CHAPTER TWO: The Command That Broke the Rules
The figure was walking down the centerline.
Hood up. Clothes soaked. Arms hanging like they belonged to someone else.
Not stumbling like intoxication.
Not twitching like aggression.
Just moving with the slow, deliberate steps of someone who’d run out of reasons to care.
Mark activated the lights but not the siren.
Red and blue bled into the fog.
“Hands!” Lena called through the loudspeaker. “Show us your hands!”
The man raised one arm.
In his fingers: something dark.
