Two years after a sniper’s bullet left me unable to walk, everyone who worked inside my mansion had learned the same rule: stay out of my way.

The darkness inside Level Three wasn't just night; it was an absolute, suffocating void created by thirty feet of concrete and steel buried beneath the earth.

To a normal man, it was terrifying.

To me—a man who had spent two years sitting in the dark corners of a mansion, learning to navigate my world entirely through sound, air currents, and the subtle vibrations of the floor—it was home.

The distinct crack-crack of suppressed pistols echoed through the long laboratory hall as Luke and Miller executed our tactical breach.

"Target left!" a guard shouted before his voice was cut short by a heavy, wet impact against the glass wall.

Glass shattered into thousands of tiny pieces. Screams of confusion and panic filled the surgical suite as Vane's private security team fired blind into the dark, their muzzle flashes illuminating brief, frantic snapshots of destruction—a guard falling backward into a tray of surgical instruments, another pinned against the wall by Miller's massive frame.

"Thorne! Where's the backup?!" Vane shrieked, his voice scrambling across the carpet as he tried to find cover behind his desk.

"The doors are dead-locked!" Thorne screamed back from somewhere near the glass display case. "The pulse fried the secondary power relays!"

I didn't need vision. I heard the frantic rustle of Thorne's suit jacket near the display case. I heard the distinct clink of glass vials as his trembling hands tried to gather the N-14 compounds to save himself.

I moved my wheelchair forward, the silent, precision-engineered rubber tires rolling smoothly across the thick Persian rug.

I reached out into the dark, my fingers locking around Dr. Thorne's neck with the crushing force of a steel hydraulic press.

Thorne choked out a strangled gasp, dropping his flashlight and his medical kit as I pulled him down toward my chair, pinning his throat against the metal armrest.

"Where is the master synthesis matrix?" I rasped into his ear, my breath warm against his wet, terrified face.

"In... in the silver vault... under the main counter!" Thorne choked out, his hands clawing uselessly at my fingers. "The keycard... it's in my coat pocket! Please! Don't kill me!"

"Luke!" I called out into the dark.

A tactical green laser flickered to life across the room as Luke activated his night-vision goggles. "I'm on it, boss."

The beam swept across the floor, settling on the silver vault built beneath the primary chemical counter. Luke produced a mechanical override tool, rammed it into the emergency manual keyway beneath the fried electronic lock, and leveraged his full weight against the iron bar.

With a loud, metallic CLANG, the vault door swung open.

Inside lay three heavy, temperature-controlled metal cases marked with high-visibility bio-hazard logos—the complete, unadulterated supply of the N-14 nerve-regeneration compound and its permanent stabilization matrix.

"Got them," Luke confirmed, lifting the heavy silver cases.

"Vane!" I called out into the darkness, my voice echoing off the concrete walls like the tolling of a heavy bronze bell.

Silence answered me, save for the heavy, terrified panting of a man hiding behind a mahogany desk twenty feet away.

"You spent two years waiting for me to break, Victor," I said, releasing my grip on Thorne, letting the doctor collapse onto the floor in a weeping, gasping heap. "You thought if you took my legs, you took the man."

I heard the wet, metallic click of a revolver hammer being pulled back behind the desk—Vane's personal sidearm, held by a man whose hands were shaking so violently the barrel was clicking against the wood.

"Stay back!" Vane screamed, his voice high-pitched and hysterical. "I'll shoot you! I swear to God, Mercer, I'll put another bullet in you!"

"Go ahead," I said softly, my voice drifting through the dark like a ghost. "Aim for my spine, Victor. I'm already used to it."

I rolled my chair forward into the path of his shaking weapon.

A muzzle flash split the dark with a deafening BOOM, the heavy bullet tearing through the wool of my coat, grazing my left shoulder with a sharp, searing heat that I barely registered.

Before Vane could pull the trigger a second time, I reached out through the flash of his gun, grabbed the hot steel barrel of his revolver, and twisted his wrist upward with a sickening, mechanical snap.

Vane shrieked in pain as the gun dropped from his fingers. I grabbed him by his silk lapels, dragging his fifty-year-old body over the top of his expensive desk, pulling his face down until his nose was inches from mine in the dark.

"The city is mine again, Victor," I whispered into his ear, my voice cold, quiet, and completely absolute. "And you're going to spend the rest of your life in a state penitentiary cell, watching me rebuild everything you tried to steal."

Miller stepped out of the shadows behind us, slapping a pair of heavy tactical flex-cuffs around Vane's broken wrists.

"Emergency power coming back on in thirty seconds, boss," Luke reported from the hallway, securing the silver cases over his shoulder. "We need to clear the sector before Cook County units hit the perimeter."

I turned my wheelchair around, looking down at Dr. Thorne, who was cowering against the wall in terror.

"If Emma Carter isn't completely stabilized by tomorrow morning," I said, looking back at Thorne, "I won't send you to prison. I'll bring you back to my house, and I'll let Luke show you what we do to people who break our rules."