Chapter2

Biting cold water dripped from my chin, failing to extinguish the bloodlust burning in my eyes.

Pushing through the heavy revolving doors of the Michelin restaurant, I stepped into the San Francisco night. The chilling fog, heavy with the metallic stench of the tide, snaked down my soaked collar.

I needed to get back. Back to that cramped, three-hundred-square-foot rat hole.

It was my only air-raid shelter in this suffocating city, the only place I could breathe.

The motion-sensor lights in my rundown apartment building were broken, as usual. But tonight, blinding white light bled from the end of the corridor.

I froze.

The door was ajar. The brass deadbolt had been violently drilled out; metal shavings glittered like snow on my frayed welcome mat.

Obnoxious electronic sound effects and a woman’s shrill, theatrical commentary echoed from inside my room.

I shoved the door wide open.

Three massive ring lights instantly seared my retinas. Thick black cables coiled across my floorboards like vipers.

A cameraman hoisting a Steadicam immediately shoved his lens inches from my face.

"Hey fam, look! The owner of this 'bottom-feeder trash-den' is finally back!"

Olivia stood dead center in the blinding glare, draped in a haute couture trench coat. She gripped a microphone, flashing a million-dollar, utterly synthetic smile at the camera.

Behind her, my meager closet had been gutted. An assistant was literally sweeping my few personal belongings into a heavy-duty black trash bag.

On a field monitor in the corner, the livestream chat was a blur of scrolling text.

Three hundred thousand concurrent viewers! the assistant excitedly mouthed to Olivia.

"Olivia." My voice dropped to a gravelly register I barely recognized. "What the hell are you doing?"

She didn’t even spare me a glance, keeping her eyes locked on the lens. "To thank you guys for the massive donations, we’re doing something edgy today—an exclusive teardown of a total loser’s life. Let’s see just how worthless this guy's existence really is."

A burly stagehand shoved past my shoulder, marching straight toward the chipped wooden desk in the center of the room.

My pupils contracted to pinpricks.

Sitting on that desk was a dark green, waterproof military lockbox.

"Don't touch that." I took a step forward.

Two hulking bodyguards immediately intercepted me, crossing their thick arms to form a wall of muscle.

Olivia caught my reaction. Her eyes lit up with the predatory thrill of discovering a viral goldmine.

"Looks like we’ve found his 'precious'." She clicked over in her stilettos, tapping her acrylic nails against the steel.

"Don't. Touch. It." My voice rasped. Every muscle in my body coiled tight as a tripwire.

Crack. Her assistant handed her a pry bar, utterly destroying the lockbox's latch with a violent wrench.

The scent of aged paper, mingling with the phantom, metallic tang of cordite, bled into the room.

Olivia wrinkled her nose in disgust. Pinching it between two fingers, she pulled out a tarnished brass pocket watch.

The crystal face had shattered long ago; the hands were frozen forever at 03:14.

The exact minute Miller bled out in my arms. The watch was a family heirloom, pressed into his hands by his dying mother.

"I thought it might be an antique," Olivia scoffed, dangling it before the camera. "Turns out it’s just a rusted piece of junk with the plating flaking off. Fake vintage trash."

"Put it down." My breathing grew ragged. My fingernails dug crescent moons into my palms.

"Hoarding worthless trash like this is just a biohazard."

She casually flicked her wrist.

The brass watch tumbled through the air in a cruel arc, smashing violently into the far corner.

Crack.

The sound of microscopic gears shattering struck my eardrums like a sledgehammer. The yellowed faceplate rolled pathetically into a dust-choked floorboard crack.

My heart skipped a violent beat.

Before I could tear through the bodyguards, Olivia yanked the last item from the box.

A leather-bound field logbook. Its edges were scorched, the cover permanently stained with dark, rusted patches of dried blood.

Every single page inside was crammed with KIA rosters and the frantic, agonizing confessions I had bled onto the paper during countless sleepless nights.

"And what’s this? An edgy teenager's cringe diary?" She flipped it open.

The chat on the monitor exploded into a frenzy:

"Eww, so gross, burn it!"

"I can smell the broke-loser stench through the screen!"

"RIP IT UP! Rip it up and I'll drop a Yacht dono!"

Under the harsh glare of the ring lights, a few photocopied Death Notifications fluttered out from the pages.

"Disgusting."

Olivia pulled her hand back in revulsion.

The logbook—a ledger bearing the crushing weight of hundreds of human souls—plummeted straight to the floor.

It landed dead center in the pile of trash the stagehand had just swept up. Filthy, muddy mop water instantly seeped into the cover, soaking right through the tarnished silver eagle insignia.

"Alright fam, that wraps up today’s 'trash disposal'..." Olivia purred, doing her sign-off for the camera.

The chaotic chatter, the hum of the lighting rigs, the incessant chiming of donation alerts—in a fraction of a second, all of it evaporated from my reality.

Deep within my auditory cortex, all that remained were the echoing screams of civilians burning alive in that final, doomed campaign.

I blindly shoved past the guards, my knees crashing heavily onto the dust-coated floorboards.

I knelt beneath the blinding studio lights. I knelt beneath the digital mockery of three hundred thousand strangers.

Reaching out with trembling hands, I gently, reverently, lifted the logbook from the filth and muck.

Grime stained my hands. Foul water had bled right through Miller’s name.

I frantically scrubbed at the page with my sleeve, but the ink only smeared, blurring the letters further.

I had convinced myself that enduring this daily humiliation was my rightful punishment.

I thought that if I just ground my own dignity into the dirt, I might buy a single ounce of peace for my damned soul.

But I was wrong.

My submission hadn't bought me redemption. It had only rolled out the red carpet for these bottom-feeding parasites to desecrate the honor I had sworn my life to protect.

They had defiled a martyr's legacy. They had dragged the names of the fallen through the mud.

Head bowed, I stared at the rusted bloom of dried blood on the leather cover.

The phantom scent of burning cordite—an instinct I had suppressed deep in my lungs for years—surged into my bloodstream, burning its way back into my brain inch by agonizing inch.

My fingers stopped trembling.

I slowly closed the logbook and pressed it flat against my heart.

When I finally raised my head into the glare of the ring lights, the cowardly, broken low-level analyst was dead. Left behind in that filthy puddle on the floor.

The lethal instincts of a tactical commander, dormant for years, violently snapped awake.