Page 6 of Controlled Drift
He wondered, briefly, who would take custody next.
And then—unbidden, unwanted—another thought surfaced.
Ethan.
The pain the thought drove through his heart surprised him, the way it still did sometimes.Years had passed since that last mission together, since the sudden departure and silence that followed.No explanation.No closure.Just absence, like a door slammed shut mid-sentence.
Niko had learned not to chase ghosts.
Still.
He did know one thing.
If anyone could read the air the way Niko had learned to ...if anyone could follow a trail that wasn’t meant to be seen...
It would be Ethan Rhodes.He had thought previously, hoping thatsomeonewould be out there watching, listening.Now he knew he hoped it was Ethan.
The thought was dangerous.
Hope always was.
Niko let it go, forcing his mind back into discipline.There would be no reaching out.No signals.No desperate moves.
He had already done what he could.
Now, he waited.
Jakarta loomed closer with every mile, and with it, the narrowing edge between value and death.Niko remained still, breathing slow and even, his face calm beneath the lights.
Whatever came next, he would meet it the same way he always did.
Silent.Watching.And ready.
****
Flying dark was musclememory.
Ethan held the aircraft just below where anyone would expect him to be, riding the thin, empty spaces between recognized corridors and logged altitude bands.The jet responded the way it always did—smooth, eager, unapologetically fast.He flew the way he always had when he didn’t want to be seen, letting the sky believe it was emptier than it was.The instruments glowed softly, muted and stripped back, showing only what he needed and nothing that might chatter into places it didn’t belong.
The sky out here felt different—quieter, thinner.A place between notice and neglect.
Behind him, the cabin was alive with quiet motion.
Black Tide didn’t fill space with noise.They filled it with intent.
Drew was strapped into the forward workstation, boots braced, shoulders loose, but his eyes sharp as they flicked between telemetry feeds and the passive external data Ethan allowed through.He didn’t speak unless he had something worth saying, and the fact that he hadn’t filled the last ten minutes with commentary said more than any reassurance could.
Victor stood just behind him, broad shoulders relaxed in a way that meant they weren’t—not really.His presence was a wall at Ethan’s back, solid and immovable.Tane hovered close by, one hand resting on the bulkhead, gaze fixed on the altitude readout as if proximity alone could influence the numbers.He shifted minutely with every adjustment Ethan made, tracking speed and pitch with a predator’s focus.
Further back, Dominic and Luca occupied opposite sides of the cabin.
Luca was hunched over a tablet, jaw set, fingers moving fast as he pulled fragmented intel from channels that shouldn’t exist.His focus was absolute, the rest of the cabin fading away as patterns formed and dissolved under his hands.Dominic sat opposite him, arms folded, expression unreadable—but his attention was sharp, watching the others as much as the data, reading posture and silence the way some men read maps.
Kael Makani took the seat directly behind Ethan’s right shoulder.
He hadn’t said much since wheels-up.He didn’t need to.Kael’s leadership didn’t announce itself.It settled into a room like the calm that came after a storm.When he leaned forward, the cabin seemed to recalibrate around him.
“The trail’s still clean,” Drew said quietly, finally breaking the silence.“No active emissions.No signal chatter.Whoever took him knows how to disappear.”
