Chapter 1 Echoes of the Past
In the low hospital ambience, distant footsteps, muffled voices, soft beeping monitors was heard.
“The nights were long for Damon Maddox… but the memories were longer.
Sleep was a stranger now, a luxury he no longer remembered, and no longer trusted.”
Damon sat alone in the cold corridor, fingers curled around the worn photograph in his hand.
The image was faded around the edges from years of being held, thumbed, and stared at in silence. Kayla’s little smile, that bright, gap-toothed grin, shone up at him like a tiny lighthouse in his storm.
Fade into a soft, distorted flashback, children laughing, a woman humming a lullaby
“For a moment, just one… he let himself pretend the world was still whole.”
Kayla’s laughter echoed, drifting through the memory like sun through open curtains.
His wife’s soft humming filled the background, warm, familiar, safe. Damon felt himself reaching for the memory, almost touching it.
Then everything shattered
Gunshots ripping through the air.
Screams overlapping.
Heartbeat pounding.
Kayla called, Daddy!”
“And just like that… the past stabbed through the present.”
With that Damon's realiation flashback collapsed suddenly; his ambience shifted back to the quiet hospital hum
Damon jerked back into the dim hallway, breath held tight in his lungs. His fingers trembled just once — a flicker of weakness he quickly buried.
Mariah stepped into view, hugging her backpack to her chest as if it were armor. Her eyes darted around — restless, haunted, carrying stories she still couldn’t voice.
Mariah was quiet and said shakily, “They found another safehouse… burned. No survivors.”
With a soft swallow, “Damon… they know you’re back.”
Damon didn’t look up. His voice came out flat, sharpened by grief.
Damon, “I want them to know.”
He slid the photo into his jacket with a careful, almost ritual motion, like tucking away a prayer.
Mariah hesitated, then set a small folder on the table beside him.
The folder slapped onto metal table creating a tinny sound.
Mariah whispering “I pulled files off a dead runner. There’s a shipment tonight. Girls. Young.” voice cracking, “Too young.”
Damon finally lifted his eyes. They were cold steel now — the kind forged in flame and loss.
She opened the folder with trembling fingers. Inside: printed manifests, GPS logs, coded names… lies disguised as schedules.
“Every page reeked of the Network’s poison.”
Damon spoke in a low tone, “Where?”
Mariah pointed to a line on the page, biting her lip.
Mariah, “Dockyard Seven. Midnight. This one… this one’s big, Damon. Someone high up is moving the pieces.”
“He didn’t flinch. Didn’t hesitate. This wasn’t a mission. It was an answer.”
Damon stood, sliding on his gloves with a calmness that chilled her. He made his way to his bike outside. His motorcycle ignited, a deep, powerful rumble
Mariah stepped forward quickly, grabbing his arm. “Just, don’t go alone. They’re upping security. You walk in blind and, her voice shaky exhale
“This could be a trap.”
Damon looked at her, expression unreadable behind the storm building inside him.
With a voice dark, resolute “Good. Then they’ll all be in one place.”
He pulled down his helmet, voice dropping to a whisper meant only for the dead.
Damon whispered to himself, “For Kayla.”
His motorcycle reved hard. Tires splashing through puddles as the heavy rain intensifies.
“And so, in the storm-soaked arteries of the city, something stirred as the thunder rolls overhead.
Not Damon Maddox, the man the world forgot.”
“But the thing the Network feared most.
The shadow they created.
The reckoning they deserve.”
“WRAITH.”
