The Valkyrie bucked hard in the crosswinds, warning runes screaming across the cockpit bulkhead. MASON heard the pilots arguing over the vox—too much flak, too much turbulence, too much everything.

“Ghost Lead, negative drop. Repeat, negative drop,” the pilot barked. “You jump now, you die before the chute arms.”

MASON keyed his helm mic. “Open the ramp.”

“Absolutely not—”

He didn’t wait. Manual override hissed beneath his hand. The ramp locks clanked. Red light still burning overhead.

SPECTRE looked at him once. Just once.

“Go,” he said.

She walked past the panic-stricken crew chief, the green light still stubbornly dark, and dove into the storm.

The pilot shrieked over the vox, “What the—?! We are not cleared for—”

MASON cut the channel.

“Vultures,” he said, “follow your Lead.”

They did.

The sky swallowed them whole.

Wind shredded their descent patterns; flak lit the clouds below with ugly veins of orange. Grav-chutes bucked and snarled. This was a bad drop—one of the worst.

Perfect. Their quarry wouldn’t expect anyone insane enough to follow him through this.

MASON hit last, knees slamming into broken concrete, breath ripping from his lungs. He rose fast, scanning—

A body lay on the street. A rag-wrapped, skeletal hive vagrant, the kind who slept wherever the ash didn’t choke him. Throat severed in a clean line.

SPECTRE hadn’t waited. She’d cleared the witness the moment she hit dirt.

MASON didn’t waste breath mourning the bastard. Wrong corner, wrong hour. The hive ate people like him every night.

“Red Hours,” he murmured to the squad, and they fanned out, shadows seeking deeper shadow.