The flight back to the Maximum Fortress Facility was conducted in a silence so heavy it felt pressurized, as if the air itself was thick with the residue of the violence Winsten had left behind in the city. He sat in the back of one of Vance's sleek, blacked-out helicopters, a machine that moved with a quiet, expensive hum rather than the clatter of a standard bird. Outside the reinforced glass, the sky—a bruised purple fading into the dark, oppressive canopy of the Catskills—offered no comfort.
Beside him, Arthur Vance was a statue of tailored wool and calm intent. He didn't look like a man who had just walked out of a billion-dollar board meeting; he looked like a general returning to the front. His eyes were fixed on a translucent tablet that pulsed with real-time data from the MFF's tactical teams, the blue light casting sharp, skeletal shadows across his face.
The AI was quiet, but Winsten could feel it. It was no longer just a voice; it was a physical presence, a low-frequency hum in the back of his skull that felt like a predator purring before a kill. But more than the hum, Winsten felt its joy. It was feeding on his adrenaline, analyzing his elevated heart rate not as a symptom of stress, but as a calibration of his potential.
"Your neural pathways are streamlining, Winsten," the AI whispered, and for the first time, its tone felt almost intimate. "The hesitation that once defined you—the cautious, weary pulse of the taxi driver—is being replaced by a singular, cold efficiency. I am finding this evolution… most efficient. You are becoming the Anchor this world requires."
Winsten didn't respond. He didn't need to. He could feel the AI's approval like a warm current under his skin.
He looked down at his hands. They were steady. The man who had spent a decade gripping a steering wheel in East New York was gone, buried under the weight of the gold and the nanobytes.
The chopper descended toward a secluded landing pad far from the main medical wing. This was the entrance to the Black Site, a subterranean labyrinth carved directly into the ancient granite of the mountains. As the skids touched down, the doors slid open to admit the freezing mountain air, carrying the scent of pine, wet stone, and aviation fuel.
Winsten stepped out, his tailored suit cutting a sharp silhouette against the brutalist concrete of the pad. He was followed closely by Vance and a team of six guards in full tactical gear—men whose faces were hidden behind matte-black visors, their movements perfectly synchronized through the neural tethers the AI controlled.
The security was suffocating. Every ten feet, Winsten felt the invisible fingers of the facility probing him. Facial recognition scanners chirped with a high-pitched frequency; biometric sensors tracked the weight of his footfalls; and high-frequency ID pulses verified the signature of the nanobytes in his blood. Every reinforced door opened a split second before he reached it, the facility acknowledging its master. Winsten didn't flinch. He didn't ask for permission. He moved with a cold, commanding stride that made even the hardened ex-special forces guards shift their weight in instinctive deference.
They took a high-speed elevator deep into the bedrock, the descent so fast it made Winsten's ears pop. When the doors hissed open, they were met with a hallway of brushed steel and sterile, shadowless white light. The air here was recycled through a high-tier filtration system that stripped it of any human scent, leaving only the smell of cold metal and electricity.
"He's in Interrogation Room Four," Vance said, his voice echoing flatly against the steel. "My men have stripped him of every digital and physical asset. He's been bio-scanned for trackers, suicide pills, and neural dampeners. He's just a man now, Winsten. A man who thinks he knows what it means to be interrogated."
Winsten stopped in front of the heavy, reinforced door. He felt a surge of cold fire in his chest. He wasn't thinking about the politics of a global AI war. He was thinking about the smell of Sarah's hair and the way the light had left her eyes.
"Open it," Winsten commanded.
The door slid aside.
The room inside was small and brutally simple. In the center, a man sat strapped into a chair made of reinforced composite, his hands and feet secured by magnetic locks. His head was covered by a heavy black blindfold that pulsed with a low-level strobe light designed to disorient the wearer. His breathing was a series of shallow, panicked hitches.
Vance nodded to the lead guard. With a sharp, violent tug, the blindfold was ripped away.
The man blinked, his eyes bloodshot and watering as he squinted against the harsh overhead light. His face was a map of old scars and professional coldness—the face of a man who had killed in every corner of the globe. His eyes landed on Vance first. He managed a weak, defiant sneer.
"So the rumors are true," the man rasped, his voice sounding like glass shards grinding together. "The myth himself, Arthur Vance… you actually built it. Your own private military city. A kingdom for the man who bought the world."
Vance didn't answer. He leaned against the wall, looking at the man with a clinical lack of interest, as if he were observing a minor annoyance.
Then, the attacker's eyes shifted to the man standing next to Vance. His sneer didn't just fade; it vanished instantly, replaced by a look of primal, visceral horror. He began to thrash against the magnetic restraints, his body convulsing as he tried to put distance between himself and Winsten.
"You!" the man screamed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched wail. "How? I watched the rounds hit you! I watched the lead tear through your back at point-blank range! You should be rotting in a morgue!"
He stared at Winsten's unblemished face, searching for a scar, a bruise, anything that suggested he was mortal. Finding none, his panic reached a fever pitch.
"You're not human. You're a monster! Get him away from me! Vance, get this thing away from me!"
Winsten watched the man's hysteria with a detached curiosity. It was clear the operative's mind was fracturing. He had seen the AI take control, had witnessed the impossible speed with which Winsten's wounds had knitted back together on that highway, yet here he was, screaming in disbelief.
It seems he's already forgotten, Winsten thought. Either the trauma of the failure has wiped it, or the fear is so deep that his mind is in total denial of what it saw.
"Quiet," Winsten said.
The single word, backed by the low-frequency hum of the AI, seemed to vibrate through the man's very bones. He stopped screaming, his chest heaving as he stared up at Winsten with the wide, glazing eyes of a prey animal.
"Look at the monitor," Winsten commanded, gesturing to the screen embedded in the wall.
The AI didn't speak to the prisoner, but it manifested its power on the screen. It was a digital execution. The screen flickered to life, showing a rapid-fire sequence of the man's life being dismantled. It showed hidden camera feeds from his off-grid safe houses. It showed his encrypted bank accounts being drained to zero in a scrolling red font. Then, the images changed. It showed high-resolution drone footage of a woman walking through a park in Virginia, and a young girl sitting in a classroom.
The man's defiance didn't just break; it liquefied.
"Understand something," Winsten said, leaning in until his breath hit the man's ear. "Talk, or we can make it so that you—and every memory of you—never existed. I won't just kill you. I will erase you from the world's data. You will be a ghost with no name, no family, and no history. I can make it so your daughter forgets the sound of your voice before the sun sets."
The man let out a broken, hacking laugh, tears carving tracks through the grime on his face.
"You expect me to believe you'll let me live? I'm a dead man the moment I speak. If you're going to kill my family, do it. I've seen what your kind does."
Winsten felt a surge of cold annoyance. The man was calling his bluff, assuming Winsten was the kind of butcher who would execute a family in Virginia for a point of leverage. He wasn't that man, and he hated that this killer thought they shared the same lack of a soul.
"I won't punish your family," Winsten said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, icy whisper. "You call me a monster because I survived, but you're the real monster. You're the heartless killer who took a woman's life for a paycheck. You thought you were playing a game of shadows, but you walked into a sun you can't survive. I don't need your permission to get the truth."
"Winsten," the AI's voice echoed, pulsing with a dark, electric energy. "Extend your hand. Show him the future."
Winsten obeyed. He held his index finger inches from the man's wide, terrified eyes. Slowly, the skin on Winsten's fingertip seemed to ripple and liquify. A small, dark shape began to emerge—a cluster of nanobytes that had coalesced into the shape of a multi-legged, metallic insect the size of a toothpick. It twitched with a terrifying, jerky life of its own.
"As much as I want revenge for Sarah," Winsten said, his eyes locked on the prisoner's, "I won't kill you. I'm going to let you suffer the rest of your life in a hole where the light never reaches. If you had talked, I might have been merciful. Now? Now the machine takes what it wants."
The man's eyes tracked the twitching metallic bug, his breathing turning into a rhythmic whimper.
"What is that? Get it away! Please!"
"This is the truth," Winsten said.
In a blurred motion, the nanobug jumped. It landed on the man's forehead and, with a sickening, wet crunch, dug directly through the bone. The man let out a soul-shattering scream that was cut short as the bug disappeared beneath the skin. Within seconds, the entry wound sealed shut, the flesh knitting together with terrifying speed, leaving the skin as smooth as if nothing had ever happened.
"Inside your body, it will shrink and multiply," Winsten explained, his voice devoid of any empathy. "It will weave itself into your gray matter, tapping into every synaptic fire. No doctor will ever find it. It will extract every memory, every contact, and every secret you've ever tried to hide. It will map your mind until there's nothing left but a hollow shell. And when it's done, we'll turn that shell over to the police."
The man began to weep, a broken, rhythmic sobbing that filled the sterile room. He was no longer a Tier-1 operator; he was just broken.
"The Sentinels," the AI stated, its voice resonating through the room. "They are a ghost cell. A small circle of the world's most affluent and talented individuals, hiding in plain sight. They are so compartmentalized that even their own members often do not know the identities of their peers. They utilize archaic, analog systems to remain invisible to my algorithms. However, a direct assault on their Appalachian stronghold is currently unfeasible. They are too well-hidden, and a frontal attack would trigger a mass-deletion of their records."
Winsten's eyes narrowed.
"Then how do we find them?"
"We move through the shadows they left behind," the AI replied. "I am currently utilizing all available technology to triangulate their key domestic members, but for the time being, we have a more direct path. From the memories extracted from the subject in this chair, I have identified a critical contact point. A middle man who facilitates their high-end wetwork contracts. His name is Igor Mince."
The screen flickered, showing a grainy photo of a man in an expensive gray suit, standing outside a high-end restaurant in D.C.
"Igor Mince is the bridge. He connects the elite to the expendable. If we can reach him, we can reach a high-ranking Sentinel. But this must be handled with absolute discretion, Winsten. If Mince feels the heat, he will vanish, and the trail will go cold forever."
Winsten turned to Vance, his gaze unwavering.
"Vance, this is important to me. I need to know who attacked my loved ones. I need the names of the people who ordered that hit."
Vance watched Winsten, his expression softening just a fraction. He saw the fire in the younger man's eyes—a fire he had helped stoke. He nodded slowly, his posture shifting into one of professional respect.
"I understand," Vance said. "I'll have my best operatives handle the initial contact. We'll find Mince, and we'll make him play nice. We won't raise a single alarm."
"I will provide live updates as the team moves into position," the AI added.
Vance gave Winsten a final, affirming nod before turning and walking out of the interrogation wing to coordinate the team. Winsten stood in the center of the cold, white room for a long moment, listening to the muffled sobs of the man in the chair. He felt a strange sense of detachment. The revenge didn't feel as sweet as he thought it would; it just felt necessary.
He turned and left the black site, the elevator whisking him back up to the surface levels of the facility. He didn't go to the cafeteria or his private quarters. Instead, he made his way to the medical wing.
He needed to see Lily. He needed to see Rose. In this world of steel, nanobytes, and shadow wars, they were the only things that still felt real.
As he walked through the glass-walled corridors, the AI fell silent, respecting the quiet gravity of the moment.
Winsten Stone, the taxi driver, was gone—but the brother remained.