Chapter 3 3

The tent was white, blinding, a bubble of light in the dark woods. Bryce Hogan opened his eyes to the scream of a heart monitor and the smell of antiseptic failure.

He moved before he thought. His hand shot out, caught the wrist of the man leaning over him, sent him sprawling. Syringe and all. The crash of the instrument tray was satisfying. The silence that followed was better.

"Sir-" someone started.

Bryce sat up. The world tilted, then steadied. He was on a gurney, strapped down, the kind with leather restraints they'd used when he was twelve and the fever first hit. He hated leather restraints. He hated being touched.

He looked at his left wrist.

There was a bandage. No-not a bandage. A strip of fabric, dark, fraying, tied in a knot that looked like it had been pulled from a garbage bag. It smelled. It smelled like cheap detergent and discount stores and everything he'd spent thirty years avoiding.

Bryce's stomach heaved. He ripped the fabric off with two fingers, pinching hard, and threw it on the ground. He wanted to burn it. He wanted to burn his own hand for touching it.

Underneath, a scar. Fresh, pink, already healing. A clean line, surgical precision, crossing his vein.

Memory flooded back. The woods. The cold. Hands holding him down, a blade, the invasion of his body. And then-heat. Unbearable heat, like being submerged in lava, like every frozen cell in his body suddenly remembering fire.

He looked at the scar again. Someone had cut him open. Someone had put something in his blood.

"Cash."

His voice was gravel. His throat was dry. He didn't care.

The tent flap opened. Cash Palmer walked in, six-four, built like a linebacker, wearing the expression he always wore when Bryce had done something violent. Concern, masked as professionalism.

"Sir. You're stable. The doctors-"

"Fired. All of them." Bryce swung his legs off the gurney. He was naked under the hospital gown, gooseflesh rising on his arms. He ignored it. "The toxin?"

"Gone, sir. Completely. The medical team is calling it-"

"I don't care what they're calling it." Bryce stood. The room spun. He waited for it to stop. "Someone was here. In the woods. A woman."

He closed his eyes. He tried to see her. But his memory was fragments: pressure, heat, the smell of vanilla underneath the chemical stink. And a shape. A hood. A pattern on the back, white on black, something that looked like-

"A skull," he said. "A skull on her jacket. Hood up. Find her."

Cash didn't argue. He never argued. He pulled out his phone and started typing.

Bryce walked to the medical tray. He found the alcohol wipes, the good ones, individually wrapped. He tore open six of them and scrubbed his wrist until the skin turned red, then pink, then raw. He could still feel the ghost of her fingers. He could still smell the detergent.

"Sir, we should get you to the hospital. Full workup. Your condition-"

"My condition is why I need her." Bryce dropped the wipes in the biohazard bin. He found his clothes, folded on a chair, his coat ruined, his shirt stained. He dressed anyway, his fingers shaking slightly as he worked the buttons. "She did something. To my blood. I felt it. The cold... it feels different. Find her. I need to know why."

He looked at Cash. Cash looked back, expression unchanged.

"She's a variable," Bryce said. "Variables get eliminated or contained. I want her contained."

"Yes, sir."

Bryce stepped out of the tent. The night air hit him, cold and clean. Above, three drones hummed, thermal cameras sweeping the tree line. Beyond them, the sound of more helicopters, his own, arriving from the city.

Fifty men in tactical gear stood at attention. SUVs lined the dirt road, engines running, headlights cutting through the dark.

Bryce walked to the nearest vehicle. He didn't look back at the tent, at the strip of fabric still lying in the mud. He would have it burned later. He would have the ground sterilized.

He got in the back seat. Leather. Clean. Cold.

"Sir?" Cash stood at the door.

"Lock down all major roads out of Silver Creek. Contact our assets at every bus station and regional airport within a hundred miles. I want all surveillance footage from the last three hours pulled. Get the drone team airborne and have them run thermal scans along the forest perimeter. I want every heat signature that doesn't belong."

"And if we find her?"

Bryce looked out the window. The woods were dark. She was in there somewhere, or she'd already run. The woman with the skull on her back and the hands that could burn.

"Bring her to me," he said. "Alive. I want to know what she put in my blood."

The door closed. The SUV pulled onto the road, and the convoy followed, a black snake winding through the trees.