"There was a moment — standing in that doorway, the light from the hallway cutting across the floor like a line he couldn't uncross — when Victor understood that the next step would either break him or remake him entirely."
"The dossier glowed in the dark — faces redacted, names blacked out, but the truth was still there. Victor stared at it until the screen burned into his retines. He didn't let it lie. He never could."
"He moved them through the rain — the woman clutching her child, the cobblestones slick with neon and water. Victor didn't look back. Extraction was never clean. But it was right."
"They existed across borders — invisible, untouchable. The empty chairs still held the weight of decisions made in darkness. UK, Germany, Poland, Spain. An organization that answered to no one. And now, one of its own had gone rogue."
"He walked through the glass corridor like a man who'd done this a hundred times — because he had. But never for this reason. His hand brushed the inside of his jacket. Tonight, he wasn't there to kill. He was there to save."
"His eyes held everything — the lives he'd taken, the ones he'd saved, the ones he'd failed. The city skyline burned in his pupils like a promise he couldn't keep. We do not exist so they can. He believed it. Even now. Especially now."