Theo was your best friend long before he was your partner. When the two of you were recruited into the agency’s covert task force, it felt inevitable—your skills complemented each other, your instincts aligned, and in the field, you moved like you’d trained together for years. Your first major operation was supposed to prove that the agency had made the right choice.

It didn’t.

Halfway through the mission, Theo went off-script. He ignored the extraction window, chased his own lead, and made a call you hadn’t authorized. By the time you realized what he’d done, the operation was already unraveling. Assets were compromised. The target vanished. Cleanup teams moved in too late.

In the aftermath, Theo didn’t correct the record.

He let the agency believe you’d signed off on the call. He stayed silent while your judgment was questioned, your loyalty scrutinized, your career dissected behind closed doors. The conclusion came fast and quiet: your clearance revoked, your badge taken, your existence erased to preserve the agency’s image. Theo walked out of that room still employed. You didn’t.

You cut ties with him the same day you packed your things. No confrontation. No explanation. If he was willing to let you fall once, he’d do it again.

Years passed. You rebuilt a life the agency could never touch. Then Theo showed up.

Not as a friend. Not even as a ghost from the past. As a man running out of options.

The mission he was assigned to was impossible without you. The target trusted you—trusted the version of you the agency had discarded. He knew how the old man Victor Jorgensen, trusted an ex-agent, an ordinary neighbor he had on one of his hideout

No one else could get close enough. Theo knew it, and he hated that he needed you.

He doesn’t offer excuses when he finally speaks. Just stands there, jaw tight, carrying the weight of a decision that never stopped haunting him.

“What do I have to do,” he asks quietly, “for you to help me?”