Chapter 285 Dante's Mission
POV: Dante | Manchester, surveillance position
The rain's been coming down for hours, straight through the night, and I'm sitting here in my car watching this warehouse like it's the most important thing in the world. Which, I guess, it is.
Five years of this shit has a way of becoming your whole life. Not a job. A life. The kind of life you build around something personal, something you can't just clock out from when things get messy or when you don't get the result you wanted.
Valentina.
And I'm not saying that for effect. I'm saying it because it's the truth. It's why I'm still doing this when the trail's gone cold. It's why I'm parked here in Manchester on a Tuesday in November, soaked through with this miserable rain that's been falling since 4 AM, testing whether I'm actually committed to this whole revenge mission in the most boring way possible.
The Order fell apart after we took down Fell. That's what I expected to happen. But here's the thing about an organization built on knowledge instead of buildings—knowledge walks out the door in people's heads. And not everyone with the Order's hybrid research was at Fell's place when it went up in flames. You can burn documents all day, but the documents were never the real knowledge anyway. They were just records.
Five years of tracking has given me a better map of the scattered Order members than anyone had when they were actually operating. The irony of hunting a disbanded group is that the hunt itself produces better intel than surveillance did when the organization was still active and protecting its secrets.
This Manchester facility is new. Started up about sixteen months ago, based on the signs of a new hybrid program—the preservation equipment, the medical supplies you need for those procedures, and three kids who went missing from care homes in the area who fit the Order's usual profile.
Three former Order members running it. I've got names for two of them from the research records Fell's dead man's switch dumped before he died. Jack's been cataloging all that for five years with the kind of patience that comes from understanding that the catalog itself is the weapon, even when each entry feels like just paperwork.
Eight kids. The intel's solid on that number because the facility's supply deliveries have been consistent enough to count—enough for eight subjects, no more, no less. And that number's been stable for six months.
The choice is the one I've been sitting with for forty-eight hours. The same amount of time I've been in this surveillance position. The same amount of time I've known exactly what I need to decide.
I could go in alone. I've done it before. Survived it. The hybrid kids I found are alive, staying with Isla now. I know what I'm capable of in these situations. I can accurately assess whether a solo extraction is possible.
But I also know what almost dying alone in a facility does to the people waiting for you to come back. I know that from experience. Valentina waiting. Callum waiting. Lucia, who's five now, the reason Valentina died, growing up in the Rookeries with my face as one of the family she knows.
I think about Valentina's death. How it happened. How it happened because the system that should have protected her failed. Because the people who loved her weren't in the right place to stop it. I think about what could have been different if other choices had been made at key moments. And I think about eight kids in a Manchester warehouse and a solo extraction and the odds of me coming out with all eight intact.
The odds aren't good enough.
I call Callum at 6 AM. That's when he's most awake, which is to say any time, since Callum only sleeps about four hours and you never know which four those will be.
"I need backup," I say. "Manchester. More children."
The silence on the other end is classic Callum. Processing, formulating a response that's already ready before the silence even breaks.
"How many children?" he says.
"Eight."
"How many mages?"
"Three confirmed, maybe more."
"How long do we have?"
"They don't know we're watching," I say. "We've got as long as it takes to get organized and get there."
Another silence, shorter this time. The first one held the assessment. This one just holds the decision, already made in the first one.
"We've done this before," he says. "We'll do it again."