Page 124 of Prey

Even if I’m one of them.

Infinity is quiet when I finally make it inside at 3:17 AM. My tactical gear reeks of smoke and gunpowder. Blood—not mine—stains my sleeves and chest. I should shower first, change clothes, wash the mission off my skin before I touch her.

Instead, I find myself walking directly to our quarters here.

Jenna is asleep on the couch, phone clutched in her hand, where she’d been waiting for my call. The television plays some late-night cooking show on mute, casting blue shadows across her face. She’s wearing one of my shirts—the gray one with the hole near the left shoulder—and her dark hair spills across the armrest like silk.

Her other hand rests on her stomach. Protective. Even in sleep, she’s guarding our child.

I set my rifle aside and carefully lift her phone from her grip.

She stirs as I slide my arms beneath her, making a soft sound of protest.

“Nikolai?” Her beautiful eyes open, immediately alert despite the late hour. “You’re back.”

“I’m back,” I confirm, carrying her toward our bedroom. “Safe. Whole.”

“The children?”

“Fifty-three extracted. All safe.” I don’t mention the bodies we left behind. Don’t talk about the blood under my fingernails or the weight of Webb’s confession. “They’re going to be okay.”

Jenna nods against my chest, trusting me to carry her, to handle the darkness so she doesn’t have to. In the bedroom, I set her gently on the mattress and begin stripping off my tactical gear. Vest, holsters, boots, socks, cargo pants stiff with dried blood.

“You smell like smoke,” she says quietly.

“I’ll shower.”

“No.” Her hand catches mine as I reach for clean clothes. “Not yet. Just… come here. Let me make sure you’re real.”

I climb into bed wearing only boxers, and Jenna immediately presses against me, her nose buried in the hollow of my throat. Her hands map my chest, shoulders, arms—checking for injuries.

“How bad was it?” she asks against my skin.

“Bad enough.” I close my eyes. “They had neural implants, Jenna. Real-time monitoring of brain chemistry. The conditioning was happening in days instead of months.”

She pulls back to look at me. “How many more?”

“Webb said thirty facilities. Multiple countries.” The words taste bitter. “Project Architect never died. It just went quiet. Evolved. Got better at what it does.”

Jenna is quiet for a long moment, processing. Then: “So we stop them all.”

Notyou.We. Even pregnant, even facing the magnitude of what we’ve discovered, she’s already thinking in terms of shared responsibility.

“It’s going to take time,” I warn her. “Intelligence gathering, operational planning. Maybe years before we can eliminate them all.”

“Then we dedicate those years.” She settles against me again, her hand finding its way back to her stomach. “Our baby will grow up in a world where fewer of these places exist. That’s something.”

I think about the eight-year-old girl who wouldn’t let go of Raphael. About all the children we saved tonight and all the ones we haven’t found yet. About the son or daughter currently growing inside Jenna, who deserves better than the world we inherited.

“I used to think the work was about revenge,” I admit. “Killing everyone who made us into weapons. But now…”

“Now it’s about making sure no other children go through what you did.” Jenna’s voice is full of understanding.

I press my lips to the top of her head and breathe in her scent—vanilla shampoo and her natural scent that grounds me in the present moment. The Hunter is satisfied for tonight. The mission is complete. The children are safe.

And I have something worth protecting that exists outside the cycle of violence.

“I love you,” I tell her.