CHAPTER ONE
I couldn’t keep my hand from trembling.
It angered me—this weakness, this involuntary surrender of control. My fingers quivered as though they belonged to someone else, as though my own body had chosen to betray me at the worst possible moment. I tried to steady them, curling them into fists, pressing them against my sides. It didn’t help.
She didn’t deserve this reaction.
She didn’t deserve my fear, my hesitation—certainly not my pity. She was a terrorist. A woman who had orchestrated violence with cold precision. A woman who had taken my mother from me. A woman who may have already killed her.
I should have been furious. I should have been consumed by it—rage hot enough to burn through the walls of this place, to carry me forward without thought, without doubt. I should have stormed into that room and demanded answers, demanded justice, demanded something.
But that wouldn’t have been true.
The truth was far worse.
I pitied her.
Three months. That was how long she had been buried inside this place—three months of calculated suffering. They hadn’t been subtle about it either. Fire that kissed the skin until it blistered. Water that drowned without mercy. Electricity that turned the body into something unrecognizable, something less than human. There was no restraint, no line they had refused to cross.
If cruelty could be catalogued, they had worked their way through every entry.
And still, she endured.
For the past month, I had come here—again and again—drawn by something I didn’t fully understand. Obsession, perhaps. Or guilt. I never spoke to her. Never crossed the threshold into that room. I remained behind the glass, a silent witness, watching as officers circled her like wolves, probing, pressing, breaking themselves against her silence.
She never broke.
She was exhausted—that much was obvious. It clung to her in the slow drag of her movements, in the faint shadows beneath her eyes. But beneath it all, there was something else. Something unyielding.
Authority.
She carried it like a crown no one could take from her. Even bound, even battered, she spoke like someone accustomed to being obeyed. Every word measured, deliberate. A queen without a throne, yet somehow still ruling the room.
She knew exactly who she was.
Which was more than I could say about myself.
I was… less.
A hollowed-out thing pretending to be a man. A one-armed ghost dragging himself through days he didn’t believe in. People like to say trauma changes you, that it reshapes your life.
They’re wrong.
It doesn’t change you. It reveals you.
Losing my arm hadn’t been the beginning of my depression. It had simply given it a form—something visible, something undeniable. A physical manifestation of everything I had already believed about myself.
That I was weak.
That I was small.
That I had nothing worth saying.
So I lived accordingly. Head lowered. Voice quiet. Taking up as little space as possible, as if the world might forget I existed if I tried hard enough.
And most days, I thought that might be a mercy.
But not today.
Today, I stood outside her door, trembling, staring at the barrier that separated us. A thin sheet of reinforced glass, a locked handle, a line I had never crossed.
Until now.
My breath caught in my throat as I looked down at the titanium that was now my arm—better than the empty sleeve. But a reminder. Always a reminder.
How did I lose it?
***
It happened seven years ago.
One overcast Saturday, I accepted an invitation to lunch with my family. My father had been desperately trying to “hold the family together” since my mother was taken by a militant group operating out of Africa.
But this time, the outing was Talia’s idea. My kid sister always had a way of dragging us together.
We argued in the car. Took wrong turns. Ended up at a steakhouse not far from home.
Things felt normal enough. The usual chaos of a restaurant on a weekend afternoon. Parents pretending not to panic when the news warned of another possible attack. Bartenders flipping the channel before anyone could hear too much. Waitresses faking smiles like everything was fine.
We chose to believe the lie.
24 November. 4:35 p.m.
I’ll never forget the moment everything changed.
Across the street, a woman grabbed her baby from a stroller and ran.
A security guard burst into the steakhouse, pale and trembling, whispering frantically to the manager.
The manager climbed onto a chair, voice cracking. “Ladies and gentlemen… please remain calm. There’s no need to panic.”
But the streets outside were already chaos.
Cars crashed over sidewalks trying to escape. Shopkeepers slammed down shutters. People scattered like ants after rain.
I never heard the rest of the announcement. My father grabbed Talia’s hand, then mine, dragging us through the screaming crowd toward the parking lot.
But we were too late.
The missile fell faster than my mind could process.
It struck a skyscraper first, tearing it apart like paper before the shockwave ripped across the street and swallowed us whole.
I remember the noise—a sound so violent it didn’t belong in this world.
I remember flying through the air.
And I remember landing hard, reaching for anything to hold on to… only to realize my right arm wasn’t there.
It lay a few feet away, absurdly intact, next to my body like it wanted to help me piece things together.
Adrenaline drowned the pain. I wrapped my stump with my shirt, forcing my legs to move, searching through the wreckage.
“Dad! Talia!”
The street was unrecognizable. Our neighbourhood—gone. Cars overturned. Buildings cracked open like eggs.
Then—
“Max.”
Talia’s voice.
I found her under our truck, pinned waist-down, reaching for me with shaking hands.
I pushed against the wreckage until my muscles burned, until my lungs screamed. It didn’t move.
“Hang on, Tali. I’ll get help.”
But even as I said it, I knew. There was no help coming. Not soon enough.
She placed her hand on my chest, eyes wide but strangely calm.
“Max,” she whispered.
I didn’t let her finish. I couldn’t. “No. You’ll be fine. They’re coming. I’ll get help.”
She smiled through the dust, tugged at my shirt until I met her eyes.
And with a strange, gentle peace, she spoke her last words.
“Go find Mom.”
Seven years later, her voice still keeps me awake at night.
And now—at last—the girl in the cell has answers.
Soon, I will learn why she destroyed everything I loved.
And no matter what I have to do, no matter what it costs me, I will go find Mom.
***
“Are you ready?” the officer asked.
My hand stayed on the handle but I couldn’t turn it. I wasn’t ready.
“Not today, Mickey,” I said, letting go. “Maybe tomorrow.”
CHAPTER TWO
I live in the tallest building in the city—a colossal tower shaped like a battery because, in truth, it is one. The Castello Tower feeds electricity to fifteen weapons factories sprawled across the capital, each producing machines designed to end lives in increasingly inventive ways.
It is also home to the elite: fifty men and women who form the beating heart of our military defence system.
Through a twist of events—fortunate or tragic, depending on how you see the world—I became one of them. I lost my home, yes. But unlike millions out there, I now live in a building with clean water, steady power, and walls that still stand.
Perspective changes everything. From my balcony, the city sprawls beneath me like a broken thing. The suburbs—once green and alive—were the first casualties, levelled to make way for the weapons we now mass-produce. What remains are clusters of zones stitched together with metal and ash.
There are no neighbourhoods anymore. No streets where children ride bikes or old men water lawns. Just zones. Strips of survival carved out of a ruined world.
And sometimes—though no one says it out loud—you can feel it. That quiet wish buried deep inside all of us: for one final missile. One more detonation to end it all.
But then again, maybe we are the saved ones. A population spared for some greater purpose, though God knows what it might be.
On clear days, when children run through the streets below, inventing games with whatever scraps they can find, and wave up at me from the pavement—I almost feel it. Hope.
The capital seems calm from up here. But I know better. The war is out there in daylight. At night, new wars are planned. No one sleeps. Not really.
Least of all me.
Not since I saw her.
Beautiful doesn’t cover it. She was… something else. Like a figure out of a dream, with eyes that carried too much knowing. I imagine that she would read my thoughts—like she would understand the hatred I have for this place, for what I’ve become.
If I could be anyone else, anywhere else, I would be.
I haven’t found anyone attractive in years. I haven’t even looked at myself in a mirror lately. I wouldn’t like what I saw: a bearded, one-armed shell of a man, muscles soft from too much thinking and not enough doing.
Life threw me out of the army before I even had a chance. I’ve been trying to find my way back ever since.
“Where did you rush off to so early?”
“Nowhere, Dre. Just went out for some air.”
Dre appeared behind me on the balcony. Her pink robe strained against her curves, the sash clinging for dear life. Matching slippers padded softly on the floor, her toes painted the colour of cherries.
“I know that face,” she said, wagging a manicured finger. “You’re up to something.”
Dre had taken me in after the blast seven years ago. She was Haitian, loud in both style and opinion, with a wardrobe so colourful it felt like rebellion against the greyness of this world. A renowned prosthetist, she had once led the foremost institute for myoelectric prosthetics—a place meant to rebuild children and teenagers after accidents, not war.
But when the fighting escalated and soldiers started returning without limbs, the government wanted her technology. Dre refused. She shut everything down.
Then her daughter disappeared.
Two teachers were found dead in a broom closet at the school, and Dre received a promise from men in suits: reopen the institute, work until victory, and maybe they’d give her daughter back.
So, she worked. And waited.
I met her a year into that waiting. Twenty-three, half-dead inside, missing an arm and my entire family. I had shown up at her institute because instinct told me to survive, even when I didn’t want to.
When my turn finally came, Dre looked at me for a long time before asking simply, “Honey, what do you need?”
I remember staring at her, confused by the kindness. She hated everything military, and here I was, son of General Taylor—a name once synonymous with victory before my mother, the General herself, was taken hostage.
“You don’t have it,” I told her.
But she asked again, voice soft but firm. “What do you need?”
I wanted too many things. My family back. My childhood. The old world before hatred turned us all into ghosts. I wanted to cry or rage, but not both—because pain and anger together felt like vodka mixed with gin: no balance, just poison.
I wanted to join the army, train, fight, find my mother, and tear through every bastard standing in my way.
But all of that condensed into one simple, impossible need.
“I want to go home,” I told her.
She smiled, handed me the keys to her penthouse, and said, “Castello Tower. Forty-second floor. Dinner’s at six. Yes, you can bring a girl. No, you can’t borrow my car. And to answer your last question—yes, but only if you want it to be.”
“What’s the last question?” I asked.
“You want to know if it ever gets better.”
And just like that, we were family.
This morning, though, her timing couldn’t have been worse.
I was just returning from the maximum-security wing to see the girl in the cell. The warden—an old family friend—had agreed to let me speak with her before her execution.
I wanted her to understand what she had done—to me, to Dre, to everyone. I wanted to grab her by the throat and shake answers out of her until her soul cracked. Then I’d hand her back to justice to finish the job.
“You never wear it,” Dre said suddenly.
“Wear what?”
“The arm. What’s the occasion?”
She meant the titanium one she had built for my thirtieth birthday. Sleek. Silver. More sculpture than prosthetic.
“No occasion,” I muttered. “Just training.”
She poured herself a glass of wine from the bottle in her hand, even though it wasn’t yet noon.
“Don’t you think it’s a little early for that?” I asked.
“Don’t,” she warned sharply before taking a sip.
I shut my mouth. Her daughter’s absence had hollowed her out. People think death is the worst thing. It isn’t. When someone dies, there’s grief, yes—but it has edges. Missing is worse. Missing drags on forever.
“She’s the reason, isn’t she?” Dre said finally. “The girl.”
I didn’t answer.
“So? What are you going to ask her? Why she did it?”
“She can’t bring my mother back,” I said flatly.
“Then why—”
“Because I have to,” I snapped. “She tore my world apart, Dre. She took my mother. Probably even killed her. And she gets a needle? That’s it? That’s all the justice there is?”
“You planning to torture her with your questions?” Dre asked, voice heavy with sarcasm.
“Maybe,” I said. “I haven’t figured it out yet.”
She studied me over the rim of her glass. “What if she’s innocent?”
The words stopped me cold.
“Innocent?” My voice dropped to a growl. “You can’t be serious.”
“What if she’s not what they say she is?”
“Why? Because she’s a girl? Because she’s black? Or is it both? You think she might be innocent because I’m white and she’s not? That we all deserved what we got?”
“Don’t you dare—”
“No,” I said, anger rising like fire in my chest. “If that’s what this is, say it.”
“The girl can’t be older than you,” Dre said softly. “Maybe even Talia’s age.”
“Don’t,” I warned, stepping closer. “Don’t bring Talia into this.”
“Why are you being like this?” she shot back. “You don’t know her. You don’t know anything about this war. You don’t even know what you are.”
The words sliced through me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dre’s fury burned out as suddenly as it flared. Her shoulders dropped. Her voice went quiet.
“Well,” she said finally, taking another drink, “you should’ve asked your mama.”
She slammed the bottle on the floor hard enough to crack the tile, then stormed off, muttering under her breath.
“Dre,” I called after her. “I’m sorry.”
But she was already gone.
CHAPTER THREE
I lay awake the entire night, staring into the dark as though it might answer me.
It didn’t.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her again—not as she had been in the reports or the grainy surveillance images, but as she was now. Still. Composed. Untouched in some essential way no amount of violence had managed to erode.
Mika.
That was the name they had given me, passed casually between officers as if it meant nothing. As if it belonged to just another detainee, just another enemy to be processed, broken, discarded.
But the name lingered.
Mika.
There was something about her that refused to settle neatly into the shape I needed it to take. I told myself she was a monster—she had to be. It was the only version of her that made sense. The only version that justified what had been done to her… and what I still wanted to do.
And yet—
She didn’t look like one.
It was a foolish thought, I knew that. Evil did not announce itself with scars and shadows. It didn’t make itself obvious, didn’t arrange its features into something conveniently monstrous. Still, I couldn’t shake it—the quiet, insistent dissonance.
She was too beautiful.
Not in the fragile, ornamental way people liked to admire from a distance, but in something sharper, more deliberate. The kind of beauty that commanded attention without asking for it. The kind that made you hesitate, if only for a second longer than you should.
Maybe that was it.
Maybe it wasn’t her beauty at all.
Maybe it was the way she looked at the people in that room—calm, unwavering, entirely unafraid. As if she were the one observing them. As if she were the one in control.
That was what unsettled me.
That was what made something cold coil in my chest every time I thought of her.
She intimidated me.
The realization settled heavily, unwelcome but undeniable. And worse still, it didn’t push me away.
It drew me in.
Because despite the unease, despite the quiet fear I refused to name, I found myself wanting to see her again. Not just wanting—needing. As though something unresolved had taken root inside me, something that would not let me rest until I faced her properly.
Until I stepped into that room.
Until I spoke.
I turned onto my side, then onto my back again, the sheets twisting around me as the hours dragged past in restless fragments. Each time I tried to quiet my thoughts, they returned to her—her voice, her stillness, the unbreakable certainty she seemed to carry even in chains.
By the time the first pale light of morning crept through the window, I had already made my decision.
No more watching from behind glass.
No more silence.
I would face her.
I would speak.
The resolve settled into me with a strange, fragile weight—like something that could either steady me or shatter at the slightest pressure. I didn’t question it. I couldn’t afford to.
When I finally rose, my body ached with the dull heaviness of a sleepless night, but beneath it, something else stirred. Something sharper. Clearer.
Purpose, perhaps.
Or desperation.
Either way, it was enough.
Despite having no sleep, I felt ready.
The prison was twenty minutes away. It took me forty.
The thoughts slowed me down. I kept thinking about the argument I had with Dre the day before.
You don’t even know what you are.
Her words kept looping in my head. Dre and I had argued plenty over race before, mostly because it was the compass that decided who got what in our fractured society. Dark skin, brilliance or not, was ignored until it was needed. White skin came with favours. Simple math.
My father fit the mould perfectly: blond hair, green eyes, broad shoulders, a muscle car parked in the driveway, and a grill so expensive he bragged about it every summer. He loved football and the illusion that the world was fair.
My mother was his opposite in every way. Dominican, Irish, Spanish—bloodlines stacked into one fiery, fearless woman who rose to the rank of General before forty. She was determination in human form, and she gave most of that fire to Talia.
I got her hair, her complexion and her impulsiveness.
Growing up in my mother’s shadow wasn’t just hard—it was suffocating. She believed in me more than I did, trained me harder than anyone else. Shooting drills by nine, five-mile runs before school, leadership training before I could even drive. But no matter what I did, I wasn’t enough.
Too soft to lead. Too hesitant to win. Too weak to be respected.
You don’t even know what you are.
Try a hot mess.
Traffic lights blinked red as I drove through what was left of the city. Wildflowers grew stubbornly through cracks in the pavement, bright patches of colour against the ruins. I rolled the window down, letting the crisp morning air cut through the taste of metal in my mouth.
In another life, I would’ve loved this place. Married a decent girl. Had kids. Maybe started a landscaping business like Dad. A life that wasn’t… this.
But this life was different. This life was taking me to a woman who had slaughtered hundreds—maybe thousands—and sat behind bars like a caged wolf waiting for the kill shot.
And I was going to look her in the eyes before it happened.
The prison gates loomed ahead, bristling with barbed wire and watchtowers.
“Hey, Max. You’re early,” one of the guards called as I rolled to a stop.
I didn’t need ID. I’d been here more times than I could count, ever since my mother brought me along on visits as a kid.
“Have you heard from Mark yet?” I asked, meaning the former warden.
The guard smirked. “You didn’t hear? Got himself a fancy new post commanding a ship. They call him The Surgeon now.” He chuckled darkly. “I don’t even wanna know why. Mean bastard.”
“Who’s taking me in?”
“Toby’s waiting for you inside,” the guard said. “Good luck with the princess.”
The boom lifted. I drove through.
Toby was waiting for me at the entrance—a tall, wiry man with silver hair and tired eyes. We exchanged small talk as we wound through the concrete labyrinth of the prison.
“She’s at the end,” he said finally, voice dropping as we stopped at a heavy steel door. He rested a hand on my shoulder. “You have every right to feel whatever you feel in there. That’s why we gave you privacy.” He nodded toward the dusty cameras mounted on the ceiling. “Your mother was a great woman. We all want her killers brought to justice.”
I said nothing.
“Whatever happens in there,” he added, “stays in there.”
Then he left me alone.
***
She was waiting inside.
Head down. Arms chained to her chest. The orange jumpsuit she wore was ripped in a dozen places, her skin mapped with bruises. Her head was shaved.
I sat across from her on a chair that wobbled beneath my weight. She didn’t look up. Didn’t speak. Just whispered to herself like the words were for someone else.
Finally, I broke the silence.
“So … your name is Mika—”
“I’m not a terrorist,” she said quietly. “I didn’t kill your family.”
Her voice didn’t match her face—smooth, calm, almost gentle. But she still wouldn’t look at me.
“You’re nervous,” she murmured.
“You don’t get to judge me,” I snapped. “Not after what you’ve done.”
“I’m not a terrorist,” she repeated.
I laughed bitterly. “Right. You’re innocent. That it? Wrong place, wrong time?”
“Your government,” she said simply, “kills strangers every day.”
I leaned back. “Great. A martyr.”
She raised her head then, and those eyes locked on mine—deep, dark, unflinching.
“According to your people, I’m the most wanted person in the world,” she said. “They finally catch me… and choose a quiet little death by injection? No trial. Just… gone.” She tilted her head. “Don’t you think that’s strange?”
I swallowed hard.
“I thought they’d at least want information,” she went on. “But no. They just want me erased. Doesn’t that seem… convenient?”
I tried not to stare at her, but there was something magnetic about the way she spoke—like she wasn’t afraid of anything, not even this place.
“Maybe your death will bring peace,” I said finally. “To the families you destroyed. To me.”
She smiled faintly. “I know who you are, Max.”
The words landed like a punch.
“Do you know my mother?” I demanded.
“I know her,” she said. “But I don’t have her.”
My pulse spiked. “What does that mean?”
She shifted in her chains, wrists clinking against metal. “I wasn’t captured, Max. I surrendered.”
“Why?”
Her eyes flicked to the dead camera in the corner.
“Because I have a message for you. About your mother. I know where she is. I can help you find her.”
“Why?” My voice cracked with anger. “Why would you help me? After everything?”
“You’ll understand when we get there,” she said. “Be at the harbour. Four a.m. tomorrow.”
I stared at her, stunned.
“You think I’m just going to walk out of here and meet you like we’re… what? Partners?”
“I think you want your mother alive,” she said softly.
I started pacing, the walls closing in. “I don’t even know who you are. For all I know, you killed her.”
“If I wanted her dead,” she said, “she’d be dead.”
I froze.
She leaned forward. “Come tomorrow. Or don’t. But it’s the only chance you’ll get.”
Her eyes locked on mine again, and I felt it—the same pull as before. A heat that rolled off her in waves. Something dangerous. Something I couldn’t name.
“You’re guilty,” I whispered, more to myself than her.
“Maybe,” she said. “But I’m also your only way to her.”
I walked to the door, hand on the handle. I couldn’t look at her anymore.
“If you’re not here for your execution tomorrow,” I said coldly, “I’ll hunt you down myself.”
She waited a beat before answering.
“No, you won’t,” she said. “Because tomorrow, Max… we’re going to Africa.”