The sun rose over Portmorris for the first time in what felt like years.
Caleb Merrick stood at the window of the clinic basement, watching the light spread across the rooftops of the slums like a slow tide. The storm had passed in the night, leaving the city washed clean—the streets glistening, the air cold and sharp, the sky a pale, fragile blue. Somewhere beyond the harbor, the wreckage of the Proscenium lay on the ocean floor, its secrets buried beneath a hundred feet of black water. Somewhere in the city, the last remnants of Margot Delaine's network were being rounded up by federal agents and the few agency operatives who had chosen to cooperate. And somewhere, in the quiet spaces between the alarms and the gunfire and the endless running, the war had finally ended.
He was still pr
