Blackout Protocol

Prologue

KANDAHAR PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN

THREE YEARS AND FOUR MONTHS AGO

The village was dead long before Marcus Kane arrived.

He felt it as soon as his boots hit the dirt; that silence. Not just quiet. The kind that followed after breathing stopped. Twenty-three houses. Seventy people at dawn. Now just wind through empty doorways and the smell of blood cooking in 110-degree heat.

“Jesus Christ,” Sergeant Danny Ortiz whispered, lowering his rifle. “What the hell happened?”

Marcus didn’t answer. He was counting bodies. Seven in the street. Four more slumped against the well. Old men, and two boys no older than twelve. Clean shots, center mass. Precise. No panic, no wasted bullets.

Whoever did this was trained.

“Kane.” Lieutenant Graves’s voice was tight as wire. “You need to see this.”

The schoolhouse sat at the village center, its mud-brick walls painted white by some hopeful aid group. The door hung crooked on one hinge. Marcus didn’t want to go inside. Thirty-two bodies later, he’d learned to recognize the weight of certain silences.

But he went in anyway. That was the job.

The children were arranged in rows, like a morning assembly that never got dismissed. Eighteen of them. Ages five to fourteen. Each shot once at the base of the skull.

Execution style. Deliberate. Cold.

Marcus felt his hands begin to tremble. Combat he could handle. Civilian casualties, accidental crossfire; war was cruel enough on its own. But this wasn’t cruelty. This was method.

“Who does this?” Ortiz choked out. “What kind of monster….”

“Not a monster,” Marcus said. His voice felt scraped raw. “Monsters don’t police their brass. Monsters don’t use subsonic rounds.”

Ortiz swallowed. “So… what? Military?”

“I didn’t say American.”

But the details didn’t fit insurgents either. Wrong caliber. No chaos. No rage. Just a quiet, efficient elimination.

A target.

Graves was already on the radio, calling it in. Marcus stepped back outside, needing air that didn’t taste like death. The sun burned white overhead. The village was too still.

Then he saw her.

A girl, maybe six, half-hidden behind a water barrel. Alive. Watching.

Marcus moved instantly. “It’s okay,” he said in halting Pashto. “You’re safe.”

The girl didn’t cry or run. She only stared; eyes too old for her small face, and spoke.

Three quiet words.

The dead man walking.

Marcus blinked. “What?”

She repeated it. Clearer. Then pointed past him.

He turned, nothing but empty street.

When he looked back, the girl was gone. Smoke in the wind.

He should’ve chased her. Should’ve secured the only witness. But he stood frozen there, her words echoing like a curse he didn’t understand.

The dead man walking.

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CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

PRESENT DAY — 11:46 PM

Marcus Kane sat in his car across from the warehouse, engine off, watching the countdown on his phone.

11:46:23.

He didn’t remember driving here. Didn’t remember grabbing his gun or leaving his apartment. One moment he’d been pouring a drink, trying to drown the ghosts. The next, he was on the docks, service weapon in his lap, staring at a text he didn’t recall receiving.

1247 PIER STREET. VIPER MEETING. CONFIRM AND NEUTRALIZE.

The number wasn’t saved. He didn’t recognize it. And yet, his thumb hovered over the reply button without his permission.

CONFIRMED. MOVING TO TARGET.

He watched himself type it. Watched himself hit send. Watched his hand reach for the door.

Stop, a distant part of him begged. This is wrong. Something’s wrong.

His body didn’t listen.

11:46:47.

The night smelled like chemicals and fish. A ship horn bellowed somewhere out on the water. Marcus checked his weapon, smoothly, efficiently, like a machine and approached the warehouse.

The detective in him was screaming: No backup.

No warrant.

No reason.

Just a text.

Turn around. Go home. This is an episode.

But this didn’t feel like his PTSD. The episodes were chaos, rage, panic, pain. This was focus. Unwanted, unnatural focus. His movements were perfect. Too perfect.

11:46:58.

The warehouse door was unlocked. His hand found it like it already knew the way. Darkness greeted him; oil, dust, concrete.

And under a single hanging bulb fifty feet in, stood a man.

Tattoos on his neck. Viper ink.

Miguel Reyes.

A name slid into Marcus’s thoughts like someone had whispered it there.

Reyes’s hand twitched toward his jacket.

Marcus fired before the man could blink.

Three shots. Center mass. Textbook placement.

Reyes collapsed.

And Marcus watched it happen as though from behind glass. Watched his hands move. Watched his body approach the corpse. Watched himself check for vitals he knew weren’t there.

No…no, no, this isn’t me..

But the body kept moving.

His hand searched Reyes’s pockets. Pulled out a phone. Unlocked it with a code Marcus shouldn’t know. Deleted messages too fast to process.

Then his fingers reached into his own jacket.

And pulled out a knife.

Marcus didn’t carry a knife.

His arm moved with clinical precision…

“Stop,” he whispered, but the blade had already sliced across Reyes’s throat in one practiced motion.

11:47:00.

Something snapped inside Marcus’s skull.

A cord severed.

His knees buckled. The knife clattered to the floor. He gasped like he’d been drowning. His hands, finally his again, were slick with fresh blood.

“No,” he whispered. “No, no…”

He staggered back. His weapon was holstered. When had he done that? When had he done any of this?

One hour.

One missing hour.

And a dead man at his feet.

His phone buzzed.

TARGET NEUTRALIZED. PROTOCOL COMPLETE. AWAITING NEXT ASSIGNMENT.

Sent from his number.

Hands shaking, Marcus opened his photo gallery.

A picture stared back at him; time-stamped fifteen minutes before he “woke up.”

Miguel Reyes. Full color. Clear as daylight.

Like Marcus had documented the target himself.

He stumbled outside, vomited against the wall, and slid to the ground.

When he could breathe again, he made the only choice that made sense.

He called 911.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“I need to report a murder,” he said, voice hollow. “1247 Pier Street.”

“Sir, are you injured?”

Marcus stared at his bloody hands.

“No,” he whispered. “I’m not in danger.”

I am the danger.

“Can you stay on the line?”

But he’d already hung up; staring at that unknown number, at the message he’d written without meaning to.

AWAITING NEXT ASSIGNMENT.

How many times had this happened?

How many blackouts had he dismissed as stress?

How many mornings had he woken up exhausted, Sarah watching him like he wasn’t the man she knew?

How many bodies had he left behind in the dark?

Red and blue lights washed over the warehouse.

Marcus didn’t run.

He stood over the dead man, hands raised, waiting to be arrested.

Even if he didn’t remember doing it…

the evidence was clear.

Detective Marcus Kane had become a killer.

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