PROLOGUE

There are rules they don’t write down.

The ones whispered over black coffee at 3 a.m., in autopsy rooms and evidence lockers and bullet-riddled safe houses. The ones only the survivors ever mention.

Don’t trust what’s sealed in red tape.

Don’t ask where the bodies go after Quantico signs off.

And above all—if you find something you’re not supposed to see… run.

I never believed those rules.

I believed in science. In data. In truth.

But the truth nearly got me killed.

And now?

Now, I believe in one thing only:

Survival.

CHAPTER ONE;

The first time I realized I was being watched, it was raining.

Heavy sheets hammered the rooftop of the evidence locker facility, and my government-issued sedan refused to start. I muttered a curse, trying the ignition again, but it only gave a pathetic click. Across the street, a figure stood beneath a flickering streetlight. No umbrella. No phone. Just… watching.

I told myself I was imagining it.

I wasn’t.

My name is—or was—Special Agent Rowan Vega, FBI Forensics Division, Digital Trace Analysis. I spent the better part of a decade combing through corrupted drives and encrypted files, chasing shadows left behind by murderers and traitors. I lived in the gray areas of justice, but I followed the rules.

Right up until the rules turned on me.

It started with a flash drive.

Case D-7396. Transferred from Internal Affairs to Evidence Room 6 under a sealed chain of custody. No request for analysis. No notes. Just “For Archive.” It should’ve been routine. It wasn’t.

The drive was half-burned, but not beyond saving. And someone had failed to wipe the contents. Sloppy. Arrogant. Deadly.

When I cracked it open, I didn’t find some low-level blackmail scheme or a financial embezzlement trail. I found everything. Government contracts rerouted through shell corporations. Payments to hitmen disguised as foreign consultants. Internal memos tying FBI brass to political assassinations.

The final document was a list.

A kill order.

My name was at the bottom—timestamped for that very week.

I should’ve turned it in. Logged the chain of custody. Trusted the system I swore to protect.

But you don’t report corruption when the corruption wears a badge.

So I ran.

I left D.C. that same night. Traded my badge for a burner phone. My safehouse in Alexandria for a seedy motel off I-70 in Missouri. Changed my name. My hair. My entire identity.

I didn’t sleep the first night. Barely breathed the second. By the third, I let my guard slip—and that’s when they found me.

It was 3:12 a.m. when the motel phone rang.

I stared at it. One ring. Two. Three.

Then silence.

A minute later, the power died.

No lights. No buzzing heater. No hum of the refrigerator.

Just darkness.

I didn’t hesitate. Grabbed the flash drive from under the floorboard, shoved it in my coat pocket, and ducked out the bathroom window just as footsteps pounded up the stairs.

A black SUV waited down the block, engine idling.

They weren’t local cops.

They were faster. Cleaner. Trained.

I ran toward the woods behind the motel, lungs burning, gravel cutting into my palms as I hit the ground to avoid headlights. A single gunshot cracked the silence behind me—but it went wide.

They weren’t trying to kill me. Not yet.

They wanted the drive.

They wanted what I knew.

I made it to a rest stop outside Columbia by morning. Slept in a janitor’s closet for three hours with a mop pressed to my chest like a shield. My hands were shaking. Not from fear—well, maybe a little—but from the withdrawal of adrenaline.

I plugged the flash drive into my laptop. I had to know what was worth killing me over.

More files had decrypted overnight.

One caught my eye: Subject: PROJECT DUSKFALL – Clearance: Eyes Only.

I opened it.

Audio logs. Surveillance transcripts. A series of interviews marked “Test Subjects.” These weren’t terrorists. These were whistleblowers. Agents. Scientists. Even a congressman.

All of them had been marked “Deceased. Cause: Suicide.”

Except one.

Subject 12: Rowan Vega. Status: ACTIVE. Surveillance initiated.

There were time-stamped logs of my movements. My apartment. My favorite café. Even a transcript of a phone call with my sister two days ago.

They’d been watching me before I found the drive.

This wasn’t just about what I uncovered.

I was the next experiment.