CHAPTER 1: THE CLOCK STARTS NOW
You ever count every second of your life?
Not the hours. Not the minutes. The seconds. Tick. Tick. Tick. Like you're already living on borrowed time, because that's all you've ever had.
That was my life in the hospital. Machines breathing for me. Feeding me. Keeping me alive when nature tried to kill me before I learned to walk. I didn't cry when my mother died. I couldn't. I was too doped, too wired, too weak. My father? He didn't talk much. But the look in his eyes said it all: desperation has a scent. It clings to you. Like the smell of bleach on hospital floors.
He told me he loved me. Then he left.
And a week later, he was shot dead on the steps of Banco Nacional, trying to rob enough to save me.
I was ten.
So yeah. I started counting seconds after that. And I never stopped.
Now here I am. Thirty-eight years old. Glasses adjusted. Voice calm. Heart rate? Steady. Because today, every second counts.
"Positions," I said into the mic.
"Ready," Berlin's voice crackled back. Calm. Cool. Psychotic.
I watched from my unmarked van two blocks from the Royal Mint of Spain. The traffic cameras I'd hacked gave me five angles. I could see every doorway, every security checkpoint. The clock above the main entrance read 08:00. Like a drum roll to a war.
Then it began.
Tokyo. Fast. Furious. Red hair bouncing as she leaped from the side van and aimed straight for the doors. Rio, behind her, fumbling but quick. Denver laughing like he was on something. Nairobi with that hungry look in her eye. Moscow and the Serbs Helsinki and Oslo moving like a wave of muscle.
"Go go go!"
Screams. Gunshots. Rubber bullets. Smoke bombs. The security guards were down in thirty seconds.
I watched. No expression.
They sealed the doors.
67 hostages. Locked inside.
Berlin's voice again. "We are now officially at war."
And me?
I was still two blocks away. Just a voice in their ear. No name. No face.
And the system?
The system was about to feel what it was like to drown.
08:15 a.m.
The floor plans of the Royal Mint are burned into my memory like a second skin. I could walk through the vault blindfolded. That's the difference between chaos and control—one prepares, the other improvises.
I never improvise.
Berlin ordered the hostages into the central press hall. Nairobi, already in her zone, began isolating the skilled workers. She knew the ones we needed just by how they looked at the machines. Reverence. Familiarity. Like soldiers recognizing their weapons.
"Find me the chief operator," she barked. "We don't print a single euro until I say so."
Meanwhile, Tokyo cleared the eastern wing. Fast. Brutal. A man lunged for a door. She pistol-whipped him.
"You'll get a million euros if you behave," she said, dragging him back to the group. "Nothing if you bleed."
08:25 a.m.
The exterior was surrounded.
Madrid Metro Police. National Forces. Helicopters whirring above like vultures.
The news had broken: Terror Group Seizes Royal Mint Hostages Confirmed.
I switched locations, slipping into a different van. Changed my jacket, switched glasses. From this angle, I had perfect sight of the perimeter. Police drones buzzed overhead, and in ten minutes, I'd have access to their feed.
I dialed into the Mint.
"All entry points sealed?"
"Yes," said Berlin. "And the rats are quiet."
"Rio, cameras?"
"All blind. Security loop engaged. We're ghosts."
"Good."
And then, just like that we disappeared from the world.
Flashback. Five Months Earlier.
The compound was remote. Wind rustled trees. The air smelled of gunpowder and paranoia.
They were strangers then. Eight criminals. Eight broken people. But I had studied them for a year. I knew their charges. Their habits. Their breaking points.
I gave them one rule: No names. No faces.
"You live together. Train together. Bleed together. But you do not get personal."
They didn't listen.
Tokyo flirted. Denver cracked jokes. Berlin judged everyone like a Roman emperor.
But over time, they molded. I turned them from misfits into precision tools.
"Why the Royal Mint?" Nairobi once asked.
"Because we're not stealing money," I said. "We're making it."
Three billion euros. Untraceable. Unserialed. Unstoppable.
"Why would the hostages help us?" Rio asked.
I smiled. "Because we'll pay them better than their country ever did."
08:45 a.m.
Inside the Mint, the hostage whisper began.
"They said they'll pay us?"
"One million each?"
"Is this for real?"
Hope. It was the perfect drug. Fast-acting. Long-lasting. Totally addictive.
Raquel Murillo arrived outside the perimeter. She took charge fast. She wore authority like a second skin.
"Get me the negotiator line," she said. "And I want satellite visuals within the hour."
Her team scrambled.
She didn't know me yet.
But she would.
And when she did, she'd wish she never picked up the phone.
09:00 a.m.
I dialed in.
"This is Inspector Murillo. Who am I speaking to?"
"Call me The Professor."
"What do you want?"
"Time."
"Time for what?"
"To change the system."