Nightshade

Every mission costs something. Some things you don't get back.

The hunters keep coming.

No matter how many Victor puts in the ground, more appear. No matter how many routes they change, how many campsites they abandon, how many ambushes they turn around - someone always seems to know where they are going before they arrive.

The missions bleed them. Every one of them. Victor carries wounds that don't fully close. Jordan fights with the specific coldness of someone who stopped counting what it costs a long time ago. Sasha came back from captivity harder than anyone expected - and harder than anyone is comfortable with.

Something is wrong inside the walls.

Someone is watching. Feeding information. Patient in the way only someone with nothing to lose and everything to gain can be patient.

And somewhere in the dark beyond every mission - a killer has been studying them from ridgelines. Watching them survive. Watching them bleed. Waiting to see if they are worth the full fight.

They are about to give him his answer.

The ground is still wet.

She didn't come to be saved. She came to make sure he didn't have to be.

Some names are supposed to stay dead. This one refuses.