Ray moved fast out of anger before he finished the thought.Three steps across the sublevel corridor, his hand reaching for Wolfe's collar, the anger in him converted directly into motion the way it always did when there was no more room for patience.His hand went through the image.He stumbled forward into empty air and turned and Wolfe was still standing at the end of the corridor, still composed, still watching with the slow smile on his face now carrying an additional quality.Amusement.Ray looked at his own hand. Then at the image.The edges of it were were not right. The way the light hit the suit jacket didn't match the lighting in the corridor. The shadow beneath the shoes was slightly off angle. Details his brain had filed and not surfaced because he had been looking at the face and the face was convincing enough to make everything else secondary.It was holographic.A projection so clean and detailed that it had shown as a person in a room until Ray's hand passed throu

Ray got to the bridge approach in eighteen minutes.He ran most of it, weaving through streets that were getting worse by the block, the conversion spread visible in real time.The sound of New York changing from the normal morning chaos of a functioning city into something Ray recognised from Kansas and had hoped never to hear again.The military staging area was exactly where Mara said it would be. Trucks and armoured vehicles spread across the approach road to the bridge, soldiers were in full gear moving between them with the arranged urgency of people deploying into something they didn't fully understand yet.Ray walked toward the nearest checkpoint.The soldier at the barrier put his hand up before Ray reached there."Sir, this is a restricted…..""I need General Clarke," Ray said. "Right now and I have intelligence on what is happening in this city that your units need before they go in."The soldier looked at Ray.At the blood on his jacket and the split across his chin. The

Charlie's breathing immediately changed.Ray heard it before he noticed it. The ragged pulls that had been the best sound he'd heard all day turned wet, then shallow, then half dead."Charlie."No answer and charlie's eyes were still open but they weren't tracking anymore, fixed on a point past Ray's shoulder that wasn't there."Charlie, look at me." Ray's hands went to Charlie's chest. Something was not right under the ribs, and not right in a way that hadn't been visible until the adrenaline stopped holding it together. "Hey. Hey, stay with me."Silence."Priya!"She was already moving, already dropping beside him, her hands finding the same spot Ray's had.Her face had changed the way a professional's face changed when the diagnosis arrived faster than the hope did."He's not breathing," she said. "Compressions, now."Ray started them. His own ribs screamed with every push and he didn't stop, didn't slow.He counted under his breath the way he had been taught a lifetime ago in

For a second, Ray didn't move.The suit was pressed and the hands were folded. The face was calm in the specific way of a man who had never once in his life worried about walking into a room. Ray had seen that face last at the hospital when he signed a consent form with to work on mother.He had seen the face in his previous life, the way he totured his sister and Wolfe is surely going to pay for everything he had done.Wolfe smiled like they were old friends."Ray Parker," he said. "The man of the hour."Jane's hand had already dropped to her sidearm. Her eyes went from Wolfe to Ray, reading something in Ray's face that made her go very still."Everyone out," Ray said. His voice came out low. "Ray…." Jane started."Everyone out, now."Jane held his gaze for one more second, then nodded once and cleared the tent, pulling her soldiers with her. The flap dropped shut. It was just the two of them now, a folding table between them, and twelve hours since Ray had knelt over Charlie's

The hotel had no power, no working locks, and half its windows blown out on the lower floors, but it had walls, and after the day they'd had, walls were enough.Nobody talked much going in.Ray took the stairs instead of standing around in the lobby with everyone's eyes on him, though he could feel them anyway.Zoe's, Priya's, Saul's, all of them carrying the same look, the look of people who had lost someone and hadn't had a single minute yet to sit with it.They found two rooms on the third floor with intact doors and put everyone in one of them. Nobody suggested splitting up further. Nobody wanted to be alone tonight, not even the ones who usually did.The call to Maya and Reyes happened around nine.Ray made it, because it felt like something he owed Charlie more than anyone else did. He sat on the edge of a stripped mattress with the phone against his ear and Zoe beside him, not speaking, just present, and when Maya picked up on the second ring her voice was already bracing for