Josh unscrewed the cap of his water bottle but didn't drink. He leaned against the reinforced doorframe, his gaze sweeping over the stark, functional prison Karl had built for himself. The single chair. The worn spot on the floor from relentless training. The absolute absence of anything that spoke of a life beyond survival.
He looked from the barren apartment back to Karl, really seeing the toll the years had taken. The tension in his shoulders was a permanent state. The eyes, once sharp with cunning and dark humor, were now just… flat. Hard. Like stones washed smooth by a relentless, cold river.
Josh had come looking for a legend. He'd found a ghost haunting the shell of a man.
He finally took a long swig of water, then capped the bottle with a decisive click.
"Alright," he said, his voice losing all its earlier levity. It was now the tone of a man stating a mission parameter. "Here's the situation. Nightingale has gone completely off the reservation. He's not just cleaning up old messes; he's consolidating power, and you're the last loose thread from the old regime. A very public, very expensive loose thread."
He pushed off the doorframe and started to pace a short, tight line in the small space. "I've been tracking his financials—what I can access, anyway. The bounty he's thrown on you is a fraction of what he's moving through shell companies. He's building something. And he's using your hunt as a distraction."
Josh stopped and turned to face Karl. "I didn't just find you to warn you, Karl. I found you because you're the only one who knows how he thinks. The only one who's gotten close before. And because leaving you in this…" He gestured around the bleak apartment, "…this purgatory, is a shitty way for a legend to end."
Karl's expression didn't change, but he was listening, his entire body still.
"I'm not offering to hide you," Josh continued, his voice low and intense. "I'm offering to help you do what you've clearly already decided to do. I'm offering to watch your back while you stop running and start hunting. I've got resources he doesn't know about. Safe houses he can't trace. A few old friends who are still loyal to the cause, not the man."
He took a step closer, his eyes locked on Karl's. "You go after Nightingale alone, you're just another body he'll have to pay to have cleaned up. You go with me… we have a shot. A real shot. Not just at killing him. At tearing his whole damn operation down."
He let the offer hang in the air between them. It wasn't just about help. It was about purpose. It was about pulling Karl out of his isolated war of attrition and back into a mission.
Karl was silent for a long moment, his gaze shifting from Josh to the window, to the world outside where a life with lavender shampoo and a kind doctor was a impossible dream.
He looked back at Josh, a flicker of the old fire finally igniting in the depths of his eyes.
"What's your play?" Karl asked, his voice a low gravel. The Ghost was no longer just waiting. He was listening to a battle plan.