Luke:
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like they were chewing through my skull, each flicker a reminder I wasn’t out in the scorching hot desert anymore. No engines rumbling. No starlit silence. No Alex.
Just the precinct. Cold. Sterile. Loud in all the wrong ways.
Rodriguez slouched next to me at the briefing table, reeking of cigarette smoke and leftover adrenaline. He’d thrown on a clean shirt but his eyes were still bloodshot from his debauchery, his hair still sticking up in ten different directions. I looked better than him on the outside. Inside? I was a goddamn graveyard.
Chief walked in, steel-eyed and impatient. The old bastard didn’t even sit.
"Rodriguez. Jennings. Report."
Rodriguez opened his mouth first. Of course he did.
"It was solid. Packed. Red Veil, Devil’s
