[Ethan’s POV]

The fog was so thick by the time we reached the Iron Street rail yard that I could barely see ten feet in front of me.

The yard was a sprawling, rusted graveyard of decommissioned freight trains, shipping containers, and overgrown tracks. It was dead silent, save for the distant, muffled sounds of the city waking up and the crunch of gravel beneath our boots.

I held up a hand, signaling Claire to stop. We crouched behind the rotting husk of a wooden boxcar.

"Look," I whispered, pointing through a gap in the rusted metal.

Parked just inside the main gate, hidden beneath the shadow of a massive loading crane, were two matte-black SUVs. They didn’t have license plates. The windows were heavily tinted, and the tires were caked in fresh mud.

"Isabella’s people," Claire breathed, her eyes narrowing. "They found him."

"They found the beacon," I corrected, scanning the perimeter. "Jake triggered that ghost protocol at the laundry facility to draw us in, but he had to know Isabella’s signal-intelligence teams would intercept it too. He wanted them to follow him here."

I leaned out slightly, my eyes adjusting to the gloom. Through the fog, I could make out the faint, green glow of night-vision goggles moving methodically between the rows of train cars.

There were six of them. They moved with terrifying precision, communicating with silent hand signals. They carried suppressed submachine guns and wore heavy, unmarked tactical gear. These weren’t street thugs like the Lupii. These were Tier-One operators. Ex-military. The kind of men who killed for a living and never left a trace.

"They’re sweeping the yard in a standard grid pattern," I whispered to Claire, drawing my Glock. "They have thermal optics and encrypted comms. If we engage them, we’re dead in thirty seconds."

"We don’t have to engage them," Claire said, her voice steady. She pointed toward the center of the rail yard, where a towering, rusted control tower loomed in the fog. "Look at the top of the tower."

I squinted. Barely visible through the mist, a small, jury-rigged antenna was strapped to the railing of the control booth. A faint red light blinked on its base.

"The jammer," I realized.

"He hasn’t turned it on yet," Claire whispered. "He’s waiting for them to get deep into the yard. He’s waiting for them to be surrounded by the metal."

...

Flashback - Eighteen Months Ago

"Technology is a crutch," Darius said, pacing in front of the chalkboard in the Aegis briefing room. The room was too warm, stale with the smell of dry-erase markers and yesterday’s coffee. The fluorescent lights hummed low, steady, the kind of sound you only notice when the room goes quiet.

I was sitting at the desk across from him, arms crossed over a bruised rib from our sparring session that morning. Every time I shifted, it flared up sharp, but I kept my face blank. Darius had changed, he now noticed everything. If I winced, he’d make me run it again.

"Modern operators rely on comms, thermals, and drones," Darius continued, tapping the board with a piece of chalk. The sound was sharp, deliberate. He used it like a metronome to keep you from looking away. "They are used to having a god’s-eye view of the battlefield. They trust the screens more than their own eyes. But what happens when you take that away? What happens when the radio goes to static and the thermals white out?"

I didn’t answer right away. I was watching the way he moved—tight, controlled, like he was still in the fight even here.

"They fall back on their training," I said finally, keeping my voice level.

Darius stopped pacing and turned on me, eyes sharp. He shook his head once, slow.

"Wrong," Darius said, voice dropping low enough that it landed harder than a shout. He leaned forward, bracing both hands on the edge of the desk. "They panic. Even the best of them. When you sever a modern soldier’s connection to his team, he feels blind. He feels isolated. Alone in a way training never prepares you for. If you want to break an elite squad, you don’t shoot at them. You cut their wires. You plunge them into the dark, and you let their own paranoia do the rest."

...

Present Time

A sharp, ear-piercing squeal suddenly echoed across the rail yard.

It was so loud it made my teeth ache. I winced, covering my ears. Down in the yard, the six PMCs stopped dead in their tracks. One of them ripped his earpiece out, cursing loudly in French.

The red light on the control tower had turned solid green.

"The jammer is live," Claire whispered, her eyes wide.

The PMCs were suddenly disorganized. Without their encrypted comms, their grid pattern fell apart. The squad leader, a massive man with a scar across his throat, started making aggressive hand signals, trying to pull his men into a tight defensive circle.

But the fog and the towering walls of the shipping containers made it impossible for them to maintain a clear line of sight with each other.

Then, the real trap sprang.

It started as a low, metallic groan. A sound so deep it vibrated in the soles of my boots.

I looked up the tracks. The rail yard was built on a slight incline, sloping downward toward the main gate where the SUVs were parked. At the top of the incline, emerging from the thick fog like a leviathan, was a massive, fully loaded freight car.

It was moving in complete silence, picking up speed as it rolled down the rusted tracks.

"He released the pneumatic brakes," I breathed, staring in awe.

The PMCs didn’t hear it coming until it was too late. The jammer was still emitting a low-frequency hum that masked the sound of the rolling steel wheels.

"Contact front!" the squad leader finally screamed, raising his weapon as the massive shadow of the freight car broke through the fog.

They opened fire. The suppressed weapons spit a hail of bullets, sparking uselessly against the thick steel hull of the train car.

The freight car slammed into the first PMC, throwing him thirty feet through the air like a broken doll. It didn’t slow down. It plowed through the center of their formation, shattering their defensive line, and continued rolling straight toward the main gate.

With a deafening, metallic crunch, the freight car smashed into the two parked SUVs, crushing them against the concrete wall of the loading dock. Glass shattered, metal crumpled, and a plume of black smoke billowed into the air.

Their transport was gone. Their comms were dead. Their formation was broken.

"Move, move, move!" the squad leader roared, scrambling backward and firing blindly into the fog.

The remaining five PMCs scattered, diving behind rusted train cars and shipping containers. They were completely isolated from one another, cut off by the walls of metal and the thick, suffocating mist.

"He separated them," Claire whispered, her voice trembling with a mix of horror and absolute awe. "He used the terrain to break their unit apart."

"And now he’s going to hunt them," I said, my grip tightening on my gun.

A sudden, choked scream echoed from the far side of the yard. It was cut brutally short.

The squad leader spun toward the sound, his weapon raised. "Dupont! Report! Dupont!"

Static hissed from his dangling earpiece.

Another sound echoed through the fog. It wasn’t a scream this time. It was the heavy, wet thud of a body hitting the gravel, followed by the metallic clatter of a dropped weapon.

"Form up!" the squad leader yelled, his voice cracking with genuine panic. "Back to back! Do not let him isolate you!"

But they couldn’t form up. Every time one of the PMCs tried to move out from behind cover, a heavy piece of scrap metal or a handful of gravel would clatter against a train car in the opposite direction, drawing their fire and keeping them pinned down.

Jake wasn’t using a gun. He was using the environment. He was using the fog. He was calculating their lines of sight, predicting their movements, and dismantling a team of elite killers with nothing but shadows and misdirection.

"He’s a ghost," Claire whispered, staring into the mist.

Another scream rang out, this one closer. A PMC stumbled out from behind a shipping container, clutching his throat. Blood poured through his fingers. He collapsed to his knees, gasping for air, before falling face-forward into the mud.

There were only three left.

"We have to do something," Claire said, looking at me. "If Isabella’s men realize they’re being picked off by one unarmed man, they’ll just start throwing grenades. They’ll level the whole yard."

She was right. The squad leader was already reaching for a frag grenade on his tactical vest, his eyes wild with desperation.

"Stay here," I told Claire.

I stepped out from behind the wooden boxcar, raising my Glock. I didn’t have the Oracle in my head. I couldn’t predict the future. But I had Darius’s training, and I had a clear shot.

I aimed for the squad leader’s center of mass and squeezed the trigger.