That night, the wooden floor of my study rumbled softly as I pried open a hidden plank I had long believed had died along with the past. Beneath it lay a worn black suitcase, sealed by two rusted steel clasps. My hands trembled as I unlocked it—not from the cold, but because I knew: the world I once left behind was about to reclaim what was left of my sanity.
Inside it, fragments of another self—old maps, creased so deeply their folds looked like veins; flash drives containing digital remnants of black operations that never made it into history books; and a semi-automatic pistol I never got the chance to use back when I chose a peaceful life. And money. Her money. The savings she'd kept, hoping they'd be used to build a future for our child—not to chase ghosts.
"Forgive me," I whispered, clutching a bundle of metal and paper that now felt heavier than vengeance itself. "I can't wait for a miracle in the ICU. I have to make one."
I reopened contacts that had been sealed for years, hidden behind encryption so paranoid even a government system would've surrendered trying. I called only one name—and not a legal one. He didn't exist in civil records, had no birth certificate, no trace of legal identity. But in the shadow world where secrets were traded at a higher price than lives, he was known by one word: Maeve.
Twenty-four hours later, a helicopter cut through layers of night clouds, carrying my stiff, cold body to a city absent from any conventional map. The wind whipped the windows like an impatient lash, and the sound of the rotor blades echoed like the heartbeat of a hunter who had long thirsted for blood.
I sat in silence, draped in a leather coat blackened by time. Beneath my jacket, old wounds breathed again—not on my skin, but deep in my chest.
The helicopter landed hard on an unofficial strip—just flattened earth surrounded by brush. An old warehouse stood a few meters ahead, cloaked in thin mist and the scent of wet metal. And there he stood. As if not a single second had passed since we last met.
His hair was shorter now, silver like a sword's edge. His military jacket hung loosely, and those eyes… the ones that could read death algorithms from the dilation of a pupil, now stared at me without mercy.
"Maeve," I said, barely recognizing the voice coming from my own throat.
His grin formed slowly, curling like a cat who already knows its prey.
"Long time no see, The legend, Mr. Exsanguine."
I held my breath.
The world I had once cast far away was now welcoming me back—and this time, I did not come as a guest.