Consciousness returned in fragments not all at once but like waves lapping against a ruined shore the first thing he registered wasn't pain. It was sound.
A low, constant hum. Mechanical. Like a generator or a storm caged just beneath the surface of the world Then came the pain.
His head throbbed, each heartbeat a hammer against the inside of his skull. His mouth was dry. His shoulders screamed. Something sharp bit into his wrists. Plastic. Tight.
Zip ties.
Cold concrete pressed against his back, unforgiving and damp. The air carried the sting of oil, rust, and mildew. Like a place meant to be forgotten. A place scrubbed clean of light, Stones blinked.
Darkness. A heavy kind of dark, wet, weighty, unmoving. Where the hell was he?
He tried to move. A bolt of fire shot through the base of his skull.Still breathing. Still conscious. That was something.
Then light.
A flicker overhead, like a dying insect. A bulb buzzed to life, bathing the room in sickly yellow light. Shadows stretched across the walls, long and hunched, dancing between rusted pipes and hanging wires.
A basement.
No windows. Just a steel door across the room, thick and reinforced. Industrial Government-grade.
There'd be no kicking through that. His gaze dropped to the floor and stopped.
It was drawn in charcoal. Or something darker.
A circle.
Perfect. Symmetrical. About three feet wide.
Inside it a symbol. A flame but wrong. Tilted, broken, jagged through the center like it had been cracked open.
Stones froze.
He'd seen it before.
On the card.
On Evelyn Trent's photo.
But this one was older. Smudged around the edges like it had been touched, over and over again. Revered. Or feared.
He stared, breath slowing.
Then a voice cut through the silence, distorted and low.
"You shouldn't have gone digging, Detective."
He flinched. The voice came from somewhere above through a speaker, maybe. No face. Just a presence. Cold. Composed.
"You weren't supposed to find 309. That wasn't part of the plan."
He twisted, trying to locate the source. "Then you should've hidden it better."
A soft chuckle echoed through the room.
"No, Mr. Stones. We left it for you."
His gut clenched.
"What do you mean?" he demanded. "Why?"
"To see what kind of man you are."
The voice was calm. Measured. Like someone narrating a chess match.
"Curious. Persistent. Morally rigid. The Circle values those traits… until they become a liability."
The Circle.
There it was.
Not a symbol.
Not a metaphor.
A name.
"What is this?" he growled. "Some secret cult? Corporate black ops? You torch people and call it justice?"
A pause. Then the voice shifted just slightly.
"You think Evelyn Trent was innocent?"
His heart skipped.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"You think this started with her? That she was the beginning?" the voice said. "You're staring at the ashes, Detective. But you haven't seen the fire."
He tried to speak, but the words got stuck behind his teeth.
The memory hit Evelyn's husband's confusion. The expensive consulting firm. The SUV in the photo. The scared eyes of a woman who had already disappeared.
"She hired you," Stones muttered. "She paid R.O.S. Consulting."
"She paid to vanish. To sever ties. To bury what she knew."
"And when she changed her mind?" he spat.
"She lit the fire herself," the voice replied coldly. "And like all traitors to the Circle, she was consumed."
The bulb above him flickered violently, casting shadows like claw marks across the floor.
"You can still walk away," the voice said, softer now. "You can pretend she was a victim. You can write your report, blame the husband, go back to your desk. Let the lie be enough."
Click.
The steel door across the room unlocked. The sound echoed like a gunshot.
Stones didn't move.
"You think I'm scared of you?" he growled.
"No," said the voice. "We know you're not. That's what makes you dangerous."
The light above him snapped off.
Pitch black.
Silence.
Then, slowly mechanically the door creaked open an inch.
An invitation.
Or a test.
Stones stood, wrists still bound. His balance wavered, but he pressed his shoulder to the door and shoved it open.
The hallway beyond was narrow, lit by flickering fluorescents. No guards. No cameras. Just peeling walls and old pipes that dripped something thick.
He stepped forward, every nerve on fire.
At the end of the corridor, a staircase. And above it a glowing red exit sign.
He took the steps two at a time.
When the door at the top burst open, cold air hit him like a slap.
Rain soaked his clothes before he could breathe twice.
He looked around, stunned.
He was in an alley.
Behind a meat processing plant on the southern fringe of the city. Where delivery trucks idled, and no one asked questions after dark.
No phone. No badge. No gun.
They'd stripped him clean.
Except for his memory.
And that was all they'd need to regret.
He found a gas station nearby. An ancient payphone, somehow still operational.
He called Monroe.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Stones?! Where the hell have you been? You dropped off the map six hours ago!"
"I found them," he rasped. "Or they found me. Evelyn Trent was the smoke. The fire's bigger. There's a group they call themselves the Circle of Ash. They erase people. Burn everything. Erase everyone."
Silence.
Then: "Get to the precinct. Now."
When he stepped through the doors of the precinct thirty minutes later, everything had changed.
Monroe was waiting. Her eyes wide, knuckles white.
"Look at this," she said, shoving a file into his hands.
The map from the storage unit the pins. They weren't random.
Each marked the site of an unsolved fire in the past five years.
The victims?
No families. No living relatives. No digital trace.
And every one of them bore the same strange marker hidden in fire reports, scrubbed from city records.
The broken flame.
A whistleblower in tech.
A retired federal witness.
A private investigator who vanished before testifying.
All erased.
All burned.
Evelyn was just the latest.
Not the first.
Not the last.
Stones stared at the evidence, jaw tight. Rainwater dripped from his sleeves.
"They let me go," he muttered. "On purpose."
Monroe looked at him. "Why?"
His eyes burned.
"Because they think I'll back down. That fear will do the rest."
She watched him closely.
"Will it?"
He met her gaze. Something raw in his eyes.
"No," he said. "I'm not stopping. Not now."
But even as he said it, something twisted deeper inside him. A wire pulled tight.
The Circle hadn't let him go out of mercy.
They'd let him go because they wanted him out there.
They wanted him to dig.
They were watching.
They were waiting.
And whatever game they were playing
He had just taken the first step onto their board.