The night was sharp with rain. It slicked against the cracked asphalt, turned the gutters into rivers of filth, and drowned the city in a silver haze.Fowler Reddington stood at the edge of a crumbling overpass, his coat drawn tight against the storm. The streets below were alive with engines and horns, but up here the world felt quiet, isolated. A vantage point. A battlefield reduced to lines of light and shadow.He had chosen this place for a reason. Some battles demanded spectacle. Others required silence. Tonight was the latter.A black sedan rolled into view, headlights slicing through the curtain of rain. It slowed, stopped beneath the overpass, and idled. A man stepped out. Tall, lean, wrapped in a trench coat too expensive for these streets.Fowler’s jaw tightened. He knew that silhouette. Colonel Marcus Hale. Once his commanding officer. Once his mentor. Once a friend. Now, perhaps, something far worse.Fowler descended the stairs with measured steps, his boots striking wet c

Rain sheeted across the ruined street, washing blood and gunpowder into the gutters. The storm did not relent, it hammered the battlefield as if the heavens themselves had joined the war.Fowler Reddington knelt in the open, blood pouring from his shoulder, his weapon lost to the torrent. Mercenaries closed in, rifles aimed, their boots splashing in unison. The air stank of cordite, smoke, and fear.Above them all, Damon Carter stood on the overpass, untouched by the chaos, his tailored coat whipping in the wind. He looked down on Fowler not like a rival, not like a brother-in-law, but like a man watching a gladiator bleed out in an arena he himself controlled.“Do you see it now, Reddington?” Damon’s voice cut through the storm, amplified by arrogance and certainty. “The truth? You were never a general. You were a pawn. My pawn.”Fowler tilted his head back, rain streaming down his scarred face. His breathing was heavy, but his eyes burned with a fire no storm could douse. “You talk

The Carter estate was silent at midnight, save for the whisper of rain sliding down tall windows and the occasional crackle of the dying fire in the study.Selene Carter sat at her father’s mahogany desk, the same one where she had once found the folder that unsettled everything she thought she knew.Her hand hovered over the glass of scotch she had poured but hadn’t touched. Her reflection in the dark window stared back at her tired eyes, drawn features, lips pressed too tight.For years, she had told herself she had made the right choice: divorcing Fowler Reddington, severing ties, moving forward. He had been branded a traitor, and she, Selene Carter, could not be the wife of a traitor and survive in her world.But now?The folder still burned in her mind. The inconsistencies. The faint but undeniable trace of her father’s hand in the ruin of Fowler’s life. And tonight, she couldn’t shake a different unease. Damon.Her younger brother had grown into something she did not recognize.

The chamber dissolved into shadow. The humming of the bulb died, leaving behind only silence and the distant drip of water through corroded pipes.For a moment, no one moved. Even the mercenaries froze, caught between orders and uncertainty. Fowler Reddington’s head lifted slowly. His vision, though blurred with blood, adjusted quickly to the dark.Blackouts were no stranger to him battlefields, ambushes, covert missions often unfolded in half light or none at all. Darkness was not his enemy. It was his ally.The mercenaries weren’t so fortunate. Their mutters rose, harsh and disoriented, boots scuffing as they tried to reorient themselves in the pitch black chamber.“Lights out? What the hell?” one muttered. “Stay sharp!” another barked, his rifle cocking with nervous haste.Fowler heard every movement, every shuffle, every breath. His chains rattled softly as he shifted, testing their give. Still strong. Still unyielding. But steel was never eternal, it had weaknesses.Damon Carter’

The chamber reeked of smoke and cordite, a tomb littered with bodies and blood. Fowler’s grip tightened on the rifle, his knuckles white, every sense straining for the echo of Damon’s laughter.But the snake was gone, vanished into the maze of corridors beneath the Carter estate. The mysterious woman, his phantom savior moved first.“Move,” she snapped, her tone cutting, brooking no hesitation.She slid a fresh magazine into her sidearm, holstered it, and strode toward the corridor, her steps silent despite the chaos around them. Fowler followed, dragging Marcus Hale up with one arm.The older man’s weight was heavy, his body failing him, but Marcus still had enough fire in his eyes to keep moving. “You’re not leaving me behind, Reddington,” Marcus rasped.“Not planning on it,” Fowler muttered, slinging him against his side as they stumbled into the corridor.The hallway stretched long and narrow, lit only by the faint glow of failing emergency lights. Shadows shifted along the walls,