​Chapter 1: It had been raining in the Northern Territory for days, wet and unrelenting, drenching a land on which a decade-long war had finally been brought to a close, but Caleb Vance never felt the cold because his thoughts were fixated on the image of the mud he stood on when his mother’s funeral was held. He remembered holding his nightmare little sister Mia as she sobbed into him, and he remembered how their father, Marcus, hadn’t even came to say goodbye because he was too preoccupied with his new woman, Isabella Sterling. Caleb had told Mia that day she promised not to wait to get out and become someone strong enough to keep her safe, and that she just needed to live through this and wait for me to come back. ​Ten years of combat had elapsed since he made that vow, and Caleb now led the Northern Phalanx, and he was inside a command tent teeming with maps and computer screens that displayed the crushing defeat of the enemy. Nervous, his assistant, Aris, entered the

Silas Thorne crossed the battered doorframe of the house, one hand holding up a handkerchief to cover his nose, the heel of the name-brand Italian leather shoe on his foot tapping against dirt and splintered wood on the floor, and he glanced down at the three corpses sprawled on the ground with an expression that read somewhere between boredom and mild irritation as if they were just some spilled rubbish he had to walk over. He smoothed the front of his grey tailored suit and glanced up at Caleb, who was still kneeling beside his unconscious aunt, and Silas emitted a brief, sneering laugh that caused his guards to shuffle and further tighten their hold around their submachine guns. "I have to say, Caleb, I thought you’d look a little more impressive after ten years of playing hero in the dirt, but here you are, looking like a tired man who doesn’t know that he’s strolled right up to a buzzsaw,” Silas said, gesturing to the half-dozen armed men surrounding h

​The armored SUV's tires squealed on the pavement as Caleb pushed the vehicle to the max, darting through the gridlocked traffic of a city still reeling from the sudden blackout. The shadow of the City B Central Hospital was visible in the distance, with the upper floors flickering with the strobo-light of emergency sirens and muzzle flashes. He didn’t wait for the car to stop before he hopped out, checking the slide on his handgun and adjusting the combat knife at his belt, and he headed for the side entrance as he spoke into his comms unit to see how his remaining men on site were doing. "This is Vance, I am at the North entry, give me a sit rep now and tell me how the perimeter wasn’t held," Caleb growled into the radio as the rhythmic thud of his boots on the pavement rang through the empty street. "Sir, they came in through the service tunnels and planted C4 in the elevator shafts, we're on the first floor and it's them moving up through the surgic

​The temporary base of operations Caleb had established in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the industrial district was suddenly bathed in the blinding white light of dozens of high-intensity searchlights, and the heavy, mechanical rumble of tank treads grinding against the pavement echoed through the corrugated metal walls, signaling that the C Family had finally played their trump card. Inside the warehouse, Aris was checking his thermal scanners and looking at the monitors with a grim expression, seeing that they were completely surrounded by at least two battalions of local infantry and several armored divisions, and his men were already taking up defensive positions behind crates of equipment with their rifles aimed at the bay doors. ​"Sir, it looks like the Thorne family didn't take too kindly to what you did to Silas, and they've brought in General Barrett along with the City B garrison," Aris said as he tapped a screen to show a live feed of a silver-hair

​POV: Third Person​The black SUV pulled up to the curb of the City Bank, its engine idling quietly while Caleb checked the magazine on his pistol and looked up at the stone building that now served as a private vault for the Sterling family's most important documents, and he could see at least four guards in dark suits standing by the main entrance with their hands hovering near their holsters. Aris sat in the driver’s seat with a tablet open on his lap, his fingers moving quickly across the screen as he monitored the local police bands and the bank’s internal security feed, and he glanced at Caleb with a focused expression as he adjusted his earpiece.​"The jamming signal is live, so the guards won't be able to call for backup or even use their radios to talk to each other once we step inside," Aris said while he tapped a final command into the system, "the biometric scanners at the front are still active, but I’ve uploaded the bypass code from the key Lyra gave