The metallic tang of dried arterial blood had a way of clinging to the respiratory tract long after the target had ceased breathing.
Celeste walked through the corridor of Sector Four with slow, deliberate strides, her tactical combat boots leaving faint, rust-colored impressions against the pristine epoxy flooring.
She was twenty years old, though her eyes, a striking, bottomless obsidian, carried the weight of several lifetimes spent navigating the most unforgiving slaughterhouses the international underworld had to offer.
Her left shoulder throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache where a shrapnel fragment from a claymore detonation had been extracted six hours prior without local anesthesia.
Her field uniform, once a standard-issue urban camouflage, was stiff with dried mire, cordite residue, and the biological aftermath of a three-week state-level extraction operation along the lawless borderlands of the Golden Triangle.
In the underworld, her name was rarely spoken aloud.
To the private intelligence directorates, cartel sovereigns, and mercenary commanders who ruled the global shadows, she was simply the “King of Hell”, the “Nemesis”, whatever they called her.
The Apex Arbitrator.
A biological weapon forged in the crucible of absolute violence, whose survival rate across eleven years of impossible deployments remained an unblemished, terrifying one hundred percent.
Right now, however, the King of Hell only wanted a hot shower, a bowl of extra-spicy beef noodles, something spicy, sweet, and at least seventy-two hours of uninterrupted sleep in a room without perimeter tripwires.
“Nemesis! Hold your position! Drop your weapons and surrender to the beauty routine immediately!”
Celeste’s eyes twitched.
The booming, thunderous roar echoed down the concrete hallway, accompanied by the heavy, rhythmic thud of combat boots sprinting at full velocity.
Before Celeste could instinctively reach for the customized SIG Sauer holstered at her thigh, a massive shadow rounded the corner and descended upon her like an overexcited, two-hundred-pound grizzly bear.
Commander Luis Vance, known across the global private military sector as “Mad Dog” or simply Grizzly Vance, came to a screeching halt three inches from her nose.
He was a veteran tactical strategist with a face crisscrossed by knife scars and a build that could comfortably deadlift a military jeep.
Currently, however, the terrifying veteran was wearing a pink, frilly barber’s apron over his Kevlar vest and clutching a high-end cosmetic styling kit in one massive, calloused hand, while dangling a garment bag from the other.
Celeste stared at him.
Luis stared back.
Her dark eyes narrowed.
Celeste still stared at him, her dark eyes narrowing into two dangerous slits.
“If that makeup sponge touches my face, Luis, I will dislocate your wrist and feed it to the perimeter guard dogs.”
“Nonsense! Absolute nonsense!” Luis barked, completely ignoring the lethal murder intent radiating from his top operative.
He reached out with terrifying speed, clamping his massive palm around her uninjured right wrist and dragging her down the corridor toward the administrative medical bays with the irresistible force of a freight train.
“Do you have any idea what day it is, you ungrateful little brat? Today is your emancipation! Your honorable discharge into civilian society! You are returning to the Hartwell Manor in the capital! The real, authentic, old-money aristocracy!”
“I am aware of my itinerary,” Celeste said coldly, though she didn’t resist his grip.
“Which means I am legally entitled to sleep.”
“Today is your emancipation!”
“I have already been emancipated several times.”
“Not from domestic society!”
Despite his overbearing antics, Luis was the man who had pulled her out of a shipping container when she was a nine-year-old child, half-starved and sold off by her own bloodline.
He had taught her how to hold a knife, how to dress a bullet wound, and, bizarrely, how to analyze human psychology by forcing her to watch decades’ worth of Taiwanese and mainland evening soap operas during their downtime in war zones.
“Being aware isn’t enough!” Luis kicked open the door to the executive styling lounge, a room he had forcibly converted from a munitions briefing depot earlier that morning, and shoved her into a plush swivel chair.
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It will be!”
He loomed over her, brandishing a pair of tweezers like a tactical scalpel.
“I have spent the last twelve hours studying the social dynamics of the capital’s high society! Do you know what kind of creatures inhabit those estates? Delicate, dolled-up, porcelain-skinned socialites! They speak in whispers! They weep when the tea is two degrees too hot! If you walk through the front doors of the Hartwell Mansion looking like you just crawled out of a mass grave in Kandahar, your poor mother will likely suffer a cardiac arrest!”
“That sounds like a structural weakness in her cardiovascular system, not a tactical flaw in my attire,” Celeste muttered, though she closed her eyes and resigned herself to the ordeal as Luis began attacking her face with wet wipes soaked in heavy-duty astringent.
Luis pointed a pair of tweezers at her like a tactical scalpel, ignoring Celeste’s remarks.
“…So we’re going to make sure you look respectable.”
“I look respectable enough.”
“You look like you just crawled out of a mass grave.”
“That I did.”
“That is exactly the problem!”
Celeste sighed.
Luis grabbed her face.
She immediately caught his wrist.
He froze.
She stared at him.
He stared at her.
“Release me.”
“You’re going to let me fix your eyebrows.”
“I have killed men for less.”
“I raised you!”
“You also made me watch nine hundred and forty-three episodes of romantic melodrama.”
“Which is why you’re qualified for this mission!”
Luis yanked his hand free and immediately attacked her face with a wet wipe.
Celeste closed her eyes.
She had survived interrogation chambers.
She had survived chemical warfare.
She had survived three weeks behind enemy lines with nothing but a knife and half a protein bar.
None of it had prepared her for Commander Luis Vance aggressively applying concealer to her cheek.
“Listen carefully,” Luis lectured while working.
“This isn’t a battlefield.”
“I noticed that much.”
“This is a domestic drama.”
“I noticed that too.”
Celeste’s mouth twitched.