Part 1: The Predictable Man My name is Nathan Cross. I’m thirty-nine years old, and I’ve spent my entire life in Charlotte, North Carolina. I build things for a living. I am a senior project manager for a commercial construction company, which is just a fancy way of saying I wear a hard hat, carry…
Part 1 The lights on the 42nd floor had been dimmed an hour ago to save energy. It was a corporate sustainability mandate that my PR team had pushed for, a small, meaningless gesture in a building that consumed more power in a day than most suburban neighborhoods did in a month. I didn’t notice…
PART 1 The rhythmic hum of Interstate 40 was supposed to be my detox. For the last twelve years, my reality had been dictated by the chaotic, deafening roar of Black Hawk helicopters, the blistering, suffocating heat of overseas deployments, and the sharp, metallic crack of incoming fire. I am Lucas Hayes. Thirty-two years old….
Part 1: The Blind Spot My phone lit up for the seventh time in exactly two minutes. I sat frozen in the backseat of the sedan, watching the notifications stack up on my locked screen. I didn’t even need to open them to know what they said. I could feel the panic radiating through the…
Part 1: The Sound of Shattering Glass I will never forget the sound of champagne hitting my face. It wasn’t the taste of it that haunts me, though it was sharp and sour. It wasn’t the freezing cold temperature of the liquid against my flushed skin, either. No, it was the sound. That sharp, violent,…
Part 1: The Spilled Coffee Riverside Park was completely quiet that Sunday morning. It was the kind of crisp, brilliant New York October morning where the golden light cuts through the elm trees, and the leaves catch the wind before scattering across the pavement. It was beautiful. I hated it. I hated beautiful days because…
PART 1: The Ghost on the Ninth Floor Midnight pressed against the glass walls of the ninth floor at Nexaura Systems. Outside, the Chicago wind was howling off Lake Michigan, rattling the thick panes of the high-rise. But inside, the air was dead and heavy. Fourteen of the city’s sharpest engineers had abandoned their chairs…
Part 1: The Weight of the House The red wine wasn’t even dry on her $5,000 dress when my stepmother did the unthinkable. She grabbed me by the arm, her manicured nails digging painfully into my skin, threw me out into the freezing storm in front of thirty elite guests, and locked the door. But…
Part 1 I hated grocery stores. Honestly, I hated anywhere the civilian world gathered in large numbers, pushing carts, complaining about prices, and ignoring the perimeter. But grocery stores were the worst. The crowds were unpredictable. The aisles felt like fatal funnels. And the fluorescent lights overhead always seemed to hum at this specific, grating…
Part 1 My apartment was the kind of place that told my entire life story without a single photograph on the wall. It was small, relentlessly clean, and arranged with a harsh precision that had absolutely nothing to do with being broke, and everything to do with a man who had learned the hard way…
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