The monitor had been dark for eleven minutes.
Adrian stood motionless in the center of his office, the datapad hanging loose in his fingers. The screen showed nothing but a flat grey interface where Jared’s biometric feed had once pulsed in steady green waveforms. Heart rate. Respiration. Neural activity. Location. All of it gone, erased from the SIU network without a trace.
He stared at the blank display, waiting for the system to re-establish the connection. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. The grey remained grey.
This isn’t a failure.
His thumb pressed the refresh command again. The interface blinked and returned the same empty field. No diagnostic error. No signal loss warning. Just absence. Someone had severed the link deliberately, which meant someone had known exactly where the transmitter was embedded and how to remove it without triggering any of the three redundant failsafes built into the housing.
The datapad lowered slowly to Adrian’s side. His jaw tightened as he reached for his coat, the fabric cool and familiar beneath his fingers. He pulled it on with mechanical precision, each motion deliberate, controlled. His hands did not shake. His breathing did not change. But something cold had begun to settle in his chest, spreading outward in slow, patient waves.
He left the office without locking the door.
The corridors of Draco’s Seattle headquarters stretched before him in their usual fluorescent hum. Agents passed in both directions, some nodding in recognition, others too absorbed in their own datapads to notice him. Adrian moved through them like a man walking a path he had already memorized, his footsteps steady, his gaze fixed ahead.
Kate’s office was on the fourth floor. He took the stairs.
The door to her workspace stood slightly ajar, a sliver of warm light cutting across the grey hallway floor. He could hear her voice from inside, low and clipped, speaking to someone on a comm. The words were indistinct, but the cadence was familiar: efficient, impatient, the rhythm of a woman who had no time for pleasantries.
He waited.
The conversation ended. A pause followed, then her voice again, sharper now. “Come in, Adrian.”
He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Kate sat behind her desk, her grey eyes already fixed on him with the kind of attention that missed nothing. Her jacket hung loose over her shoulders, the tie at her collar slightly askew. A half-empty cup of coffee sat near her elbow, the surface long gone cold.
She studied him for a long moment before speaking. “What's wrong?”
Adrian closed the door behind him. The latch clicked softly.
“Jared’s feed went dark,” he said. “Twenty minutes ago. No warning. No system failure.”
Kate’s expression did not change, but her hand moved to the coffee cup, her fingers wrapping around the ceramic.
“That’s not possible,” she said. “The transmitters are—”
“I know what they are,” Adrian interrupted. The words came out flatter than he intended. He drew a breath and steadied himself. “I designed the housing. I know what it takes to remove one.”
Kate set the cup down. The sound of ceramic against wood was loud in the quiet room.
“You think he did it himself.” It wasn’t a question.
Adrian’s gaze dropped to the floor. The carpet was a muted grey, worn thin in the path between her desk and the door. He had walked that path a hundred times, reporting results, requesting resources, defending decisions he had made in the field. But he had never stood here with this weight pressing against his ribs.
“He told me he was going to leave,” Adrian said. The words hung in the air between them.
Kate leaned back in her chair. The leather creaked beneath her weight. She did not look away from him. “When?”
“Last night.” Adrian’s throat tightened. He forced the next words out before the pressure could build further. “Said he couldn’t stay. Said the monitoring was—” He stopped. His fingers curled into a fist at his side. “I told him I wouldn’t be responsible for containing him anymore. Qhall would take over.”
Kate’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “You didn’t report this.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Adrian lifted his gaze to meet hers. The answer sat heavy on his tongue, bitter and honest. “Because I thought I could change his mind.”
Kate held his stare for a long moment. Then she exhaled, slow and controlled, and reached for her datapad. Her fingers moved across the screen with practiced efficiency, pulling up files, cross-referencing data. The light from the display cast sharp shadows across her face.
“Do you believe he’s becoming a Dark Anchor?” she asked.
The question struck him like a physical blow.
Adrian’s hand moved to his chest, pressing against the fabric of his coat, feeling the steady rhythm of his own heart beneath his palm. He had asked himself that same question every night for the past three weeks. He had examined Jared’s behavior, his speech patterns, the way his eyes sometimes drifted to places that weren’t there. He had documented every anomaly, every flicker of something unfamiliar in the man he had sworn to protect.
And he had found no clear answer.
“I don’t know what he’s become,” Adrian said. His voice was quiet. “I know what the Dark does to people. I know the signs. But Jared?” He paused, searching for words that refused to form. “He’s always been difficult to read. That hasn’t changed. But there’s something else now. Something I can’t identify.”
Kate set the datapad down. Her grey eyes were unreadable.
“You’ve been watching him for months,” she said. “You’ve had more access to him than anyone in this building. If you can’t tell me whether he’s a threat, then no one can.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“I know what I should have done,” he said. “I should have reported his intent to leave the moment he told me. I should have increased monitoring. I should have—” He stopped. His hands were trembling now. He pressed them flat against his thighs to still them. “I tried to protect him. And in doing so, I became part of the system that was destroying him.”
The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating.
Kate rose from her chair. She walked around the desk, her steps measured, deliberate, until she stood before him. She was shorter than him, but the force of her presence made the difference irrelevant.
“You gave him compassion,” she said.
Adrian’s throat burned. “It wasn’t enough.”
“It mattered.” Kate’s voice was firm, unyielding. “You think I don’t know what it costs to stay present with someone who’s falling apart? You think I don’t see the weight you carry every time you walk into this building?” She shook her head. “You couldn’t prevent this, Adrian. But you made his time here bearable. That counts for something.”
He wanted to believe her. He couldn’t. “What happens now?” he asked, but he already knew the protocols.
Kate turned back to her desk. She picked up the datapad again, her fingers already moving across the interface.
“I will assemble a tracking team,” she said. “Jared’s a high-priority retrieval target.”
Adrian’s stomach turned. “Retrieval,” he repeated.
“If he resists, the team will be authorized to contain him.” She looked at him over the datapad, making eye contact while she said it.
The word hit him like a blade between the ribs. Containment. “I want to be on the team.”
Kate studied him for a long moment.
“You understand what you’re asking for,” she said. “If we find him, and he resists, you may be the one who has to make the call.”
Adrian’s fingers curled into fists at his sides.
“I made him a promise,” he said. “I told him he wouldn’t be alone.” His voice cracked, just barely, before he forced it back under control. “If someone has to find him, it should be me. If someone has to contain him, it should be me. I owe him that much.”
Kate held his gaze. Then she nodded, once, and turned back to her datapad.
“I’ll prepare the team,” she said. “We’ll move within the hour.”
