Page 3 of Hardline Torque
Victor lay prone inthe upper branches of the ironwood, body pressed flat along a limb thick enough to carry his weight without complaint.The tree had been there longer than the compound, its roots deep in undisturbed soil, well back from the cleared perimeter where the forest still held fast.He’d chosen it deliberately—high enough for range, dense enough for cover, alive enough to mask heat signatures.
Three nights.
That was how long it had been since he’d left this place, his whole world rocked by what he had confirmed, knowing that when he thought he had been on the side of justice and purpose, he had really been on the side of chaos and carnage, and was now hunted by men who used to own his leash.
He didn’t know why he’d come back.
Before him, the site crawled with controlled movement.Not panic.Not chaos.Purpose.He had learned that Black Tide had always been good at that—turning violence into order, aftermath into infrastructure.Contractors in dark work gear moved in coordinated lines, unloading steel panels, rolling out fencing, welding sections together with sharp bursts of light that flared and died like silent fireworks.
Victor adjusted the scope, fingers steady despite the low, persistent burn in his abdomen.The knife wound sat just above his hip, ugly and deep, wrapped tight beneath layers of compression and improvised stitching.It throbbed with every breath, a reminder that he wasn’t as untouchable as the Directorate liked to pretend their assets were.
Former asset, he corrected automatically.
The bruises were worse.Purple and yellow blooms mapped his ribs and shoulders, souvenirs from the fight it had taken to get out of his motel room.They ached when he shifted, when he breathed too deep, when he remembered hands that hadn’t been kind when they had tried to help him to change his mind about leaving.
He rotated the camera feed, splitting the view into four overlapping angles.The tech he was using was his—custom, modified, untraceable.Directorate-grade optics paired with directional audio pickups that could isolate a whispered conversation from a hundred meters out.
One of the many things he shouldn’t still have.
One of the many reasons he should have kept moving.
He zoomed in on the northern tree line.
Niko—Reef—was working with a crew clearing a wide swath of trees, chainsaws chewing through trunks with mechanical snarls.Victor watched the spacing, the angles.It wasn’t just clearing the land, it was shaping it.
A landing zone perhaps?The man was a pilot after all.Likely with a hangar footprint just beyond, if the ground held.
Smart.
He shifted feeds.
Luca—Breaker—paced near the temporary command structures, tablet in one hand, a secondary display strapped to his forearm.Data streamed across both as he spoke rapidly to someone off-screen, gesturing up, then down, then sweeping wide.
“Camera angles,” Victor muttered.“Drone overlap.”
He could hear Luca’s voice faintly through the audio pickup, frustration threaded with focus.Luca always sounded like that when he was building a web.
Another feed.
Keanu—Torch—was laying perimeter wire with meticulous care in front of their main compound, gloved hands moving fast and precise.Victor recognized the telltale markers immediately.
Explosives.
Not crude.Controlled.The kind that redirected force instead of simply obliterating everything around it.
Victor felt a ghost of a smile tug at his mouth.
They were good.
Too good for the kind of heat that was coming.
He pulled the feed wider, letting the system paint the compound in layered outlines—movement, heat, sound.Kael—Surge—strode through the center of the compound like he owned the ground beneath his boots, barking orders that snapped people into motion.Drew—Wraith—was with him, the two of them hauling a heavy wooden crate between them toward the garage that doubled as a command center.
Victor’s jaw tightened.
He knew that box.
He’d sat across from it once, wrists uncuffed, spine straight, answering questions no one else was allowed to ask him.Interrogation was a loose term.No one had touched him.But then, they weren’t really trying to get anything out of him.He and Tane had a nice conversation, and then, well, Victor stood up and left.
