They came at night.
No warning. No threats. Just the soft crunch of broken glass — and then the world exploded.
Hale dove behind the couch as the window shattered, bullets chewing through the drywall like hungry insects. Red yelled, scrambling for his gear, but he was too slow. A sharp cry split the room.
Hale looked up just in time to see him go down.
"Red!"
Blood soaked through Red's hoodie as he writhed on the floor, clutching his side. Hale grabbed him, dragged him behind the overturned table. More rounds punched into the walls, sparking off metal and plaster.
Whoever was out there wasn't playing games.
Hale popped up, fired two blind shots through the window. The gunfire stopped.
Silence.
Then footsteps — quiet, measured, almost surgical. A silhouette passed the alley light outside.
It wasn't just a hit.
It was a message.
Fifteen minutes later, the attackers were gone. Whoever they were, they didn't linger. They'd come to send a warning — and they'd delivered it in blood.
Hale wrapped Red's wound in gauze. It wasn't fatal, but it was bad.
"They knew where to find us," Red hissed, sweat dripping from his brow. "They're burning the whole net. You're a liability now, Matt."
"I always was."
He finished tying off the bandage, then sat back. His hands were shaking.
"Why didn't they finish us?" Red muttered.
"They didn't have to," Hale replied. "This wasn't about killing. This was psychological warfare."
He remembered Graves' words:
"You think the world is black and white... We remove chaos."
This was her way of removing it — piece by piece, contact by contact, bleeding him dry until he was alone.
But this time, they'd made a mistake.
They'd hurt someone he cared about.
An hour later, Hale stood over the sink, scrubbing Red's blood off his hands. His face was stone. In the mirror, he didn't see the man he once was. He saw something harder now. Angrier.
Behind him, Red stirred. "You gonna run?"
Hale shook his head. "No."
"You got a plan?"
"Not yet."
"Then start with this," Red rasped, holding out a blood-stained tablet. "Before the ambush, I cracked part of that Emberlight archive. Found something. A codename: 'The Marionette File.' Confidential clearance. Deep black."
Hale narrowed his eyes. "What is it?"
"Don't know. But it's tagged with two names — yours… and Drexler's."
Outside, the city moved on. Sirens in the distance. Horns blaring. The cold, indifferent rhythm of New York.
But something had changed.
They thought they could scare him off. Break him down.
They were wrong.
Matthew Hale wasn't just surviving anymore.
He was declaring war.