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

Damon didn't fall to his death.

As he dropped past the second-story brick facade, his hand shot out with predatory accuracy, grabbing the rusted steel ladder of the old industrial grain chute that ran along the warehouse exterior.

*CLANG!*

The shock pulled violently against his injured shoulder, tearing open the stitches on his old combat scar, but his grip was iron. He absorbed the swing with his legs, kicked off the brickwork, and dropped the remaining ten feet into the open bed of a slow-moving freight train crawling along the spur track toward the lumber depot.

He landed in a knee-high mound of damp wood chips, rolling to absorb the impact.

A second later, Julian hit the adjacent car, coughing and sputtering as he sank into the cedar sawdust. Damon was on his feet instantly, pulling the young fighter down below the metal rim of the freight car just as the Little Bird's spotlight swept over the train tracks.

The train chugged steadily through the rain, carrying them away from the burning warehouse and deeper into the maze of the industrial rail corridor.

Julian lay on his back in the sawdust, staring up at the dark sky, his chest heaving as if he had just fought ten championship rounds without water. His knuckles were bloody, his clothes ruined, and his hands shook uncontrollably.

"You... you jumped," Julian breathed, his voice cracking. "You jumped off a three-story building."

"Controlled descent," Damon said, kneeling by the side of the car and keeping his eyes fixed on the receding lights of the warehouse. "You telegraphed your fear. If you had hesitated half a second longer, her sniper would have taken your shoulder."

Julian turned his head to look at Damon. The older man was bleeding from his jaw, his dark hair plastered to his forehead with rain and grime, but his pulse was steady. He was calmly stripping the magazine from the captured Glock, checking the remaining rounds, and sliding it back into the well with a smooth, mechanical *click*.

"Who is she?" Julian asked, his voice shaking. "Who was that woman?"

"Valeria Vance," Damon said quietly. "Director of Special Projects for the Trident Directorate. Mercer was just a sub-contractor. Valeria is the architect."

"And you?" Julian’s eyes drilled into Damon. "You aren't just some veteran who fixes water heaters, are you? No plumber moves like that. No retired soldier moves like that. Who the hell are you, Damon?"

Damon paused. He looked down at his own hands—scarred across the knuckles, rough from steel wool, wrench work, and decades of violence.

"I was Ghost-Six," Damon said, the name sounding foreign even to his own ears after six years of silence. "A member of an elite deep-reconnaissance unit that was erased from official Department of Defense records in 2018. We were the ones sent in when diplomacy failed and covert operations became too dirty for the CIA."

Julian swallowed hard. "Why did you quit?"

"Because they stopped killing monsters," Damon replied, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper that chilled Julian to the bone. "And started manufacturing them. Iron Gate was a program to destabilize domestic infrastructure to justify privatized military security contracts. When I refused to trigger a blackout in Chicago, they bombed my unit’s safehouse. I crawled out of the rubble, took a dead man's identity, and bought a plumbing truck in Pine Ridge."

He looked at Julian.

"I thought if I fixed people’s pipes, cleared their drains, and kept my head down, the ledger would balance out. But rot doesn't disappear just because you paint over the drywall. It festers."

The freight train began to slow as it approached the rail yard junction near Blackwood Ridge, five miles outside town.

"We get off here," Damon said, rising to a crouch.

"Where are we going?" Julian asked, scrambling to his feet, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his bruised ribs. "You said she has the roads sealed!"

Damon stepped to the edge of the freight car, looking toward the dark outline of the Appalachian ridgeline in the distance.