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She preferred her work silent. She could handle arrogance if it didn’t get in the way.
What she wasn’t prepared for was the way her thoughts hovered longer than necessary on the last page of his file. The photo. Cropped. Grainy. But sharp enough to catch the edge of something in his eyes. Something that hadn’t been broken yet. Or maybe something that had never healed right.
She got the call from the front desk that her car was ready to take her to OrdoTech.
Tomorrow, she would meet Nash. Today, she would breathe and hope that whatever force of nature Nash Rahim turned out to be, he wouldn’t blow her careful world apart.
Fifteen minutes later, Grace stepped out of the black government SUV and into the sharp glare of late-afternoon sun. The air smelled different here, cleaner somehow, edged with pine and something dry and industrial in the wind. The OrdoTech Strategies compound sat at the base of a long ridge, tucked behind a row of low, sharp-angled buildings that all looked identical from a distance. The architecture was smooth steel and matte glass, corporate money poured into sleek lines and security-grade tinting.
Officially, OrdoTech specialized in drone warfare, adaptive surveillance, artificial intelligence, and autonomous tactical systems, the future of battlefield intelligence, according to every glossy Pentagon brochure.
On the outside, it looked like a think tank.
On the inside, she knew better.
Somewhere inside, she would find her answers even if she had to dig right into their profit line.
She adjusted the strap of her bag and followed the driver into the front building. The lobby was colder than she expected both in temperature and tone. A long reception desk curved around a minimalist sculpture of brushed metal blades rising from a marble base. It was probably meant to represent innovation. It looked like a weapon.
Behind the desk, embossed in muted steel lettering against the marble wall, a corporate motto read:Quiet Solutions for a Complex World.
Grace’s mouth tightened. Translation: we make problems disappear.
Something whirred past her ear with a high-pitched hum. She flinched, her breath catching in her throat. Her eyes followed the sharp zigzag of motion until it landed on a small platform embedded in the wall.
“It’s just a security drone, ma’am,” her escort said, standing with her in the lobby. “Nothing to worry about.”
She gave him a tight nod as he turned to leave, but her pulse kept climbing.
She knew better. Drones were tools, useful in the right hands, deadly in the wrong ones. Sometimes… those hands worked for the government. Sometimes they had her kind of clearance.
She swallowed, the taste of metal rising in her throat. The memory surged unbidden, white heat, twisted metal, blood on the screen. Then real blood, later, too close. She'd awoken half-buried under rubble to the heavy, cloying smell of it, one of the operators still beside her. Or what was left of him. His hand had been touching hers.
Someone decided Grace Harlan would take the fall. That was criminal. What she was doing would be justice. She hadn’t failed. She’d been used.
Her fingers curled tighter around the strap of her bag as she crossed the polished floor.
Audits were their cover story, but this went so much deeper.
A young woman with a slick ponytail and a badge checked Grace in without fanfare. No eye contact. Just clipboard efficiency and the click of keys that never slowed.
Grace’s temporary credentials were on a lanyard, already printed. Her photo was two years old.Auditorwas beneath her name and Black Kite below it. They bought their cover story. Of course they did. Fighting a government audit flagged you faster than failing one.
Uniformed security walked her past two checkpoints and down a hall that narrowed the deeper they went. No windows. Just walls that absorbed sound and lights that murmured just off frequency. Her breathing stayed steady, but her pulse didn’t.
Her assigned workspace was a glass-fronted office tucked behind a secondary operations cluster, the side walls and back sealed in blank white. Perfect for projection.
The space was isolated vulnerability, boxed in transparency, and felt familiar. It was clean but not sterile, with scuffs on the desk legs, a slight dent in the edge of the filing cabinet. The chair was ergonomic but worn.
One of the checkpoint guards handed her a keycard, murmured something about operations access, then walked off without looking back.
There was a desk, a monitor, and a small cabinet that vibrated too loudly for its size.
Even the bare minimum was too much.
Inside, she shrugged out of her cold-weather coat and scarf and hung them on a rack near the door. After extracting her laptop, she walked to the desk, plugging it in with movements sharper than necessary. The machine hummed to life. That sound, at least, was soothing.
Grace pulled her sleeves down past her wrists and stared at the screen as the network synced. Her partner wouldn’t be here until tomorrow. She was grateful for that. For the moment of stillness. For the time to adjust. He would come. When he did, everything about this fragile quiet would shift. She didn’t know what kind of man Nashir Rahim was, but regardless, she was trapped in this place with him.