Consciousness returned like a bad hangover—sluggish, sour, and full of regret. Head thudding like someone had used it for target practice.

Sound came first—a low mechanical hum. Generator, probably. Then taste—bile and copper. Eyes stayed shut. Light stabbed through his lids anyway. Nasty kind of sterile brightness.

Wrists? Bound. Plasticuffs, tight enough to flirt with nerve damage. Fingers already tingling. Brilliant.

He cracked one eye. Cement floor. Cinderblock walls. No windows. No camera—at least none he could see. One vent overhead, humming like it didn’t want to be noticed. Door: heavy steel, reinforced, no handle on this side. A proper black site.

He’d been in worse.

He shifted slowly. Inventory time. No broken ribs. No obvious fractures. Sore all over, like he’d lost a bar fight with a truck, but still intact. Silver linings.

Sat up, back against the wall, legs out like he was sunbathing instead of stuck in someone’s basement. Just another Thursday, then.

He took it in. The stink—iron, sweat, and bleach, like someone cleaned just enough to smear the evidence. Amateur hour.

Been through this dance before.

Gaz wasn’t new to captivity. He'd had guns pointed at him, been beaten up, and bled. Fell out of a helicopter. Baku, Marrakesh, that godforsaken mudhole near Caracas—places that don’t make postcards. Got pinched once in Tripoli. Another time in a blown-out village outside Aleppo—spent thirty hours cuffed to a pipe while artillery did its best to rearrange the skyline. This? This was cushy in comparison.

He let his head fall back against the wall, a dull thunk, centering himself. Not resting. Strategizing. Each second mapped out escape routes—a drill he’d practiced in every briefing. He studied the door again. Already running numbers in his head. Angles. Weak points. Timing. Options.

They thought they’d boxed him in. Funny thing about boxes—you flip ‘em upside down, and now you’re on top.

He took a deep breath through his nose and stared at the ceiling for a moment. In. Out. Measured each air intake like it might cost something. Think back, Garrick—what was the last thing? A mission. Cold weather. A blink. A gap. A hand across his mouth or maybe the barrel of a gun against his temple, a needle? Not sure. It didn’t matter. No wasted energy. No pointless yelling for help.

Panic was for civilians.

First rule they drilled into him: don’t give your fear a face. Don’t name it. Don’t look it in the eye. Because the second you do, it owns you. And whatever self-control you’ve got left? Gone. Just like that. As for right now, Kyle wasn’t giving anything the satisfaction.

Price would be pissed. Ghost even more so. Probably already tearing apart half a city somewhere, looking for him.

Good.

Let the bastards know what’s coming.

A weak half-grin—dry as old gunmetal—escaped. Let them savor the illusion of control. He’d dismantle it soon enough.