He was drowning in blackness.

It was all around him—sinking into his skin, bleeding through his eyes. It was everywhere, and Synek’s already broken mind was in shambles. He thought he’d known what hell on earth was.

He’d lived it for years, yet this, this was worse.

Because he couldn’t escape it. It was impossible to escape his own thoughts.

As it always did over the course of the days—weeks?—he’d been trapped in this room, Synek’s mind went back to the past, conjuring images and feelings he thought he’d gotten past in the years since he had become a member of the Wraiths.

But it was there all around him. Suffocating. Debilitating.

He needed to get out.

The heavy metal door swung open, shattering the image in front of him as bright light poured in. Seeing his mother across from him, that same look of accusation in her eyes even as he’d known that the pain he inflicted on her was exactly what he’d suffered for years, made him snap.

He had nothing left.

Synek didn’t know who was standing on the other side of that door; he only cared that there was a motherfucker who put him in here, and he wanted to make them pay.

The first snap of bone as he launched his fist into the man’s face closest to him felt like nirvana. The resulting pain nearly made him smile, but the rampage inside him wasn’t culled just yet.

He wanted blood on his hands.

Synek didn’t care who came next. He didn’t heed the protests lobbied around him. Once he let it all out—the pain, the anger, the madness—he could never reel it back in.

He didn’t want to.

Someone made a wet, gurgling noise in the back of their throat, the sound jarring Synek back to the present and to the sight of a man who looked unconscious with one of Synek’s hands wrapped around his throat.

The rest of him was a bloody mess, especially his face, and from the looks of it, he’d been beating the man’s face in.

Large hands clamped down on him, and before Synek even had a chance to register what was happening, those hands dragged him off his victim and shoved him against a wall. Even if he had wanted to resist, the bloke at his back was far too fucking big to go up against.

And with the look in his eye … there was a chance Synek wouldn’t win this one.

As much as he’d been consumed with fury, it was gone now.

The last Synek saw of the man before he was dragged down a hallway was one of the others slapping the man in the face, attempting to rouse him.

As he was shoved into another room, this one full of light and at least had a chair, Synek’s clarity came rushing back, and while he didn’t feel entirely guilty for what he had done to whoever had fallen into his path, the other side of him knew he’d fucked up.

The mercenary who had pulled him off left the room without a backward glance, but before long, Synek heard voices out in the hallway a moment before the door opened again and a familiar face stared back at him.

Grimm hardly blinked at the rough state of him. Instead, he asked, “They must have really fucked you up.”

They?

He didn’t know the half of it.

If he thought Synek’s problems began and ended with the Wraiths, he didn’t realize just how mentally fucked up he was.

“Don’t lock me in a fucking windowless box,” he returned, his tone just as flat.

He wouldn’t apologize for who he was, not when they knew what they were getting when they asked him to sign on.

Grimm’s expression shifted. Not in a way that suggested he was pissed with Synek, but rather like he understood his pain. “You’re gonna have to get over that shit if you want to survive in this place. No one gives a fuck about your issues. Trust me,” he said with a shrug, “we all got problems.”

Synek came awake with a start, the final dredges of the dream slipping away as awareness crept in. The ceiling fan spun lazily, momentarily distracting him—grounding him, rather—until he was able to take a breath with relative ease.

Iris was still asleep, her back to him, her hair fanning out over the pillows. He was glad his restless sleep hadn’t woken her.

He could still hear Grimm’s voice in his head as though the man was currently in the room with him. He could even recall the perpetual frown on the man’s face whenever he was called for something he deemed unimportant.

Those were the good days—the easy ones. Back when Synek was still training, Winter was in school in Arizona, and he hadn’t been juggling the kind of responsibility weighing on him now.

Killing was easy; it was what he was good at. But trying to navigate shit without using knives and weapons was hard. The hardest thing he’d ever had to face.

And it still wasn’t over just yet.

Synek thought of waking Iris as he slipped out of the bed, but one glance at the clock on the nightstand told him it would be better if he didn’t. She wouldn’t complain about the hour, he knew, but it was early as fuck—too early even for him—and if somebody was going to be awake to head in, it would have to be him.

It was what he signed up for, after all.

He walked into the bathroom, foregoing the light switch entirely to go for the shower, the moonlight bleeding in through the window enough to take the edge off. The cold water was enough to further wake him up, and by the time he was back out again and fully dressed, nearly half an hour had passed.

Iris was still asleep when he came around to her side of the bed, and for a moment, he watched her. Her eyes closed, her face soft. At least, when she dreamed, the ex-governor couldn’t touch her there.

Synek pressed his lips to her forehead before leaving as quietly as he could.

The sun hadn’t risen yet as he made his way to the Kingmaker’s prison, rolling the windows down to feel the cold air on his skin as he breathed the night in. While he wasn’t sure what his handler had on the agenda for the day, he only needed to concern himself with one thing, and that was the ex-governor.

It was important, he thought, to keep a level head because the last thing he needed was someone else to take his place. No one else would give a shit about the ex-governor or Iris or anything he had planned.

And he was wearing his favorite shirt. He didn’t want to get blood on it.

Once he arrived at the facility, he reached over and opened the glove compartment, finding the pack of smokes he’d left inside and flipping them open to pluck one out.

He gripped it with two fingers, letting the slight weight comfort him before he tucked it behind his ear.

It would be a long day.

The war room was empty save for Red. Tucked in the corner, he held his phone to his ear, wearing a pensive expression on his face. When Synek entered, he jerked his chin up in greeting, ending the call.

“You seen Celt?”

“I thought it was your job to keep up with the Irishman,” Synek said absently, walking over to the monitors. He knew fuck all about computers and the complicated system Winter had set up, but he was able to at least get the feeds going.

One for Belladonna and one for the ex-governor.

“Probably still apologizing,” Synek said as a joke, but while it eased some of Red’s worry, there was still dark contemplation in his gaze. “The sooner we get this job done, the sooner we can all get back to our lives, yeah?”

Red seemed to think over his words a moment before he nodded. “What’s happening now?”

“Now, I go in and pay the ex-governor a little visit. Are you coming?”

Red grimaced. “You’re on your own. You get a little too happy with a knife in your hands.”

Truer words had never been spoken.