The small harbor at Wick was supposed to be a point of departure, not a pause.
Julian Vance stood in the modest room of a stone guesthouse overlooking the breakwater, his duffel bag sitting unopened on the floorboards beside a narrow iron bed. Through the small, salt-crusted window pane, he watched the rhythmic light of the harbor beacon sweep across the gray water. It was 03:00 AM, and the quiet town was asleep.
He couldn't sleep.
It wasn't the pain in his shoulder, which had dulled to a manageable ache under fresh bandages, nor was it the lingering phantom stench of pulverized concrete from Bunker 17. It was a sensation in his chest—a strange, subtle pressure behind his sternum that felt like a low-frequency hum.
At first, he had tried to dismiss it as tinnitus, a psychological resid
