[Elias]
The church came out of the storm the way a confession did—sudden, unavoidable, lit wrong.
Callum eased the vehicle off the narrow road and onto wet stone, tyres whispering through puddles that reflected the ambulance lights in broken red-blue shards. The rain hit the windscreen like thrown gravel. Wind worried at the trees hard enough to make the branches look frantic, as if even the sky had found a reason to panic.
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Elias kept his eyes on the steps.
Not because he was religious.
Because this was where the night had decided to gather its consequences.
The ambulance doors were open. A medic’s silhouette moved in the glare. Two doctors guided a small figure down the steps between them—careful, practised, efficient in the way you were when the body you were supporting could fold at any moment.
Margaret.
Her hair was plastered to her scalp. Her face looked too pale under the lights, skin drawn tight over bone. She held herself upright with something older than pride—sheer refusal—one hand braced on a doctor’s arm as if the arm were a railing and not a person.
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Elias’s chest tightened.
He had asked for this.
He had made the request like it was logistics—send her here, keep her conscious, I need her present—and his body had accepted the lie because it was easier than looking directly at what he was doing to her.
Callum, hands still on the wheel, said nothing. The rookie’s gaze tracked the doctors with a soldier’s precision, not curiosity—threat assessment baked into his first instinct now, whether he wanted it or not.
Elias saw it anyway. The micro-flicker of alarm when Margaret’s knees buckled for half a second. The way Callum’s jaw tightened as if he could hold the woman upright from inside the car.
Good, Elias thought. Stay like that. Stay awake.
His head rang.
Not pain exactly—not yet. Pressure, high and cruel behind his eyes, like a frequency searching for a place to settle. The instrument lights inside the vehicle seemed too sharp at their edges. A thin whine threaded through his skull, rising when he looked at the steps, rising when he looked at Margaret.
And then he saw her.
A figure in the doorway—backlit by the church’s interior, hair dark against the pale rectangle of warm light. She stood very still, as if movement might invite the storm inside.
Recognition hit him before thought did.
Alice.
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Not his memory.
The name rose the way it had that night on the tarmac — tangled in panic that wasn’t his, threaded through a child’s desperate need.
Older now than the image lodged inside him. Not the teenager with the breathless voice, the fond exasperation. This woman carried years in her posture—shoulders that had learned what it meant to hold someone up and not be thanked for it, eyes that had seen death on tarmac and still walked forward.
The ringing surged.
Elias blinked hard. The doorway held.
No vision flicker. No overlay.
Real.
He forced his breathing down into his chest, shallow enough not to disturb the pressure.
Callum glanced sideways. “Sir…?”
“I see her,” Elias said, and immediately regretted it because it sounded like madness.
Callum’s eyes narrowed. “See who?”
Elias didn’t answer. There wasn’t time to dismantle what his own mind was doing. There was only the task in front of him, the one he had driven toward like a penitent toward a blade.
A tone sounded in the car—muted, proprietary. The secure channel line pulsed.
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Elias lifted the handset and pressed it to his ear.
“Control,” he said.
The voice came through compressed and calm, with the slight edge of someone speaking from inside a room where even breathing was monitored. “We’ve got a breach. Internal.”
Elias’s hand tightened on the handset. The ringing behind his eyes sharpened into a thin spike. “Define.”
“A whistleblower,” Control said. “He’s bypassed our chain. He’s in the Aegis Vault—right now—speaking directly to the Prime Minister and the President.”
The words landed like a punch to the sternum.
Aegis Vault wasn’t a place you referenced lightly. You didn’t say it at all unless the world had already started breaking.
Elias stared through the windscreen at the ambulance lights bleeding across wet stone.
“What did he reveal?” he asked.
A pause, then: “Veylan. The outage. Your reappearance in Suffolk.”
Elias’s throat went dry. “How much?”
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“Enough that they’re treating Nightwatch as a strategic variable,” Control replied. “Not a tool. Not an asset. A liability they have to understand before it gets too hot for them.”
The pressure in Elias’s skull flared hot. He swallowed it down, not because it helped, but because the alternative was collapsing in the seat with the handset still to his ear.
“Who is it?” he said, already knowing there were only a handful of people who could carry the right access into that room without being shot on sight.
Control didn’t soften it. “Nathaniel Cross.”
For a second, Elias couldn’t hear the rain.
His mind flashed to a face at a distance, the kind you saw in corridors, on screens, on a roster you signed off without reading too closely because you were tired and you trusted the system to sort itself.
Cross.
Elias’s tongue pressed hard against the back of his teeth. The ringing became a roar.
“He did what,” Elias said, low and lethal.
“He’s claiming urgency,” Control replied. “He’s claiming compromised channels. He’s claiming the situation in Suffolk is already spreading into allied jurisdiction.”
Elias’s fingers shook once. He tightened them until they stopped.
“What else?” he asked.
Control’s voice dipped half a register. “Their sources have flagged interest in the girl.”
Elias went still.
The air in the vehicle seemed to thin out, as if the cabin had lost oxygen without the seals breaking.
“What did you just say?” Elias asked.
“The PM and President were briefed with the child’s identity,” Control said. “Skye Harper.”
The name hit the inside of Elias’s skull like a bell.
The ringing became unbearable.
He closed his eyes for one beat and saw—not a memory—the shape of her on the tarmac. Small. Too still. Rain collecting in the fabric of her clothes. The moment before breath returned, when the world had paused as if waiting for permission to continue.
Elias opened his eyes.
He didn’t need to ask who had done that.
“Cross,” he said, the word coming out flat with contained violence.
Control didn’t contradict him. “Yes.”
The word fuck left Elias’s mouth like a prayer gone wrong.
Callum stiffened in the driver’s seat, eyes flicking to him and away again, as if he’d heard the sound but didn’t yet know where to put it.
Elias pulled the handset away for a second, breathed through the spike of pain behind his eyes, then forced his voice back into control.
“Thank you,” he said, clipped. “Keep eyes on it. All updates. Immediately.”
“We are,” Control answered. “And Elias—”
“Not now,” Elias said, and cut the line.
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The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was loaded. Callum’s breathing was the only human sound in the car, steady but too deliberate, like he was controlling it so he didn’t fall apart.
Callum looked at him. “Everything okay?”
Elias stared at the church steps.
Margaret was halfway inside now, guided by the doctors, her small frame swallowed by the doorway and the waiting warmth beyond. Alice had stepped aside to let them pass, one hand braced on the doorframe like she was holding the building upright.
“No,” Elias said quietly. Then he added, because Callum had earned it: “I lied, Callum. I’m sorry.”
Callum let out a breath that was almost a laugh but didn’t have humour in it. “Yeah. I kinda guessed.” He swallowed, eyes forward. “Hypoxia isn’t… really a good explanation for how you came back to life at an embassy.”
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Elias’s mouth twitched. It might have been a smile if his head wasn’t splitting in two.
“Well,” Elias said, voice thin with pain, “that is kind of a gift… and a curse.”
Callum’s hands tightened on the wheel. “How did this happen?….How…How could you come back?”
Elias stared at the church again, at the wet steps and the smoke-coloured sky beyond them, and felt something in him tilt—something exhausted, ancient.
“To be honest,” he said, “I don’t know.” He exhaled slowly. “It’s not like I made a ritual. I didn’t… sacrifice anything. I just—” His throat tightened, unexpectedly. “I just got it. And I hated that I got it.”
Elias didn’t look at Callum when he answered. He couldn’t. If he met the rookie’s eyes, the question might turn into something Elias didn’t have words for. The pressure behind his eyes surged again, searching for a crack—so he did what he always did when the world started to tilt. He reached for the one thing that still made him feel real.
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket with fingers that didn’t want to obey him.
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A little girl in a coat too big for her, hair pinned back, eyes bright in a way the world hadn’t yet learned how to punish.
He handed it to Callum.
Callum hesitated, like touching the past required consent. Then he took it.
“Who is she?” Callum asked.
Elias watched the photo in the rookie’s hands as if it weighed more than paper.
“She was… she was my sister. The youngest in my family,” he said.
His jaw tightened. He had to swallow before the next words would come.
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“She’s my reason.” His voice thinned, not weak — stretched. “Why I keep going. So no one else suffers like she did.”
He stopped.
The rain filled the silence.
Callum didn’t speak.
Elias stared at the photograph as if it might answer something for him.
“…Like so many did,” he said quietly.
His throat worked once.
“…Like I did.”
Callum looked up, eyes cautious. “What was her name?”
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Elias’s mouth opened and something in him buckled.
“Anna,” he said, and the name scraped his throat raw. He inhaled sharply, a sound that wanted to be a sob and refused. “She loved drawing. She loved reading. She would have been—”
Pain knifed behind his eyes, sudden and vicious, the ringing pitching higher until it felt like it might shatter his teeth.
Elias blinked hard. The cabin pitched slightly, as if the car had shifted under him.
Callum’s voice sharpened. “Sir—are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Elias lied automatically, then corrected, because he was tired of lying and Callum was looking at him like he wanted to believe him and couldn’t. “Well…I’m not. But I’m functional.”
Callum’s gaze flicked to the photo again. His brow furrowed, recognition blooming in slow horror as his eyes tracked the era in the clothes, the paper quality, the way history sat in the image like smoke.
He handed it back with care.
Elias took it and, without meaning to, his sleeve shifted.
He slid the photograph back into his inside pocket with hands that didn’t quite work.
The inside of his forearm caught the dim dashboard light.
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Numbers.
Faded, but still there—ink pressed into skin long enough ago that it should have disappeared, yet it clung like an accusation. A prisoner’s identifier, stamped into him by a system that had needed his body to be less than human for the machinery to run smoothly.
Callum’s stare snapped to it.
His face emptied—shock wiping everything else away.
“That can’t be,” Callum whispered. “That means you’re—”
Elias’s head surged with pain again, harder, the ringing becoming a roar. His vision swam. The church steps blurred. For half a heartbeat, the world threatened to slide sideways into darkness.
He clenched his jaw and forced the next words through.
“I’m sorry,” Elias said, voice breaking at the edges. “There’s no time.” He leaned forward, one hand bracing on the dashboard because the world wouldn’t hold steady. “You need to get me to the church.”
Callum’s voice shook. “Elias—”
Elias grabbed his wrist—just once, firm enough to anchor. “Callum.” He waited until the rookie’s eyes locked to his. “I need you to protect the girl and her family if I go down. If I fall unconscious. If I don’t wake up when I should.” His throat burned. “I promise I’ll explain.”
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Callum swallowed hard. Nodded once. “Okay,” he said, and it sounded like a vow he didn’t understand yet. “Okay.”
He shoved the door open into the storm.
Wind slammed rain into the cabin. Callum rounded fast, boots splashing on stone, and yanked Elias’s door.
Elias tried to stand.
His legs disagreed.
Callum got under him—awkward, desperate, solid—hauling him up with a grunt that was half effort, half fear. Elias’s weight sagged against him, heavier than he should have been for a man who looked thirty.
They staggered toward the steps.
Headlights swung across the wet churchyard.
An unmarked police car rolled in behind them and stopped hard enough to throw up a fan of water across the yard. The headlights cut through the rain in a flat white sweep, catching the church steps, the slick stone, the ambulance glow bleeding red-blue across everything like a bruise.
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The driver’s door opened and Jack got out, jacket already soaked through, moving with that grim efficiency of someone who’d learned the difference between panic and urgency. He saw Callum first—wrong kit, wrong car—then his gaze snapped to the weight Callum was carrying.
“Oh my God,” Jack breathed, and he was already crossing the yard. “Alright—alright. I’ve got him. Give me his other side.”
He got under Elias without ceremony, bracing shoulder to ribs, taking the load like he’d done it a hundred times and hated that he still could.
Behind Jack, the passenger door opened and Jolie stepped out into the rain, one hand up against the wind, hair immediately plastering to her face. Linda followed—slower, as if her body hadn’t decided it was allowed to move yet. She shut the door too carefully. Her eyes were already on the steps, on the men, on the half-conscious figure between them.
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Jolie took one look at Elias’s face and then at Callum’s expression and her posture changed—alert, ready, the kind of readiness you got from years of stepping into other people’s disasters without flinching.
Linda didn’t look at the ambulance.
She didn’t look at the church.
She looked at Elias.
Recognition hit her like impact. Not the soft kind. The kind that stole your breath and replaced it with a cold, precise dread.
“No,” she said, and it wasn’t denial. It was refusal. “Elias?”
The name landed wrong in the storm—too familiar, too charged—like it belonged to a memory that should have stayed buried.
Elias’s mouth moved, a faint pull at the corner like he was trying to be kind even through the pain. “Hi…” he managed, voice slurred and thin. “Linda… long time no—”
The sentence never finished.
His body went rigid.
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It wasn’t gradual. It wasn’t weakness. It was as if something had seized the wiring inside him and pulled.
Jack felt it first—the sudden lock in muscle under his grip. “No, no—” he muttered, instinct kicking in before fear could.
Elias’s head snapped back, jaw clenching hard enough to make the tendons stand out in his neck. The ringing inside his skull detonated into white. For a fraction of a second, the world became light without shape.
Then he went down.
Callum swore, the word ripped out of him raw. He barely managed to keep Elias from striking the stone steps as the seizure hit fully—violent, indiscriminate, body jerking with brutal force that had nothing to do with choice.
“Easy—easy—” Jack was already dropping with him, rolling Elias onto his side, one hand cupping the back of his head to keep it off the ground, the other trying to control limbs that didn’t belong to him anymore. “Don’t fight it. Just let him ride it.”
Callum knelt hard in the rain, hands shaking despite everything he’d told himself about staying steady. This was different. This wasn’t a suspect or a hostage or a drill. This was the man who had just asked him to protect a child.
“Elias!” he shouted over the storm, uselessly. “Stay with me—”
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Jolie was beside them now, already counting. “Forty seconds,” she muttered. “Keep him on his side.”
Jack adjusted his grip without argument.
Linda hadn’t moved.
Rain streamed down her face, down her neck, soaking into her clothes. She stared at Elias on the ground like she was watching a second impossible thing happen in the same night.
The man from the hospital five years ago.
Margaret’s supposed grandson.
The man whose name Skye had screamed before slipping into a coma.
The man who—according to records—should not be alive.
And yet.. Now he was convulsing on church steps like his body was paying for something no one else could see.
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“Get him inside,” Jack barked, voice sharp with command. Not panic. Command. “We’re not doing this out here.”
Callum didn’t hesitate. He shifted position, waiting for the worst of the seizure to crest. When Elias’s body slackened—just slightly, just enough—Callum got his arms under him again.
“He’s burning up,” Callum said, breath tight.
“I know,” Jack answered. “Move.”
Between them, they hauled Elias upright again—dead weight now, muscles spent, head lolling forward. His face looked too young for what his body had just done. Too young for the number inked into his skin. Too young for the grief that lived behind his eyes.
Linda stepped forward then, finally, like something inside her had unclenched.
She reached out—not to stop them, not to question—but to steady his shoulder as they passed.
Her touch was light.
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Reverent.
As if she were afraid he might vanish.
They crossed the threshold together, storm left hammering against old stone as the church doors swung inward.
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and then Add to home screen.