Chapter 1

1

Paige Penderson shivered and yanked her down jacket tighter around her shoulders. The van's heater sputtered against the damp chill of a Croatian winter as her breath fogged the air. Outside, the Adriatic stretched gray and uninviting, contrasting its usual postcard-perfect blue.

Normally, excitement would buzz through her, her fingers itching to dance across her keyboard. As Redemption Inc's cybersecurity expert, these missions let her flex her considerable tech muscles and prove her worth. She relished being the invisible puppet master, manipulating digital strings to safeguard her friends and clarify their objectives.

But today, the usual thrill eluded her. The screens before her, typically a source of comfort and control, taunted her with blinking cursors and scrolling data. Ever since that disastrous Arctic mission three weeks ago, a flatness had invaded Paige's world. It drained the color, leaving only shades of gray as dull as the sea outside.

She shook her head, attempting to banish the funk. Her team needed her at her best, especially with Jason still missing. They'd chased their teammate across the globe and back these past few months, but with the Consortium hounding him, he couldn't linger in one place long enough for them to rescue him.

If they didn't persuade him to rejoin them soon, the Consortium would find him. Eventually.

Paige's thoughts drifted to her father, gone two years now. What would he do in this situation? The legendary coder would have relished the challenge. His words echoed in her mind, carrying that familiar playful tone: "The beauty of networks, kiddo, is that they're living things. They breathe, they grow, they leave footprints. You just need to learn to track them."

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, remembering the late nights they'd spent huddled over lines of code, her father teaching her the art of digital warfare. He would have found a way to buy Jason time, to throw the Consortium off balance. Maybe a distributed denial-of-service attack on their communications network? Or a cleverly disguised backdoor into their tracking systems?

A sad smile tugged at her lips. Her father would have reveled in outmaneuvering the Consortium, seeing it as the ultimate test of his skills. But that was before the bad times. Before she got kicked out of college and a chilling distance had grown between them. The fact was, though he died two years ago, Atticus Penderson had kept her at arm's length ever since. No more words of wisdom. No more gentle teasing. No more coding challenges late into the night, complete with burned microwave popcorn.

Not since MIT.

She gritted her teeth, flexing her fingers hard against the ache of loss. Nothing she could do about that now. The mission was her focus.

She straightened in her chair, a newfound determination coursing through her veins. She might not be able to match her father's legendary status, but she had inherited his stubborn resilience. And right now, Jason needed that more than ever.

"Some vacation spot," she muttered, her eyes darting between the array of screens before her. The van hummed with the latest tech, a stark contrast to the dreary weather outside. "Mason, how's it looking out there?"

Mason's gravelly voice came through her earpiece. "All quiet. Too quiet."

Paige nodded, though he couldn't see her. The knot in her stomach tightened as she watched Bridger and Fenn's heat signatures move through the abandoned mansion on her thermal imaging display.

"Tai, give me a drone's eye view of the south wing," she requested.

"Coming up now," Tai replied. A new feed popped up, showing a bird's eye view of the once-grand Baroque edifice. Broken windows gaped like missing teeth, and an algae-filled swimming pool lurked in the overgrown garden, a sickly green against the winter-dead grass.

"Kate, status at the airfield?" Paige asked, running through her mental checklist.

"All clear here," Kate's steady voice responded. "Plane's fueled and preflighted. We can be wheels up in five."

Paige took a deep breath, trying to settle her nerves. "Graham, how's the perimeter?"

"Secure," came the terse reply. "No movement detected."

As Bridger and Fenn moved deeper into the mansion, Paige watched their progress with growing unease. The interior looked like something out of a horror movie—punched-out walls, mold-covered wallpaper peeling in long strips, broken furniture scattered like discarded toys.

"Getting some weird echoes here," Fenn reported. "This place is seriously creepy."

"Stay focused," Bridger ordered. "Paige, any signs of recent activity?"

She scanned her readouts. "Nothing definitive. Wait—Fenn, pan left. What's that?"

The camera shifted, revealing a single designer stiletto with a broken heel, dust and pin-sized spots of black mildew obscuring the original color.

"Well, well," Fenn drawled. "Looks like Cinderella had a rough night."

"Can we stay on mission, please?" Paige snapped, more harshly than she intended.

Minutes ticked by as the team methodically cleared room after room. With each empty space, her hope dwindled. Finally, Bridger's voice came through, heavy with disappointment.

"Place is full on empty. A total bust. Whoever sent that intel was wrong."

"Or they got us here on purpose," she added sourly, remembering all too well how a Consortium operative had lured them to the Arctic less than a month ago.

A tense silence followed before Bridger spoke again. "Alright, team. Bug out. We're done here."

Paige slumped in her chair. Three weeks since Christmas, three weeks of chasing ghosts, and still no sign of Jason. She began shutting down her equipment, her mind already racing ahead to their next move.

"Hold up." Mason's voice cut through her thoughts. "Movement on the road. Single vehicle. Approaching fast."

Paige's head snapped up, adrenaline surging. "Tai, get me visual."

Her eyes darted between multiple screens, her mind processing data at lightning speed. With a flick of her wrist, she manipulated the holographic display hovering above her customized command center. As the license plate came into focus, Paige initiated her cutting-edge recognition software with a crisp voice command, her heart racing with the familiar thrill of cyber sleuthing.

"Nothing to worry about. We're clear," she announced. "Local law enforcement." She watched the white compact maneuver the winding coastal road. It zipped straight past the overgrown entry to the mansion and continued toward town.

Paige's eyes darted to the mission clock on her display, a frown creasing her brow. "Guys, we've overstayed our welcome. You've been inside longer than the mission specs allowed."

She could almost hear Bridger's nod through the comms. "Copy that, Paige. Team, initiate egress protocols. Move it, people."

The thermal imaging display showed Bridger and Fenn's heat signatures moving swiftly towards the exit. She initiated the shutdown sequences for their remote surveillance equipment. "Graham, start the engine. We need to be ready to roll the moment they're out."

"On it," the retired Marine replied, the van rumbling to life beneath them.

She watched over the video feed as Bridger and Fenn navigated the decaying mansion's treacherous interior. "Watch yourselves on those stairs," she warned, noting a particularly unstable section on her structural scan.

"Tai, bring the drone in for a final sweep," Bridger commanded. "Make sure we're not leaving any traces behind."

"Affirmative," Tai responded, the drone's feed showing it zipping through broken windows for a last look.

As the team coordinated their exit, Paige couldn't shake the feeling that they were missing something. The mansion had been a dead end, but someone had wanted them there.

Why?

Her fingers absently found the antique locket at her throat, tracing the elaborate raised cross and scrollwork on its front. The large, empty locket was a constant reminder of her complicated relationship with her father. He'd sent it when she joined BlackOut squadron, probably an acknowledgment that she'd gotten her life back on track in an acceptable way. If he'd even picked it out himself. The man had staff, certainly.

Still, she preferred to think he'd chosen it. She only wished he would have added photos inside. But hey, better than nothing ...

Paige had always meant to put photos of her parents inside, but somehow never got around to it. Maybe it was easier to leave it empty, a blank slate full of potential rather than a reminder of what she'd lost. Or maybe, deep down, she was still waiting for her father to fill it himself, to bridge the gap between them in a way words never could.

She shook off the moment of sentimentality, refocusing on the mission at hand. The locket slipped from her fingers as she returned her attention to the screens, determined to unravel the mystery of this seemingly pointless excursion to an abandoned mansion.

She shoved the thoughts aside, focusing on the immediate task of getting her team out safely. There would be time for analysis later. Right now, they needed to disappear before anyone else took an interest in the abandoned property.

Or whoever lured them there closed the trap.

Her eyes fixed on the mission clock. "Bridger, Fenn, you've got thirty seconds to clear the building before we're in the danger zone for discovery."

She hummed absently, methodically scanning the feeds. The east wall of the living room filled her screen, a mottled canvas of decay. Dirty and leaves filled the corners, and water stains created abstract patterns on the walls and floor, testament to years of neglect.

Something about the wall nagged at her subconscious. She leaned closer, her nose almost touching the screen. There, beneath a particularly nasty patch of black mold, was a faint discoloration.

"Stay here," she ordered. "I want to see that wall with the infrared filter."

Tai's voice crackled through the comms, curiosity evident. "Copy that. What's caught your attention?"

As the drone adjusted its sensors, the image on Paige's screen shifted. The mold and water stains faded into the background, and something else emerged. At first, it was just a hint, a whisper of a shape hidden beneath layers of paint and time.

Paige's heart raced, a cold dread seeping into her bones. She blinked hard, willing the image to change, to be a trick of light or a glitch in the system. But it remained, growing clearer with each passing second.

"That's it," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Hover there."

The words stuck in her throat as her mind raced to process what she was seeing. A doodle, invisible to the naked eye but perfectly captured by the infrared lens.

Exactly as the creator intended.

Slowly, like a nightmare taking form, the image resolved itself. A single, stylized rose. The long stem curved gracefully, but it was the thorns that drew the eye—wicked-looking, almost claw-like in their menace. And there, at the tip of one thorn, a single droplet of blood.

Her breath caught. The room spun. Memories flooded back. She'd seen that doodle far too many times to forget it. In the margins of class notes, absentmindedly sketched during long lectures. On scratch paper, discarded without a thought. And on one spectacular forearm, inked permanently as a symbol of promises made and broken.

"Cody Lassiter," she whispered, the name tasting bitter on her tongue.

Destroyer of dreams.

The van suddenly felt claustrophobic, the air thick and oppressive. Paige's fingers trembled as she zoomed in on the image, her past and present colliding in a nauseating swirl of emotions. The rose mocked her, a silent reminder of everything she'd lost and everything that now hung in the balance.