Midnight, Essex County, New York.

  Shadows lengthened in Sanguine Springs. Five hours north of Manhattan, the Adirondacks had settled into darkness. The mountains, highest in the state, stood apart from the more famous Appalachian chain, relegated to minor league status by those who bothered to rank such things.

  The mountains didn't care.

  They had weathered far more than human opinion. Some years, the rippling peaks held their snowcaps through summer, while others bared fangs of dark rock at the indifferent sky. A few tourists came in summer. Fewer locals endured the brutal winters. None truly conquered the peaks. They remained wild—untamed before man's arrival, and ready to outlast his departure.

  A dark night. The waning moon had already departed, setting below the High Peaks and shrouding the hamlet of Sanguine Springs in even deeper darkness. At the end of a dead-end road, five houses stood amid wood and water at the foot of the Jay Range. Four houses lay silent, their windows black as the water in the adjoining beaver pond.

  The fifth house kept watch, its lodgepole pine exterior lit on one side by the glow of a single occupied room. Inside, a warrior sat, once more facing death.

  A familiar crossroads.

  Brad Clarke had been here before. In front of him, sitting on a battered rustic wooden table, were two paths. Two choices. The high road, or the low.

  He breathed in, held the breath, and let it out. Like he'd first learned in the teams. Steady, focusing only on his breathing.

  Trying to, anyway.

  In the end, it was all the same. Each path led toward death. The only difference was fast or slow. He closed his eyes, took an extra deep breath, and reached out. His hand passed over the black plastic handgrip of a loaded pistol. His fingers wrapped instead around the glass neck of a bottle of Glenfiddich. Someday, Jake. But not today.

  The whisky burned, like it should. Light, but firm, like a steel bit in the mouth of a horse. The liquor left a trail of warm coals from his tongue down to his stomach. The Scotch was the experience his own moonshine emulated. After a decade of trial, error, and hangovers, his process was finally on par with the venerable brand.

  Or it had been, until last month, when he took a sledgehammer to his still. The mangled remains sat in the corner of his garage, the once bright metal already dulling like an old penny. Maybe someday, if he lived long enough, he would regret it. Brad doubted it.

  After surviving Iraq and the arid mountains of the 'Stan, he had returned with pride that none of his brothers had died because of his own mistakes. Some died, sure. Too many. And that stung. But it was all... what? Fate? Happenstance? Luck of the draw? Hell, his country's own intel got men killed more often than the Mooj. It was wrong, but at the end of the day, none of it had been his fault. He'd been a good soldier.

  He used to think he was a good brother, too.

  Before he killed Jake.

  Brad raised the bottle. Swig followed swig, until the warm Edison bulbs overhead began to swim. He smiled a grim reaper's smile and looked again at the Glock. Why wait?

  A scarred fist pounded the table, rattling the golden wood. "Because I have to atone," he said aloud, his voice lost in the empty spaces of his lodge-style home. He tried to regain composure, tried to bring his breathing under control.

  No joy.

  The whisky won, hammering him with blow after blow, until the ex-soldier collapsed in sleep, tears of shame running down his shaggy cheeks.

  Hadley Caine sat in his EV, beneath a droning parking lot light. His eyes focused on the apartment in front of him. The lights were off. Made sense. It befitted the hour. Past midnight. The ice princess would be asleep by now, her fake hand on the nightstand beside her.

  This was not his first rodeo. He was wearing black nitrile gloves before he even unbuckled to slide out of the car. Hadley rounded the car and threw open its trunk. An LED strip lamp filled the car's interior with light. A cloud of moths descended from their orbit around the overhead bulb to investigate the new illumination. Hadley ignored them, withdrawing a black cordura bag, its exterior covered with some sort of webbing. Molly, he remembered. He didn't know what it was for, but it was built into all the tactical gear these days. It looked cool. And it was expensive—from some English company on London Bridge. He unzipped the bag. Artificial light glinted off the polished steel inside. He smiled, and zipped it shut. He took a moment to slide the bag over his head, threading his arms through the shoulder straps. Then he grabbed a navy blue hoodie from the car's trunk. Not his taste. He'd bought it with cash from a thrift store in Topanga. With a quick zip, he hid the tool kit on his chest from prying eyes.

  With the kit concealed, Hadley used his iPhone to access his personal Tetherly App. Not the social networking app that now came preinstalled on every Android and iPhone. A special one, for in-house use only. His version was even more customized. It broke a few laws, but hey, what didn't?

  Hadley waited until the app's GPS pinpointed his position. From there, it located all Tetherly-owned systems in a quarter mile radius. An emblem glowed on the map right on top of his location. Hadley nodded in satisfaction. Allison's apartment complex was using Tetherly Secur-IT for their camera network.

  With a few swipes, Hadley's black-hat app overrode the camera feed in Allison's apartment building. The timestamp would continue to tick along, while the feed would loop the last seventeen seconds with occasional coordinated AI insertions of foot traffic to maintain the appearance of movement. It was ingenious, but then, it WAS one of his projects. Off the books, of course. The sort of thing that would get you fired, with extreme prejudice. Hadley wasn't worried though. He'd uncovered more in his time at the company than just unprotected apps. Certain operations with company destroying implications. Things he'd only bring up if he needed to. Things like the existence of the Horus Overwatch. It was his own gold-plated parachute backup plan.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Hadley walked through the parking lot, head-down, eyes towards the pavement as he passed others, leaving. At the door, he held his phone against the electronic keypad. His app overrode the security protocol. A green light flashed as the door popped open.

  Hadley stepped inside, letting it close before him. He strode down the hall, found the stairwell, and climbed the stairs, two at a time. He turned at the first landing, and there, partway down the hall, he saw it. The door to room 207.

  The lair of the gimp.

  He walked cautiously towards the door, his steps silent as death. Special shoes, with felt soles. He'd burn them, after tonight.

  The door to room 207 had the same black keyreader as the entryway. Hadley doublechecked the hall, then used his phone to unlock Allison's door.

  With a steady hand on the knob, he lay a palm flat against the door and eased it open slowly. Gently. Quietly. He stepped out of the hall and into the apartment. It was as dark inside as it had appeared from the exterior.

  Hadley pulled the door closed behind him. He looked at his phone. It took a moment to reacquaint himself with the floor plan. It had been available on the website of the apartment complex. Useful stuff. It let him know right where the bedroom would be.

  With that information at hand, he slid the phone into his back pocket. He pulled a black balaclava over his head, shrouding all but his eyes and mouth from view. Hadley stood back against the door, his eyes closed, breathing steadily, allowing time to pass. Time for his heart rate to calm. Time for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  A shiver ran down Hadley's spine. He hadn't felt this alive in years.

  He licked his lips. Salt, from his excited perspiration, with a tinge of the merlot.

  Eyes still closed, he unzipped the hoodie, one quiet click at a time. The jacket hung limp, flopping open in an obscene fashion. Like he was a flasher. But all it exposed was the prowler's kit, jutting proud from his chest.

  Hadley opened the cordura pouch by feel. His finger caressed the objects inside. Fingers that trembled slightly as they wrapped around their prizes.

  His right hand wrapped around a pair of box end wrenches, wrapped in thick guitar string. A garotte, of Hadley's own making.

  The left hand stroked a knife handle–its blade concealed inside, ready to shoot out with the press of a button Spring loaded with a six inch drop point blade. A switchblade.

  The knife was a backup. Hadley's favorite tool was the garotte. He loved the fight, the way veins and eyes bulged as he wrestled the sluts to the ground, depriving them of even the air to raise a final scream of terror. It was his preferred means of saying good riddance to bad rubbish.

  And if that should prove to be a problem, the knife would finish the job quick enough.

  Hadley opened his eyes, pupils fully dilated in response to the darkness–and the thrill of the hunt. He left the pouch open, his tools ready at a moment.

  Through the imperfectly shut window blinds, the apartment was clear as day. It was emptier than he had expected, but that didn't matter. There were signs of life. Messy girl, our Allison, he mused. He could see every plate on the island of the kitchen ready to be put away. A stack of mail on the coffee table, between a pillow-clogged couch. A few floor lamps, and generic wall art of mountains, and a strange-shaped lake with two islands in it. The piled clothes sticking out of a hamper in the short bedroom hall.

  He walked down that hallway, each step measured, tread silent on the thick carpeting. The door stood open a few inches. It reminded Hadley of his mother's bedroom door, always ajar in case her precious Pomeranian wanted to get out.

  Hadley grabbed the doorknob and waited. After a few breaths, he pushed it open, soft as a breeze. He reached into the bedroom. A full-sized bed dominated the modest room, its rumpled sheets lit by streetlights shining in through the ineffective gauzy curtains. The rumpled bedspread covered a lengthy form, hunched to the bed's right side, hard against the nightstand. Hadley took the garrote from his pouch and advanced, his heart beating loudly.

  Three steps took him to the top of the bed. He fumbled for the balaclava, lifting it free to rest messily on his head. I want her to see me before she dies. His hand grabbed the wrinkled top of the comforter and tore it from the bed, before pulling the garrote taut with a twanging hum.

  The motion of the comforter set the flimsy curtains in motion, causing the full strength of the parking lot’s light to fall on the exposed bed. The light revealed a lumpish shape. What had looked like a sleeper beneath the covers turned out to be a body pillow, larger than any he'd seen.

  It was only then that Hadley noticed the state of the room.

  Clothing lay strewn across the floor. Clothes hangers piled in front of an open closet, a jumbled heap like pickup sticks. A conspicuous space on the closet floor, where one would expect to find luggage. Evidences all of a hurried departure.

  Allison had flown the coop. His prey was gone.

  Hadley’s face contorted. He kicked the bed, earning a slight crunch as his pinky toe broke. The sharp pain drove him over the edge. Inside his head, voices roared. He flung the garotte to the side, shattering the cheap porcelain bedside lamp in the process. The knife came out, blade flicking out as Hadley pressed the button. He slashed the body pillow open, then flung it to the floor before attacking the mattress itself.

  He stabbed, stabbed, stabbed into the mattress, climbing on top to deliver a frenzied series of double fisted blows. Springs squeaked as the blade scraped itself dull against the high tensile steel. He only stopped when his hands came up empty, the knife embedded in the wood of the frame beneath the ruined mattress.

  Hadley Caine knelt on the bed, panting, his fingers locked into C-shaped claws like a garage sale action figure. Sweat dripped from his brow, into the foam and spring filled hole his rage had carved. He knelt there for a long time.

  Finally, his breathing and pulse returned to normal. Hadley slid off the bed. Standing ramrod straight, he pulled the knife free. The blade was bent, and no longer retracted. He laid it sideways in the chest rig, then collected the garotte from the wreckage of the lamp.

  Hadley looked around the room, took a breath, and walked away. After checking the camera on his phone, he opened the door and walked out of Allison’s apartment. Despite his lapse of control in the bedroom, there was nothing here that could tie him to the scene.

  The scene of what? Nothing. No murder. No assault. A little breaking and entry, but his program had already erased that. As far as he knew, trashed apartments didn’t raise any alarms on their own.

  He was fine.

  Except, he wasn’t.

  His revenge–no, his satisfaction–ruined. cut off at the moment of climax. It was just like her. One more reason to hate that one-armed tease.

  She didn’t know he was coming tonight, but still, she’d fled. Which meant he’d have to get creative. Push the boundaries. It’s time to see what this Horus Overwatch can do, He thought, as his EV rolled out of the apartment’s lot.

  His prey had made a mistake. Hadley was often accused of having no emotions. That wasn’t true. He had plenty— but only the bad ones, locked away in his mental clubhouse. Tonight, The hard boys were kicking up a storm. And now, with the rabbit on the run, he was directing them all at Allison Myles.

  Kudos to everyone who made it this far, and special thanks to anyone who binged the first three chapters on launch day.