Waller Greene's POV
Growing up, I always imagined a detective as someone who storms into danger, takes down the bad guys, and gets applauded for it.
I became a detective — well-known, respected, just as I thought I would be. But instead of glory, my career has been tangled in betrayal, lust, and most of all, bribery.
For years, a group known as The Eclipse has played a major role in blocking every attempt at justice. They dodge every accusation, every investigation, every stone thrown their way — always managing to keep the law in their grasp and out of reach of those who seek the truth.
New York, once a city admired for its beauty and tourism, has slowly turned into a breeding ground for crime.
I stood on the rooftop of a building, the night sky glowing with city lights. The wind cut through my skin as I looked down at the streets below.
"Sigh."
I let out a slow breath.
What now? Who can I trust? Who's hiding in plain sight, waiting to take down someone like me?
My thoughts raced, spiraling out of control.
No plan. Just a broken detective surviving at the mercy of a powerful entity that overshadows the life we once dreamed of.
The people I had trusted with every fragment of loyalty were either involved… or held in the highest ranks of it.
"Of all places, this is where I least expected to see you." A voice rose from behind me.
I almost turned. Almost.
But if this was my final evening in this city, I wanted to drink in its skyline one last time—the shimmering towers, the restless traffic, the illusion of order.
"Am I in trouble?" I asked, not bothering to face the speaker.
"Waller Greene," the voice replied smoothly, "you've come too far to be frightened by the shadows around you. You should embrace them. Look at me—I'm still agile, still charismatic, still strong-willed… perhaps you can finish that sentence just by looking at me."
That tone.
I knew it.
I turned slowly.
"Theresa?" My voice broke as tears slipped down my cheeks. "How did you find me?"
She stood poised, composed—grief no longer visible, replaced with something sharper.
"You were never hard to find," she said gently. "You just hide in obvious places. Rooftops. Old precinct corridors. The past."
I swallowed hard. "You disappeared after Ben left the force. After the scandal."
"I didn't disappear," she corrected. "I repositioned."
The word felt deliberate.
"I failed him," I said. "I failed you both."
Theresa studied me, her eyes unreadable.
"You failed yourself first, Waller. Ben believed in you. He believed justice meant something because you wore that badge like it was sacred."
"It was," I snapped, then softened. "It still is."
She shook her head slightly. "You still think this is about good men versus bad men. It hasn't been that simple in a long time."
I stepped closer. "Tell me what you're doing here."
"To offer you clarity," she replied.
"About what?"
"About The Eclipse."
The name felt like poison in my throat.
"You were closer than anyone to bringing them down," she continued. "And then you stopped."
"I was blocked at every level," I said bitterly.
"Evidence vanished. Witnesses turned. Orders came from above. I was drowning."
"And you chose to float instead of fight."
Her words landed heavy.
Before I could respond, footsteps echoed across the rooftop.
Slow. Measured.
I didn't need to turn this time.
Ben.
He stepped forward, no longer the idealistic young officer I had been partner with. His suit was tailored, his expression composed—cold in a way that made my chest ache.
"Still giving rooftop speeches, Detective?" he said.
"Ben…" My voice barely held. "You're alive."
"Very much," he replied. "And enlightened."
I looked between him and his mother. "You're working with them."
"With The Eclipse?" He gave a faint smile. "Not working with them. Evolving with them."
"You swore to dismantle them!" I shouted.
"I swore to protect this city," he corrected calmly. "And I realized something you never did—power doesn't hide in alleyways anymore. It lives in code."
My hands trembled. "You built their system."
"I refined it."
Theresa watched silently, almost proud.
"What system?" I demanded.
Ben stepped closer until we were face to face.
"The government approved it this morning,"
he said.
"Full national integration. Eclipse-developed surveillance infrastructure. Predictive crime analytics. Behavioral monitoring. Autonomous enforcement drones."
The air seemed to thin.
"No," I whispered. "That tech was unstable. It flagged innocent people. It manipulated outcomes."
"It learned," Ben replied. "It adapted. Crime rates in pilot cities dropped by forty percent."
"At the cost of freedom," I shot back.
"Freedom is chaos without control," he said evenly.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I ignored it.
"You came here to recruit me?" I asked bitterly.
Ben's eyes softened for a fraction of a second. "We came to give you relevance."
Theresa spoke quietly. "You're becoming obsolete, Waller. The badge you cling to is symbolic now. The system sees patterns faster than you ever could."
"I'm not a pattern," I growled.
Ben's jaw tightened. "To the system, you are."
My phone vibrated again. I pulled it out.
Suspended.
Internal investigation reopened.
Financial accounts under review.
My name was already being dismantled.
"They've flagged you as resistant to integration," Ben said. "A destabilizing influence."
"You did this," I breathed.
"No," he said. "You did. By refusing to evolve."
The city below us hummed with unseen networks—cameras, drones, silent algorithms mapping lives in real time.
"All those raids," I said hollowly. "All the blood. It was theater."
"Transition," Ben corrected.
I looked at him—the partner I became a brother with and eventually had a plan to clear this city off the crime.
"You think this makes you strong," I said quietly.
"It makes us necessary."
Theresa stepped forward, placing a hand briefly on his arm. "The world changes, Waller. Governments don't fight power anymore. They partner with it."
The twist settled in my bones like ice.
The Eclipse hadn't infiltrated the system.
They had become it.
And I stood there—badge heavy in my pocket, reputation crumbling in my hands—more broken and worthless than I had ever felt.
Above us, a drone hovered briefly before gliding into the night sky.
Watching.
"So what now?" I asked, my vision swimming, the skyline bending like melted glass before my eyes.
The wind howled between the high-rise buildings, carrying the scent of smoke and burning steel. I finally turned.
Theresa stood a few feet away, her coat snapping violently in the wind, her face carved from something colder than stone.
"You finally stopped running," she said.
Before I could respond, the world erupted.
A deafening blast tore through the lower floors of the building. The ground beneath us lurched. Concrete screamed. Glass shattered outward in a deadly rain. The force knocked me off my feet, slamming my back against the rooftop gravel. My ears rang as if a thousand alarms were going off inside my skull.
The tower groaned.
Half of the building below us collapsed inward, floors pancaking into each other in a violent chain reaction. Flames burst from shattered windows. Black smoke coiled into the night sky like a serpent claiming its territory.
"Waller!" Theresa shouted, but her voice felt distant.
I scrambled up, coughing, just as a section of the rooftop caved in. I barely rolled away in time. The ledge I had been standing near moments ago broke loose and plummeted thirty stories down.
Sirens wailed far below.
Then I saw them.
Men in tactical black surged through the rooftop access door — masked, armed, moving with mechanical precision. Eclipse.
I reached for my gun.
Too slow.
A heavy boot drove into my ribs, sending the air exploding from my lungs.
My weapon skidded across the rooftop and vanished over the broken edge. I swung blindly, catching one of them in the jaw, but another slammed the butt of a rifle against my shoulder. Something cracked. Pain flared white-hot.
Hands seized my arms. Zip ties bit into my wrists.
"You should've stayed afraid," one of them muttered into my ear.
I struggled, but another explosion rocked what remained of the structure. The building tilted — just slightly — but enough to remind me we were standing on a dying giant.
Chunks of concrete rained down around us. One of the masked men lost footing and disappeared through a widening fissure in the rooftop, his scream swallowed by fire and smoke below.
They dragged me toward the access door.
Through the chaos, through the flames licking upward, I locked eyes with Theresa.
She wasn't running.
She wasn't captured.
She was watching.
And in that moment, as half the building collapsed behind me and the city I once swore to protect burned beneath the falling debris, I realized something far worse than betrayal.
This wasn't an ambush.
It was a handover.