Rain.
Even now, the scent of it pulled memories from behind his eyes—memories he'd spent a lifetime sharpening into silence. Marek stood beneath the low hum of fluorescent lights, the edges of his reflection warped in the fogged glass of the training bay window. Below, new recruits mimicked forms they didn't yet understand. He didn't watch them. He never did.
He watched the gaps.
The spaces between movement.
The hesitation before impact.
That was where truth lived.
That was where he had come from.
Marek wasn't always security. Wasn't even always Marek.
Born on the southern edges of a war-torn district once scrubbed from maps, he'd grown up with nothing but the sound of gunfire and a sister who prayed louder than the bombs could scream. His name then had been a number—part of a trafficked group of children raised to be currency and weapons.
He survived by becoming invisible.
Then lethal.
Then indispensable.
By sixteen, he'd dismantled the very ring that made him. By seventeen, he vanished, resurfacing three years later with new eyes, a new name, and a reputation that travelled faster than his boots ever could.
The underworld whispered of him as The Smoke Between Doors—a phantom fixer, always where he shouldn't be, always two steps ahead. Those who saw him coming didn't see much after.
But Aldrin saw him.
Not just his skill.
His fury.
And offered something better than escape.
Purpose.
Marek moved from the glass and picked up his comm. "Security is stable. Perimeter teams holding. No shifts."
A pause.
Then the response came. A voice he trusted.
"Copy. Holding position. Eyes forward."
He nodded to himself, tucking the device away. His reflection met him again—older now. Worn but not tired.
He remembered his sister's voice. She'd died humming something soft in the dark. A lullaby to hold the pieces of him together.
Every action since had been for her.
Every shot he fired, every hallway cleared, every silence maintained—it was all so no other child had to carve out meaning from nightmares.
He walked through the corridor toward the tactical wing, boots echoing in careful rhythm. As he passed a few new hires, they straightened instinctively. He didn't look at them. But they felt his presence like the warning before a storm.
Ainsworth once called him a shadow with edges. Said he didn't walk into rooms—he cut into them.
Maybe that was true.
But only Aldrin ever called him brother.
And that was the only title he'd ever worn with pride.
In the war room, he paused before the sealed vault doors, palms resting briefly on the cold metal.
He thought of the chaos still to come.
Of the ghosts he'd buried.
Of how the past never stays dead—it just waits.
Waiting to see if the blade you became is sharp enough to cut it clean.
And Marek?
Marek was always ready to cut.
The silence of the war room was sacred.
It didn't scream strategy—it breathed it. Quietly. Intentionally. Everything from the sound-dampened walls to the soft glow of the interface tables was designed to keep things unspoken understood. And Marek—he thrived in that language.
He approached the vault of records in the back, tapping his credentials into the system. As the biometric lock read his palm, he stared at the sealed compartment behind it. A drawer he rarely opened.
The archive of his own unit.
Not the current teams, no. These files were from before—the ones Aldrin had helped erase from official history. The ones with names Marek had outlived.
The drawer hissed open.
There it was: a crumpled patch from his first ops team, stained and half-burnt from the mission that went sideways. Every name on that team had died following orders he didn't believe in.
It was the day he learned that silence wasn't always survival.
Sometimes silence was betrayal.
He left their tags in the drawer, but he took the photo at the bottom. Just for a moment. Held it like it might dissolve if he breathed too hard.
They had trusted him.
He hadn't been ready to lead back then.
But now? He would burn cities to protect those who stood under his watch.
Back in the hall, his stride returned to precision. He passed a junior analyst nervously fumbling with a data pad and offered a rare, quiet correction to her grip.
"Your thumb's over the disruptor port. One spike and that whole pad's fried."
She blinked, startled, then nodded. "Th-thank you, sir."
He gave a subtle tilt of his head before disappearing down the corridor again. That's all anyone really got—pieces of him. Advice without attachment. Orders with silent concern. A presence felt, not flaunted.
But with Aldrin? There were no walls. No performance.
They were different sides of the same storm.
He arrived at the side entrance to one of the external towers, eyes narrowing at the faint silhouette of a figure ahead—Ainsworth.
Of course.
That bastard always sensed when Marek was chewing on ghosts.
"You've got that look again," Ainsworth said, without turning.
"What look?" Marek muttered, already annoyed.
"The one where you're about to do something heroic and irresponsible."
"I was thinking."
"You always think. But tonight, it looked more like remembering."
Marek paused beside him.
"I don't forget," he said flatly.
"Didn't say you did. But you wear the past like armor. Just remember, armor's heavy. You might need to run soon."
Marek gave him a sidelong glance. "Then I guess I'll run through."
Ainsworth chuckled. "Aldrin said something similar once."
The silence stretched.
Then Marek added, "She's not like the others."
"Who?"
"The intern."
Ainsworth arched a brow, clearly entertained. "So you're watching her too."
"No," Marek said. Then, after a breath, "Just… keeping her off the blast zone."
"She's already standing in it."
That, Marek couldn't argue with.
And maybe that's what bothered him.
Later, as he walked back into his division's wing, he caught a glimpse of Iris through the mezzanine's security lens. She was pacing slightly in the corridor below, brows drawn in thought. Overthinking, maybe. Maybe not.
He tapped a command into his comm and watched her screen profile flicker up. Clearance low. Behavior patterns... erratic but sharp. Inquisitive.
Dangerous.
Or useful.
He closed the file. Not everything needs a label. Not yet.
Marek leaned back, arms folded, watching her through the camera as Aldrin once watched him years ago. Judging potential. Judging risk. Seeing… something.
Maybe the past wasn't behind them at all.
Maybe it had just started walking beside them—again.
And Marek wasn't sure if he was ready for that.