Page 52 of Controlled Drift
Kael nodded once.“Then it’s us.”
Movement followed instinctively—chairs scraping back, gear being grabbed, tablets snapping shut.No wasted motion.No questions left hanging.
“What are we flying?”Niko asked as they moved.
Ethan didn’t break stride.“The Aquila X-1.”
Marsh let out a low, reverent sound over the channel.“Of course it is.”
“It’ll get us there ahead of him,” Ethan said.“Fast enough, he won’t see us coming.Quiet enough, he won’t know we’re there until I want him to.”
They were almost out the door when his phone rang.
The phone rang again.
Not loud.Not urgent.Just a clean vibration against Ethan’s palm that felt far heavier than it should have.
He knew before he looked.
The room seemed to sense it too—movement stalled, voices cut off mid-word, the air tightening as if everyone had collectively drawn the same breath and forgotten how to let it go.
“I’ll take this,” Ethan said, already pulling the phone free.His thumb hovered for half a second before he set it to speaker.He didn’t trust his hand not to shake if he held it to his ear.
Gregory Payne’s voice slid into the room like oil.
“Ethan.”
There it was.Calm.Fond, almost.As if he were calling about dinner plans instead of bodies on a school floor.
“I thought you might take my call,” Gregory continued, amused.“It seems I have something you want.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
Then he heard it.
A sound—muffled, choked, unmistakably human.Pain, barely restrained.Breath forced through clenched teeth.
Marcus.
Niko moved instantly, his body angling toward Ethan, one hand gripping his arm hard enough to ground him, the other flexing like he was ready to tear something apart with it.
“Careful,” Gregory said softly, almost conversational.“You wouldn’t want to miss anything.”
Ethan opened his eyes.
The conference room had vanished.There was only the voice, the sound behind it, and the cold certainty settling into his bones.Gregory wasn’t improvising.This wasn’t rage.This was theater.
“You killed them,” Ethan said quietly.Not a question.
Gregory sighed, as if disappointed.“They interfered.You know how that goes.Tragic, really.But useful.It reminds people to stay in their lanes.”
Niko made a sound low in his throat, something feral.Kael’s jaw tightened, his gaze already distant, calculating, storing everything.
“You didn’t have to do this,” Ethan said.
“Oh, but I did,” Gregory replied.“You’ve been very busy, Ethan.Pulling threads.Breaking things that took years to build.I thought it was time we talked face-to-face again.”
Another sound from the line—sharper this time.
