The service corridor beneath the Lancaster villa smelled like old copper pipes and cleaning solvent. Marcus Steel sat on an overturned supply crate with a tablet propped against a water heater. Fourteen camera feeds tiled across the screen in a grid that covered every room worth watching and six exterior angles that covered everything else.Lucas Davis leaned against the opposite wall with his right arm wrapped from shoulder to elbow. The bandage was clean but the arm hung at an angle that made it clear he wasn't going to be throwing anything for a while."You installed all of this in one week?" Lucas looked at the screen with the expression of a man who just found out his house had been wired."Seven days." Marcus tapped the upper left feed to expand it. "The villa's security system runs on a closed network with a single point of access in the basement utility room. It took twenty minutes to mirror the signal and another forty to install supplementary cameras in the blind spots.""Fo

Hamza opened his eyes to darkness and the smell of wet soil. His wrists were bound behind his back with woven steel cable. His mouth was covered with a strip of cloth that tasted like engine grease. His left shoulder throbbed where the projectile had gone through.He was sitting against a tree trunk. The forest canopy blocked most of the moonlight, but enough filtered through to show two figures standing fifteen feet away.One of them walked forward.Marcus Steel crouched in front of Hamza and pulled the cloth from his mouth."You're going to want to scream." Marcus looked at him the way a man looks at a chess piece he just moved into position. "I'd recommend against it. The villa is two hundred meters south and the Saint Heir's thermal awareness extends about one fifty in calm air. If he picks up your heat signature, this conversation ends before it starts."Hamza's eyes adjusted to the darkness and locked onto Marcus's face."You intercepted the escort." Hamza's voice was raw from t

Hamza sat with his back against the tree and his wrists finally cut free. He rubbed the raw skin where the steel cable had bitten into his flesh and looked at Marcus with the expression of a man working through practical consequences."Let's say I believe you." Hamza flexed his fingers. "The seal is real, you are who you claim. That still leaves a problem your rank can't solve.""Which problem?" Marcus folded his arms."Your soldiers won't follow me." Hamza's jaw tightened. "I'm Skyfire. Born Skyfire, trained Skyfire. Every man in the Ten Thousand Mountain Alliance has been taught since day one that Skyfire operatives are competitors at best and enemies at worst. You hand me a unit and tell them to follow a freshly defected Skyfire commander, the first thing they'll do is look at each other and laugh.""They won't laugh." Marcus's expression didn't shift."They'll laugh, Marcus." Hamza leaned forward. "I've seen it on the other side. When Skyfire absorbed defectors, those men spent th

The clearing was wide enough for six men to stand shoulder to shoulder. Marcus had positioned two portable lanterns at opposite ends, casting just enough light to see without bleeding into the tree line where the villa's perimeter patrols might notice.Eight men stood in a loose formation in front of Hamza. Marcus's guard unit. They wore matching dark field gear stripped of insignia and stood with the stillness of men who didn't need to prove anything to anyone by moving.Hamza looked at them the way a general looks at a map of unfamiliar terrain."I need to know what I'm working with before I lead anyone anywhere." Hamza turned to Marcus, his good hand resting on his hip. "Every time I took over a new group, I started the same way. You test the biggest man first.""Why the biggest?" Lucas leaned against a tree with his injured arm cradled against his chest."Physical size reflects trained strength in every unit I've evaluated." Hamza's eyes moved across the line and stopped on the la

Hamza sat in the dirt with his back against a fallen log and his pride spread across the clearing like something that had been run over twice. The thin fighter stood three feet away, cleaning his fingernails with a twig."I didn't even have to think about it." The thin fighter flicked the twig into the bushes. "The moment you shifted your weight, I knew where your fist was going and how much empty air it was going to hit."This man had just put him on his back and was now picking dirt from under his nails like he'd finished taking out the trash."What's your name?" Hamza's voice was flat."They call me Skinny Monkey." The thin fighter shrugged, his shoulders lifting with the casual indifference of someone who had stopped caring about names a long time ago."Skinny Monkey." Hamza repeated it like he was tasting something that had been left in the sun too long."It's descriptive." Skinny Monkey looked down at him. "You want a formal introduction? None of it changes the fact that you're