CHAPTER TEN

  The dream does not announce itself.

  It never does.

  Though this time, it expands.

  The hallway is too narrow, walls close enough that the air feels trapped. Light flickers overhead, not failing, just hesitating. The sound comes first. Boots. Controlled. Too synchronized to be anything but intentional.

  He is smaller here. The world looms.

  The woman stands across the room.

  She is not frantic. She is focused. Her eyes are not on him exactly, but just past him, fixed on a point only she seems to see.

  Then she speaks.

  “Buck, Go.” she says, sharp and urgent. “Now!”

  The words land with weight.

  Before he can understand why, the voice arrives.

  Not from the room.

  From inside his head.

  Calm. Familiar. Steady in a way that makes panic impossible.

  Hold on, little buddy, the voice says. This is going to be a wild ride.

  The world slides around him.

  ___

  Buck jerks awake in his apartment, breath catching mid-inhale.

  Dark. Quiet. The city hums beyond the walls, indifferent and distant. His heart is steady. His hands are still. The dream evaporates faster than usual, but the voice does not.

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  His last few days had been filled with his normal work, but a tension hung over him, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Was his brain adding details to compensate for the stress, or was he finally remembering something real. That’s the thing about dreams, they often leave you with the feeling that you can’t trust your own reality. That feeling is unsettling.It lingers, like a sentence left unfinished.

  He swings his legs out over the side of the bed and knows that its almost 3am now. He decides that as usual, he is better off getting up.

  Then the knock hits the door.

  Firm. Measured. Professional.

  Buck stands up slowly, already knowing this is not a neighbor and not a mistake.

  The knock comes again.

  “Buck,” a voice calls. “It’s Chen.”

  He stands, pulls on the shirt he had tossed over the back of the only chair just a few short hours ago, then opens the door.

  Chen stands centered in the hallway, posture neutral, expression carefully controlled. Two elite operatives flank her, black uniforms, helmets clipped at their sides. They are positioned perfectly. Close enough to intervene. Far enough to pretend this is voluntary.

  “Morning,” Chen says quietly.

  Buck searches her face. There is tension there. Contained. Purposeful.

  “What’s going on?” he asks.

  She lowers her voice. “Orders came down. They want you brought in for questioning regarding your recent activities.”

  “Questioning,” Buck repeats.

  “I asked to handle this myself,” she says. “No restraints IF you come willingly.”

  Her emphasis on the word IF, causes a visible tension to ripple through all of them. One of the operatives shifts. Chen silences him with a glance she doesn’t bother turning her head for.

  Buck exhales once.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  She hesitates, just long enough to matter. “You always have a choice.”

  He steps carefully into the hall. His hands above his elbow palms open towards them in a gesture of compliance. Their bodies relax slightly, but he knows that they are not only ready for anything, like him, these men are trained, capable and deeply indebted to the company. Any attempt at escape would only lead to pursuit, and where can you go when the company is always watching your every move.

  ___

  The interrogation room is familiar in a way that makes his skin crawl. Stainless steel table. Two chairs. The mirrored panel he used to stand behind. Cameras placed where compliance is most efficiently encouraged.

  Now he sits on the wrong side of the table. He folds his hands. He waits. Eventually, the door opens.

  Director Kade enters without urgency, as if this is already resolved. He doesn’t sit right away. He circles the table once, slow, evaluating, like Buck is a variable that has started producing noisy data.

  “Buck Payne,” Kade says. “You’ve been busy.”

  Buck doesn’t respond.

  “You’ve been digging too deeply,” Kade continues. “Looking at systems that are no longer your concern.”

  “Internal Affairs exists to ask questions,” Buck says evenly.

  Kade smiles, thin and patient. “Only the approved ones.”

  He finally sits, folding his hands. “There’s a point where resistance stops being admirable and starts being inefficient.”

  Buck tilts his head. “Is that the warning?”

  “No,” Kade says lightly. “This is me being polite.”

  He gestures vaguely around the room. “The Continuance isn’t something you delay. It’s something you participate in. Or something that happens to you.”

  Buck feels it then.

  Not fear.

  Attention.

  “So what’s the plan?” Buck asks. “You disappear me? Reassign me? Lock me in a stress chamber and call it research?”

  Kade stands and turns his gaze toward the camera in the corner of the room.

  “We observe you,” he says. “Under pressure. Constraint. Uncertainty.”

  He doesn’t look back at Buck. “Someone very important finds this stage… informative.”

  Buck follows his gaze to the lens. He already knows who is on the other side of the camera. The sensation that has been there since the penthouse meeting. The same quiet weight. The same sense of being measured against an internal standard.

  Buck smiles. It’s small. Deliberate. He looks directly into the camera.

  “Yippee ki yay,Motherfucker.”, he says calmly.

  Kade’s smile fades and the silence that follows is surgical.

  Somewhere far beyond the room, something bigger than all of them watches very closely.