An arrogant kickboxing champion challenged a quiet plumber to a full-contact fight—and realized his mistake the second his fist missed.

Damon moved through the dense hemlock and black pine forest without making a sound.

Every step was deliberate, landing heel-to-toe on wet pine needles, his knees slightly bent, his center of gravity aligned directly over his hips. The physical habits of a decade of jungle and mountain reconnaissance were as natural to him as breathing. He was soaked to the bone, his dark tactical sweater heavy with water, but his core body temperature remained steady, fueled by the cold adrenaline of survival.

In his right hand, the plumber's wrench remained firm. In his left pocket, he carried the only piece of intel he had managed to pull from Mercer's terminal before the crane fell: an encrypted micro-drive he had ripped from the server rack with his bare hands.

He needed a workstation to crack it. But more than that, he needed to assess the threat to Pine Ridge.

Valeria Vance was not a blunt instrument like Mercer's rent-a-cops. She was the architect of Operation Iron Gate—a shadow contingency Damon had refused to execute seven years ago, leading directly to his staged disappearance and his quiet life as a tradesman. She had systematically tracked Mercer’s blundering pursuit of Ghost-Six, allowing Mercer to flush Damon into the open so that she could finish the job with surgical precision.

And she knew about Pine Ridge.

Damon halted behind the broad trunk of an ancient oak tree, two miles east of the lake. He raised his hand, testing the wind.

North-northwest. Carrying the smell of wet soil, decomposed leaves, and—faintly, half a mile out—the distinct chemical taint of synthetic ozone.

Drones.

High-altitude multi-rotor surveillance platforms were already sweeping the canopy with thermal optics. Under heavy foliage and cold rain, his body heat would register as a faint anomaly unless he masked it.

Damon knelt by the edge of a sluggish mountain stream. Without hesitation, he scooped up handfuls of freezing, mineral-rich mud from the stream bed, smearing it thickly across his face, his neck, his hands, and over the shoulders of his clothing. The cold stung like needles against his bruised skin, but the mud created an immediate thermal barrier between his body and the atmospheric sensors above.

He rose, now looking like a creature sculpted directly from the forest floor itself.

A distant hum buzzed through the canopy. Damon froze, melting against the oak tree. Twenty feet above the hemlock branches, a disc-shaped reconnaissance drone glided past, its blue optical array sweeping the ground in slow, concentric circles. It paused directly above him for five agonizing seconds.

Damon did not blink. His breathing slowed to four counts in, four counts hold, four counts out—a heart-rate suppression technique used to lower vascular heat bloom.

The drone found nothing but wet mud and bark, buzzing lazily away toward the lake.

Damon exhaled softly. He couldn't go back to his cabin; that was compromised long ago. He couldn't go to the local hardware store or his workshop. Every known associate would be under surveillance.

Except one.

A face flashed in his mind: Julian Ross. The arrogant young kickboxing champion who had challenged him on the mat at Apex striking gym weeks ago. The boy who had tried to knock off Damon's head with a spinning wheel kick, only to be dismantled with effortless precision and taught the deepest lesson of his life.

Julian had come to respect Damon not as an enemy, but as an unattainable standard of discipline. More importantly, Julian operated entirely outside the military intelligence grid. Valeria’s algorithms would search Damon's past military links, his dead squadmates, his former handlers. She wouldn't look at an arrogant, rich kid living in a gated loft on the edge of the industrial district.

Damon turned his compass bearing east.