Chapter 1: Echoes of Screams
The van stank of old leather and burnt coffee. Kael’s three monitors cast a sickly blue glow over the gear strewn across the console—silenced pistols, coiled wire, a single cracked tablet with a factory schematic pulled up. Rowan’s shadow swallowed half the light.
“Thermal’s picking up life. Basement level. Three… fuck, four bodies. Huddled.” Kael’s voice was too loud in the close space. His fingers didn’t stop moving over the keys. “Low heat signatures. Probably scared shitless or drugged.”
Rowan didn’t look at the screen. He was staring through the tinted window at the decaying factory across the street. Moonlight caught on broken windows, turning them into jagged teeth. The place was a tomb. “I don’t give a shit about ‘probably’. Get me a definitive count. Are they moving?”
“Negative. Static. Like they’re… waiting.”
“They’re not waiting. They’re trapped.” Rowan’s voice was gravel. He checked the suppressor on his HK, the click satisfying and final. “You’re on overwatch. I see a single rat scurry out a side door you don’t flag, I’ll use your balls for garnish.”
Kael snorted, adjusting his headset. “Charming as ever, boss. Drone two is live. Feed’s on your lens.”
A faint green grid superimposed itself over Rowan’s vision as he blinked. The world became a video game—cold, structured, dead. He preferred it that way. Emotion was a luxury that got people killed.
“Move your asses,” he growled into the throat mic. “Quiet and clean. We’re ghosts.”
He slipped from the van, the night air hitting him like a physical slap. It was thick with the city’s rot—wet garbage, diesel, the underlying sweet-sour tang of decay. He melted against the chain-link fence, his dark clothes absorbing the shadows. Two other shapes—Mack and Simms—followed, silent as smoke.
The fence was clipped in ten seconds. They flowed through the gap.
The factory yard was a graveyard of industrial bones. Chunks of concrete, skeletal conveyor belts, the rusted skeleton of a forklift. Rowan moved through it, his boots making no sound on the gritty asphalt. His eyes tracked every potential cover, every dark window. The comms were silent in his ear. That was good. Noise meant problems.
He reached the side door—a steel slab hanging crooked on one hinge. The lock was ancient, snapped a decade ago by kids or addicts. He caught a scent as he edged it open. Mildew. Chemical waste. And beneath it, faint but unmistakable—the cloying, distressed scent of omega. Fear-sweat and helplessness. It coiled in his gut, a hot wire of rage.
He shoved it down. Rage was useless. Control was everything.
“In,” he whispered.
The interior was a cathedral of neglect. High ceilings lost in darkness, girders crossing like black ribs. Their night-vision painted the world in monochrome green. Puddles glistened on the concrete floor. Something scuttled in a far corner. Rats.
“Basement access is northeast corner,” Kael’s voice chirped in his ear. “Stairwell should be clear. No heat signatures on the main floor.”
“Should be.”
“Is. Drone’s got full coverage. You’re alone up there.”
Rowan didn’t trust should. He trusted his eyes, his nose, the prickling on the back of his neck. He led with his weapon raised, sweeping the corners. Mack and Simms flanked him, a well-oiled unit. They found the metal door, the stairs descending into utter black.
The smell got stronger.
Damp. Earth. Urine. And that omega distress, now layered with notes of pain and exhaustion. It was a physical thing down here, a fog.
“Kael. Life signs?”
“Same four. Clustered. Thirty feet ahead, through a doorway at the base of the stairs. One signature is… weaker. Fluctuating.”
Rowan took the stairs two at a time, silent. The basement was a labyrinth of peeling support columns and crumbling brick partitions. His light cut a narrow beam, catching motes of dust dancing in the air. The doorway was just an arch, no door left.
He held up a fist. Stop.
He listened. Not with his ears, but with his whole body. The vibration of the city above. The drip of water. And then—a whimper. Soft, stifled, utterly hopeless.
He rounded the arch, weapon ready.
The room was a cage. Literally. A large, rusted animal pen welded from rebar, shoved against the far wall. Inside, three figures huddled together on a pile of filthy blankets. A fourth lay apart, motionless. All young. All omegas. Their clothes were rags. The air reeked of their fear.
There was no guard. No traps. That was wrong.
“Clear,” Mack muttered, sweeping his light across the rest of the space. Empty. Just debris and stains.
Rowan approached the cage. The lock was a heavy padlock, new and shiny against the rust. He holstered his weapon. The closest omega—a boy with matted hair—flinched back, pressing into the others. Their eyes were huge, hollow in the beam of his light.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” Rowan said, his voice low. It still sounded like a threat. He couldn’t make it soft. “We’re getting you out.”
He yanked on the padlock. Solid. “Simms, bolt cutters.”
As Simms moved forward, Rowan’s gaze fixed on the one lying still. A girl. Her chest rose and fell, but barely. “The weak signature,” he said into the mic.
“Yeah, that’s her,” Kael confirmed, his usual cockiness gone. “Vitals are crap.”
Simms snipped the lock with a heavy crack. The sound echoed. Rowan shoved the cage door open. It screamed on its hinges.
The huddled omegas didn’t move. They were frozen, terrified of a different kind of trap.
“Mack, medic kit. Now.” Rowan stepped into the cage, his large frame making the space feel smaller. He knelt by the girl, ignoring the way the others shrank from him. Up close, it was worse. Bruises mottled her face. Her wrist was bent at a sickening angle. The scent of infection was thick.
He pressed two fingers to her throat. The pulse was a frantic, fading bird against his skin.
“Got company,” Kael’s voice snapped, sharp in his ear. “Vehicle. Approaching fast from the west. Black SUV. Two blocks out.”
Rowan’s head snapped up. “How the fuck did they get a ping?”
“No idea. They’re driving hot. Sixty seconds, max.”
“Extraction point. Now.” Rowan didn’t hesitate. He slid his arms under the girl, lifting her as carefully as he could manage. She was feather-light. “Mack, get the others moving. Simms, point. We go out the east side, through the old loading bay. Kael, bring the van to the alternate point. Don’t get made.”
Grunts of affirmation filled his ear. The three other omegas stumbled out, pushed gently but firmly by Mack. They moved like sleepwalkers.
Rowan carried the girl, her head lolling against his chest. Her breath was a shallow whistle. The rage was back, a cold, sharp blade in his veins. He used it for fuel, moving faster.
They hit the stairs just as the first set of headlights washed across the factory’s front, casting long, monstrous shadows through the broken windows. Tires crunched on gravel outside. Doors slammed.
“They’re here,” Kael hissed. “Four tangos. Armed.”
“We’re ghosts,” Rowan repeated, a bare whisper. “Move.”