CHAPTER 2 The Fall
STRATOSPHERE ABOVE THE NORTH ATLANTIC — 02:20 AM
The C-130 Ghost Raven shuddered like a wounded beast as it carved through the storm. Lightning flayed the sky, illuminating three figures standing at the open ramp. The wind screamed into the hold, carrying the sting of ice and salt.
Aris Van Thorn stood at the edge, his night-vision goggles casting the world in spectral green. Below, through tents in the clouds, the ocean churned—a black pit hungry for bones.
"Drop zone in 60 seconds!" Nyx's voice crackled in his earpiece. The hacker was already syncing their HUDs to the Leviathan's coordinates.
"Remember Atticus's guards have thermal scopes. Hit the water silent and deep."
To Aris's left, Rook adjusted his oxygen mask. A mountain-tall man and a former Spetsnaz brute, Aris had helped break out of a Mongolian prison. To his right, Wraith checked her chute lines. An assassin who moved like smoke. Both were recruited by him. "Both knew tonight's price:" Get Silas, or drown trying.
Aris gripped his nanny's locket beneath his wetsuit. "Soon justice will be served", he said.
"GO! GO! GO!"
Rain came not in drops but in spear ice-tipped and relentless, stabbing the C-130's fuselage like a thousand frantic fists. Lightning tore open the night, freezing the chaos in stark, Turboprop blades bending against hurricane gusts. Clouds churning like boiling pitch.
Ocean waves far below, jaws of liquid darkness snapping at the void. The wind screamed through the open ramp. Not a howl but a war cry. It clawed at Aris' gear, trying to rip off his vest, his weapons, his resolve. He braced against the bulkhead, boots sliding on rain-slicked steel.
Aris's night-vision goggles turned the world sickly green. Throbbing lightning flashed them white-blind for a half-second eternity. He tasted ozone and salt—sharp as blood, cold as the grave.
"Wind shear! Hold position!" Nyx's voice crackled, frayed with static.
Below, the Crimson Leviathan flickered in and out of sight a sinister red ember in an inkwell sea. One moment visible. The next was swallowed whole by cloud-rot. A steel scarab bristling with guns. Rook cursed, knuckles bone-white on a support strap. Wraith stood poised at the edge, her silhouette a blade against the storm's chaos. Rain sluiced down her black mask like tears.
Aris gripped his grandfather's tanto, saying the storm wasn't an obstacle. It was an accomplice.
Chaos to hide their fall.
Noise to mask their chutes.
Rage to match his own.
He touched his nanny's locket beneath his wetsuit.
Lightning flashed again
And in that split second, he saw it:
A gap in the clouds.
A path.
A reckoning.
"JUMP!"
They leaped. Three shadows swallowed by the night. Freefall was violence. Wind ripped at Aris's gear as he arrowed himself downward, rain needling his exposed skin. He spread his arms, stabilizing. The plane vanished above, leaving only the howl of the void.
Aris, Rook, and Wraith fell. The wind screamed. Rain slashed sideways, icy needles against their sealed helmets. The world was chaos: Black clouds, lightning fractures, the ocean below a churning abyss.
<< THERMAL SWEEP DETECTED >> flashed in Aris's HUD.
The Crimson Leviathan was hunting.