Salalah, Oman – Three Weeks After the Fall
The sun rose slow and brutal over the Arabian Sea, turning the water into hammered bronze. The café was little more than a tin roof and plastic chairs, but the coffee was thick as tar and the old man who served it asked no questions of burned men who paid in crisp dollars.
Jax sat with his back to the wall, eyes on the street. Old habit. Kenji sat opposite, scarred arms folded, watching the horizon like it might try something. Prime—they had started calling him Elias, a name he picked from a dog-eared English novel in the safehouse—sat between them, turning a glass of mint tea in small circles.
None of them had slept more than a few hours at a stretch since Dubai.
Regeneration without the network was sluggish. Wounds closed, but slowly. Pain l
