—an old parking garage just up the street. The video flickered with harsh, grainy clarity, revealing the shadows of a military unit, twenty soldiers staged in disciplined formation. Their movements were controlled, methodical, preparing for something imminent.
Jax’s eyes narrowed. “That one—he’s the only one who hasn’t left the structure. Zoom in.” The feed sharpened, pixels pulling into focus, and then—Noel’s breath hitched. A face emerged from the distortion, familiar, unmistakable. A face from her past. “That’s my son.”
The words barely escaped Noel’s lips before trailing into silence, strangled by the weight of realization. Her worst fears unfolded before her, sharp and undeniable, as she stared at the screen—a man standing amidst the chaos, his features carved in an undeniable resemblance to her father. A chill crept up her spine. “Show me more,” she ordered, forcing the tremor from her voice. “Let’s see what they’re up to.”
The analyst’s fingers flew across the console, feeds flickering and shifting. Fragmented images sharpened—shadows moving in calculated formations, armed figures sweeping the streets. COA operatives. Everywhere. Noel’s breath hung.
“They know,” she muttered, a raw edge cutting through her tone. “By now, they know this area is being jammed.” The realization struck hard, pulse hammering in her ears. Her fists clenched, nails digging deep into her palms. The noose was tightening.
Jax’s voice cut through the tension like a blade. “We’re at 48% on the download. At this rate, we’re not moving fast enough to get it all. I’m calling it—we need to detonate the payload.”
His words landed with calculated urgency, his gaze unwavering as he rattled off the final parameters for the virus. But Noel barely heard him. His voice melted into the static hum of her mind, drowned beneath the relentless pull of a singular thought. Her son.
Her fingers tightened around the terminal as she reopened the Henchmen Folder, scrolling until the software update for Nolan surfaced on the screen. A prototype. Why?
A shadow of unease curled around her chest, tightening, constricting. Jax was talking, the plan was in motion, but her mind was caught in the snare of a question she couldn’t afford to ignore. Why was it a prototype?
“I need you to look at this,” Noel urged, sliding the terminal toward Jax. Her voice was tight, the weight of urgency pressing into every syllable. “What do you make of it? Break it open—tell me what it does. I’m sure they’re still using your code.”
Her words hung in the air as Jax processed them, his expression hardening. Then, without hesitation, he moved. Within moments, his fingers danced across the keyboard, exporting the software to a text editor, the code spilling onto the screen like veins in an open wound.
Lines of logic unraveled before him, shifting in organized chaos. He scanned them with practiced precision, his gaze cutting through syntax and commands the way a seasoned thief rifles through inventory—quick, deliberate, searching for something crucial.
The Henchmen folder. The remnants of a system he once touched, now twisted into something unknown.
The flickering glow of the monitor cast sharp shadows against the walls, illuminating the storm brewing within Noel’s mind. Something was buried in that code. And they had little time to find it.
Jax’s eyes, bloodshot and weary, flicked across the code with relentless focus. Fatigue weighed heavy on him, blurring the lines between logic and exhaustion. At first, nothing stood out—just the familiar strings of parameters, each one maintaining engagement, running as expected. But something gnawed at him, a whisper of unease buried beneath the surface. Then, near the bottom—developer notes. His breath stilled, pupils dilating as he scanned the text, dissecting the intention behind the update.
"It seems like this update..." His voice faltered, breaking beneath the weight of realization. A hesitation. A pause too long. Then, finally— “...elevates the onboard user to Administrator?” The words hung in the air like a slow-moving threat, unraveling their implications one syllable at a time.
The words struck Noel like a jolt of electricity, stopping her mid-thought, mid-breath. Her head snapped to the side, her gaze locking onto Jax, searching his expression for any trace of hesitation, any indication that what he had just said wasn’t as catastrophic as it sounded. Her pulse stumbled. “...Okay…?” The word barely left her lips, fragile and uncertain, drawn out in slow disbelief. But the silence in response—the heavy, leaden silence—only confirmed the worst.
“Yeah,” Jax muttered, eyes darting across the screen, absorbing the words as they unraveled before him. “It says—” He hesitated.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Noel caught the shift—the brief pause, the tension curling around his voice. Then, he continued, voice lower now, cautious, as if saying it aloud might solidify its consequences.
“Use under extreme caution: unit’s latent security parameters will be suspended or overridden…” The air in the room seemed to constrict. Noel felt the weight of the sentence settling over them, thick and unshakable. Suspended? Overridden? Her breath shallowed. Whatever was buried in this code—it wasn’t just dangerous. It was volatile.
Noel’s mind scrambled to make sense of what she was hearing, but the weight of it crushed her thoughts before they could fully form. The implications twisted in her gut, sharp and unrelenting. The security parameters —suspended. Overridden. The words replayed in her mind, cold and absolute, but she could do little more than force a single question past the lump rising in her throat. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Who’s the onboard user?”
A slow, aching creak fractured the silence, the chair groaning under the weight of Jax’s shifting posture as he leaned back. His brow furrowed, deep lines of thought etched into his face as he met Noel’s gaze—steady, deliberate, yet clouded with hesitation. Something unspoken lingered between them, thick in the air, pressing down like the static before a storm. Noel watched as his mouth parted, the words caught somewhere between resistance and inevitability. When they finally surfaced, they carried the weight of something irreversible.
“Nolan.” Just a name. A single, damning syllable. And yet, it cracked through the room like a gunshot.
#
The night pressed in, bitter and unforgiving, the cold weaving its way through the open structure like an uninvited specter. Captain Joy wasted no time. Within minutes, the first floor of the parking garage had transformed—what had once been a hollow, concrete shell now thrummed with controlled urgency, repurposed into a tactical command center.
Rows of counterintelligence workstations flickered to life, their terminals casting ghostly blue glows against the darkness. The hum of processors filled the space, feeding encrypted streams of data into the hands of men who knew how to wield them. They carried no camera equipment of their own, no cumbersome recording devices—but they didn’t need them. Joy and his team had other methods. If there was a transmission within range, no matter how faint—an open frequency, a signal pulsing from some unseen device—they would find it. And when they did, the source would have nowhere to hide.
“Captain.” The operator’s voice was tight, urgent. Joy turned, his gaze narrowing as the man gestured toward the screen. “They’ve got a lot of security feeds in the area. Check this out.”
The feeds cycled, flickering between locations across the city—grainy shots of alleyways, rooftops, streets littered with shadows. “Motion detection, uhhh… black-and-white hot lenses, and—” The scrolling halted. A frame froze—a peculiar image of two men. Joy’s stomach lurched.
His own reflection stared back at him from the screen, stark and unmistakable. His pulse surged as he twisted in his chair, eyes darting wildly through the room, searching for the source. It took only seconds to spot it—a device, discreetly nestled in the far corner, just behind them. Watching. Recording. A slow, suffocating realization clawed its way through his chest.
He had ordered his unit to sweep the area. Had them comb the surroundings, search for threats. But this structure? This very place where they had established their command center? He had let it slip. Overlooked it. And now? Now their entire plan might be compromised.
Joy’s eyes locked onto the camera, his breath steady but his pulse ticking faster beneath his skin. Who else is watching? How long have they been here? The questions swarmed, cold and relentless. How many are there? Do they have Nolan? His grip tightened around his sidearm.
“The jig is up, I suppose,” he muttered, voice flat, unreadable. A single breath—then his finger pressed against the trigger. The shot rang out, sharp and decisive, a 9mm round striking the device dead center. Sparks spat from the shattered casing, the screen fizzling to black. But one camera down didn’t mean the threat was gone. “Find the rest of them,” Joy ordered, his tone now sharper, more commanding. “Clear this place out.”
He turned back to his unit, eyes cold, calculating. The final preparations had begun. And with one last command—one that might very well decide their fates—Joy set everything into motion. The quiet before the storm had ended.
He ascended to the rooftop, the cool night air wrapping around him like a vice. His breath was steady, his focus unwavering. “Five..." His voice was measured, deliberate. “Four..." In the distance, the earth trembled—barely perceptible at first, a whisper beneath his boots. “Three..." The distant rumble deepened, rolling through the concrete veins of the city, a warning of what was to come. “Two..." The garage lights sputtered, shivering violently in their casings. Then, as if exhaling their final breath—darkness. Total. Unrelenting. Silence. The hum of infrastructure, the pulse of modernity—all snuffed out in a single, merciless instant. "One."
Seconds stretched into something heavier, a quiet void where uncertainty gnawed at Joy’s thoughts. The weight of his conviction teetered on the edge—this moment would either confirm or dismantle everything he believed.
He turned the possibilities over in his mind. If the rebels were here, if they were actively moving within the perimeter, the harmonic interference would hold steady, unchanged. They would remain unseen but never absent.
That is, of course, assuming they possessed the sophistication—the precision—to capture or destroy Nolan and his unit. Cold understanding settled over him. If they had, the battlefield had already shifted. Regardless, there was no room for hesitation. No margin for error. That sector had to be swept. And it had to be done now.
The first floor of the structure was steeped in the aftermath of calculated precision—every corner swept, every device silenced, the ghosts of surveillance stripped from the space. Joy stepped into the room, tension riding the edges of his posture, waiting for confirmation. It came as expected. “We’ve removed all the recording devices, sir.” The soldier’s voice was crisp, unwavering. “And the interference hasn’t budged since the blackout.”
The static hum that had once clawed at the air was gone, replaced only by the muted pulse of anticipation. No shifting frequencies. No signs of movement. The enemy’s reach had not adjusted, had not adapted. It meant only one thing. The battlefield remained unchanged, but the advantage was slipping. “What are your orders?” All eyes turned to Joy. And the storm loomed closer.
Joy’s voice cut through the tension like a blade, sharp, deliberate. “You nine are on me.”The words, firm, unquestionable. The rest of the unit splintered into fireteams of four, moving with swift precision to flank the target—a single, ominous point on Joy’s map. He motioned toward it, his gaze locking onto the building standing like a shadow at the end of the street. “There. The source of the jamming is coming from that location. I’d bet my bottom dollar on it.” Dark. Silent. Waiting. Joy narrowed his eyes, assessing the threat. “But we’d be fools to walk in unprepared. I’m sure that’s what Michaels did.”
He turned to his soldiers, scanning their faces trained, disciplined, ready. “Listen up. The plan is simple. We surround the building, sweep the area clean, then move in. Fireteams—rooftops of the neighboring structures. Set charges as you go. When in position, pop smoke.” A pause. The weight of the mission pressing down. “My team will split into pairs, securing each wing before we clear the building. Floor by floor.” Another scan of faces—grim, focused.
“Look alive. We have nine elite soldiers missing. Assume nothing. This will not be a cakewalk.” Ten minutes. That was all they had. As the soldiers packed their gear, the air thickened, charged with the quiet before the storm. Joy made one final call—one last update before everything was set into motion.
#
Drifting through the abyss of his own mind, Nolan remained still, weightless in the expanse of darkness. He listened—dropping eaves in the void, Twilight validating his presence as though he belonged to its quiet realm. His mother’s voice wove through the fabric of this spectral silence, intertwined with the other man’s, dissecting security feeds, strategizing. The parking structure. He knew it well.
If his instincts were correct, Captain Joy had been sent for him. The thought settled in his chest, bitter and undeniable—a reunion not of sentiment but necessity. Yet something nagged at the edges of his awareness. There had never been a second bed, no space reserved for the brother he barely knew. The rebels had overreached. They had underestimated the scope of their predicament.
To host a single mechanized titan was reckless enough. To prepare for two? Impossible. And now, four COA teams loomed in the periphery, standard procedure unfolding with cold precision. The weight of his knowledge pressed against him, heavy, undeniable. Now, the real question remained. What to do with this newfound understanding—this revelation earned in Twilight?
Nolan tread carefully through his own mind, wary of the memories that lurked just beneath the surface. Every thought, every flicker of doubt or hesitation—laid bare for the world to see, dissected by unseen eyes. He held them close, restrained, unwilling to divulge too much, too soon. Yes, this woman may be his mother. But what was her intention? She wasn’t just a ghost from his past. She was a name scrawled into the pages of history—a documented terrorist. A woman responsible for the deaths of men he had fought beside, men he had called friends. He had come here to balance the scales, to return the favor written in blood. Was he supposed to simply turn away? Forget what had shaped him? What had made him?
For decades, this had been his purpose, his sole directive. Yet something gnawed at the edges of his certainty. Who had assigned this task? Who had woven this mission into the very fabric of his being?
HIVE? Had they known who she truly was? Were they still hunting her—still chasing ghosts from the hospital bombing all those years ago?Was that why he had abandoned his mission to the Pentagon with such ease? Or was there something else? Something deeper. Waiting. One Mind.
“Noel!” The voice sliced through the room, raw with urgency, thick with concern. It wasn’t a call but more of a warning.
“The feed’s been cut. We’ve lost our visual on the garage.” The words settled like a sudden pressure drop, stealing the air from the space. Nolan felt it instantly—the shift, the invisible ripple of unease threading through the room. Scraping chairs. Rushed footsteps. Bodies pressing toward terminals, desperate to retrieve lost streams of data. Another voice, tighter now, rattling with controlled panic— “We’re losing feeds. All over the city.” The quiet that followed was not true, it was the kind that suffocates, the kind that precedes disaster.
The lights stuttered, flickering like dying embers before surging back, their glow fragile, temporary. Nolan barely registered the shift—his senses were attuned to his mother’s voice, cutting through the gloom like a measured pulse. “We’re on backup power.” Stillness followed, thick and heavy, dragging seconds into something denser. Then, Noel spoke again.
“How long until the generators deplete?”
The answer came after a pause, a hesitation laced with unspoken urgency. “They’ll hold for an hour—maybe an hour and a half. But…” A trail in his voice, a realization settling into his tone like lead. “They cut the power. Which means they know what side of town we’re on.” Nolan could feel it—the invisible shift, the tightening noose.
“It won’t take them long to find the generators. They’re probably the only things still making noise out there.”
A breath. “Ten. Fifteen minutes, tops.” There was a slow inhale, measured, resigned. “Our window for exfiltration has likely closed.” The room held, now reduced to a hum of machinery, its only disturbance the rhythmic beeping of Nolan’s EKG—counting down, second by second.
A new weight settled over Nolan, pressing into him like the slow, inevitable descent of a heavy shroud. The path of inaction stretched before him, clear, uncomplicated—if he did nothing, no harm would come to him. The COA would arrive, engaging Noel and the terrorists, breaking him and his unit free. That would be that. And yet, beneath the cold logic of that truth, another question clawed at him. What kind of life would that be?
If his mother and Lil’lah were right, then everything—his existence, his purpose—had been a carefully constructed deception. A lie wrapped so tightly around him, it had become indistinguishable from truth. To return would be simple, effortless—like a hammer sliding back into its toolbox, awaiting the next hand to wield it. But was that all he was? A tool. A weapon. A mechanism built to be controlled. No.
What Nolan needed—what he craved—was choice. To wield himself, instead of being wielded. And somewhere within the code, buried in the update the man had mentioned earlier, lay the faintest glimmer of possibility. Maybe, just maybe, it could give him the power to decide.
Nolan’s voice broke through the air, measured but unwavering, cutting through the tension like a blade. “I think we all got off on the wrong foot. I’d like to apologize—start over.”The words drifted into the space between them, unchallenged, unanswered. He waited, ears straining against the quiet, but only the steady rhythm of his pulse returned his call. “Hello. My name is Nolan Graves.” Nothing. “I know who you are, Noel.” A pause. A flicker of hesitation in the air. Then—a gasp. Faint, fragile, unmistakable. His mother. He pressed forward, urgency rising now, sharpening the edges of his words. “We don’t have time. If what he says is true, COA is staging now—for a raid.” The atmosphere shifted, heavy with implications. The seconds stretched thin, suffocating. “We move now, or we prepare to fight.” Another breath, then the final blow—undeniable, absolute. “You need to free me from my restraints, or all of you are going to die here.”
