Waller's breath came shallow as the realization refused to loosen its grip on him.
The beeping of the heart monitor felt louder now, almost accusatory. Each pulse echoed the same question in his skull—what did they do to me?
The doctor stepped closer, his shadow stretching across the white sheets like a closing door.
"You should rest," he said. "You've been through a lot."
"Don't," I muttered. My fingers curled weakly into the sheets. "Don't talk to me like I don't know what's going on."
His smile faltered for half a second. Just enough.
"Where's Tina?" I asked again, forcing my eyes to meet his. "And the man she dragged me out with."
A pause.
"They're… being debriefed."
That word snapped something inside me.
"No," I whispered. "You don't debrief people who saved a dying man."
Silence thickened the room. The doctor reached for the chart at the foot of the bed, pretending to read it, pretending not to notice the way my heart rate spiked on the monitor.
"You lost a lot of blood," he said. "You were unconscious for twelve hours."
"Twelve hours is a long time," I replied. "Long enough for the Eclipse to move pieces."
His hand froze.
There it was.
He turned slowly, studying me now—not like a patient, but like a problem that had started talking back.
"You shouldn't know that name," he said.
I laughed, the sound dry and painful. "People keep telling me that. Funny thing is—everyone who says it already works for them."
The air shifted.
The doctor exhaled through his nose, then reached up and shut the blinds. The room dimmed instantly, the world shrinking to just the two of us.
"They've been watching you since before New York," he said quietly. "Before you quit the agency. Before you thought you disappeared."
My chest tightened. "Because of the Crest files."
"Yes." He nodded. "And because of what you are."
The words crawled under my skin.
"I'm a man," I snapped. "One they tried very hard to kill."
He shook his head. "You're a variable. An anomaly Jim Coleman never should've allowed to exist."
My vision blurred—not from weakness, but from rage.
"Coleman trained me," I said. "He believed in me."
"He used you," the doctor corrected. "Just like the Eclipse wanted to. The difference is—Coleman hoped you'd choose the right side."
A door creaked open behind him.
Footsteps.
I turned just as Tina stepped into the room, her jacket torn, dried blood along her sleeve. Her eyes met mine, relief flashing for a brief second—then guilt.
"Waller," she said softly. "I didn't have a choice."
The chains from my dream suddenly felt real again.
"What did you tell them?" I asked.
Her jaw tightened. "Enough to keep you alive."
The doctor stepped aside, revealing two men in dark uniforms waiting in the hallway. No badges. No names.
I understood then.
This wasn't rescue.
This was custody.
The Eclipse hadn't lost me in that explosion.
They finally caught up.
And whatever I was about to remember—whatever they'd buried inside me—
Was about to decide whether I walked out of this room…
Or went back to chains.
___The cuffs clicked shut with a sound I'd heard too many times—just never on my own wrists.
Cold. Precise. Final.
I didn't resist. Resistance was what they expected. Instead, I looked at Tina as they lifted me from the bed, my legs barely holding my weight. Her eyes followed every movement, sharp and wet at the edges, like she was memorizing me in case this was the last time.
"This isn't over," I said quietly.
She swallowed. "I know."
They marched me through sterile hallways, past nurses who wouldn't meet my eyes, past doors that sealed behind us like swallowed secrets. Somewhere above us, the city kept breathing—cars, lights, people unaware that a war was tightening its grip beneath their feet.
The van smelled of metal and old fear.
As the doors slammed shut, darkness swallowed me whole.
The cell was smaller than I imagined.
Concrete walls. One narrow bed bolted to the floor. A toilet that hissed like it was alive. No windows—just a strip of dim light leaking through the bars, enough to remind me time still existed.
They took everything.
My watch.
My jacket.
My name.
Here, I was just a number tied to a file that would never see daylight.
Days blurred. Interrogations came and went. The same questions asked in different voices. Sometimes polite. Sometimes cruel. Always circling the same truth.
What do you remember?
What did Coleman tell you?
What did the Eclipse put inside you?
I gave them nothing.
Because somewhere beyond these walls, Tina was still free.
And she was the only variable they couldn't lock away.
Tina Cole Williams stood alone in the rain, staring at the building that had shaped her entire life.
Cole Williams Tower.
Her father's empire.
From the outside, it was all glass and prestige—philanthropy plaques, global summits, humanitarian awards. To the world, Cole Williams was a savior.
To the Eclipse, he was something else entirely.
The architect.
Tina pulled her hood tighter and stepped inside.
Every guard knew her face. That was the problem. Trust was the most dangerous weapon her father ever forged.
She moved through corridors filled with echoes of childhood—late nights waiting for him, promises postponed, love replaced by purpose. She'd grown up believing his cause was righteous.
Until she learned the cost.
Waller.
The others.
The lives erased in the name of balance.
In the private wing, she accessed the terminal only two people in the world could open.
Her father's voice greeted her, calm and warm.
"If you're seeing this, Tina, then you've finally chosen to look behind the curtain."
Her hands trembled as files unfolded—human trials, erased identities, psychological conditioning. The courtroom from Waller's dream wasn't metaphorical.
It was real.
A system built to judge threats before they were born.
Her name appeared in the logs.
Handler: Tina Cole Williams.
She staggered back.
"No…" she whispered. "You used me."
A soft clap echoed behind her.
Cole Williams stepped from the shadows, older than she remembered, eyes sharp with disappointment—not anger.
"You were meant to understand," he said. "Not rebel."
"You imprisoned him," she snapped. "You broke people and called it order."
"I saved the world," he replied. "And you helped me do it."
Silence stretched between them—father and daughter standing on opposite sides of the same truth.
"You won't stop," Tina said, voice steady now. "So I will."
He smiled sadly. "Against the Eclipse? Against me?"
She reached into her jacket and placed a drive on the desk.
"I already have."
Outside, sirens wailed. Data streams leaked into the open net. Names. Faces. Proof.
For the first time, the Eclipse was exposed to the light.
In his cell, Waller felt it before he heard it.
The guards moved differently. Faster. Nervous.
A distant alarm screamed through the corridors.
He leaned back against the cold wall and allowed himself a single breath of hope.
Tina…
Whatever happened next—whether he walked free or rotted behind bars—
The Eclipse was finally being dragged into the open.
And the war?
It was no longer hidden.
--------The alarms didn't stop.
They multiplied—layered, frantic, the sound of a machine realizing too late that it had been betrayed.
In my cell, the lights flickered, bathing the concrete in sickly pulses of white and red. Boots thundered past my door, voices overlapping, orders contradicted by newer orders that came faster and louder.
The Eclipse was panicking.
I smiled to myself for the first time since the cuffs closed around my wrists.
Tina ran.
Not away—through.
Cole Williams Tower was no longer a fortress; it was a hive kicked open. Screens across the building flashed emergency protocols, encrypted channels bleeding into public servers. Every secret her father had buried now clawed its way into the light.
She burst into the control floor just as security sealed the exits.
Cole Williams stood at the center, calm amid the chaos, hands clasped behind his back like a king watching his city burn.
"You've always been dramatic," he said. "You could've come to me."
"I did," Tina replied, breathless. "Every time I asked you to stop."
Armed guards moved in behind her.
Cole raised a hand. They froze.
"Do you know why the Eclipse exists?" he asked. "Because the world refuses to learn. Because men like Waller Greene appear—unpredictable, uncontrollable. The courtroom you saw wasn't punishment. It was prevention."
"You put chains on a man who tried to save people," she shot back.
"Because he can undo everything."
Cole stepped closer, lowering his voice. "He remembers more than you think. And when he does, your little leak won't matter."
Tina's jaw tightened. "Then I'll make sure he gets the chance to remember."
She hit the switch.
The floor lights died.
Emergency power kicked in too late.
Gunfire erupted.
In the prison, the blast knocked me off the bench.
The wall shook like it had been punched from the outside. Dust rained down. Somewhere deep in the structure, metal screamed.
A riot siren howled.
Cells began to unlock.
Not all of them.
Just enough.
A guard skidded to a halt in front of my bars, panic written all over his face.
"You," he muttered, fumbling with his keys. "You're coming with us."
I stepped forward, chains clinking. "Funny. That's what they said when this started."
Before he could respond, the lights cut out.
A second later, the keys hit the floor.
Tina emerged into the rain again, blood on her knuckles that wasn't hers. Behind her, Cole Williams Tower burned—not with fire, but with exposure. Drones hovered overhead, broadcasting everything the Eclipse had worked decades to hide.
Her father's final message played across her earpiece.
"You think you've won," Cole said calmly. "But the Eclipse doesn't die with me."
She stopped walking.
"No," she replied. "It just lost its shadow."
She crushed the earpiece under her boot.
I didn't know how long I ran.
Through corridors. Through smoke. Through memories that weren't mine—or maybe always were. Faces. Names. Trials that never saw daylight.
The courtroom returned to me.
Only this time, the chains were breaking.
As I burst into the open night air, lungs burning, one truth rang louder than the alarms behind me:
The Eclipse hadn't been hunting me to silence me.
They'd been trying to keep me from remembering who I was—
and what I was built to end.
And somewhere out there, Tina Cole Williams was still fighting.
Against her blood.
Against her past.
Against a world that was finally beginning to see the dark.
The war was no longer coming.
It had begun.