Night settled over the city like a warning—too calm, too smooth, the kind of calm that hides teeth.
Ben and I arrived at the gathering Devon mentioned, but neither of us went alone. We brought Andrew Gates—our third, our anchor, the one guy we trusted to walk into fire with us and somehow come out complaining about the temperature.
Andrew had been part of nearly every case we worked in the last five years.
Smart. Loyal. Dangerous when he needed to be.
A brother in everything but blood.
He met us outside the warehouse, hands shoved in his jacket, eyes scanning the street.
"You two look like you're going to a funeral," Andrew said.
Ben sighed. "We might be."
I nudged him. "Ignore him. He's dramatic."
Andrew smirked. "Right. And you're not."
We stepped inside.
The gathering wasn't what I expected. No circle of shady informants. No underground bunker filled with conspiracy boards.
Instead, we found a quiet, dim-lit space—an abandoned event hall with scattered tables and a few dozen people murmuring in clusters.
Not criminals.
Not agents.
People.
Ordinary people. But all of them carried the same expression—like they'd seen something they weren't supposed to.
Devon appeared from the far side of the room, waving us over.
"Took you long enough," he said.
"You said come at nine," Andrew replied.
"It's eight fifty-eight."
"That's late in my book," Devon muttered.
Ben grinned. "He's in his strict-dad era."
"I heard that."
We moved to a secluded corner where Devon's contacts were waiting. Three of them. All different. All tense.
A former analyst named Lena Cortez—sharp eyes, sharper tone.
A tech specialist, Marv, who looked like he hadn't slept in days.
And an ex-field officer, Osei, silent but observant, like he could see through walls.
Devon introduced us one by one.
"Waller, Ben, Andrew… these are the people I trust with the threads," he said.
"They've been tracking Eclipse patterns long before we knew what we were looking at."
Lena crossed her arms. "Patterns, movements, disappearances. You name it."
Marv pulled out a tablet. "Missing-person clusters that don't match any profile. Data wipes that happen minutes after we log them. Cases reassigned so fast it's like someone tries to keep us blind."
Osei added quietly, "Three officers who asked the wrong questions… gone."
Andrew's eyebrow rose. "Gone as in transferred?"
"Gone as in… gone," Osei said.
A chill crawled through me.
I exchanged a look with Ben.
And for a moment, I saw something strange flicker in his eyes—uncertainty, maybe even fear—but also something else.
Something I couldn't name then.
Devon continued, lowering his voice.
"We've pulled together what we can. We believe Eclipse has been infiltrating operations at different levels—subtle, quiet, testing responses. But whatever they're building toward… it's close."
Andrew took a step forward. "Okay, but what do they want?"
Lena sighed. "Control. Influence. Chaos. It's unclear."
Marv added, "But I can tell you this: they're using agents. Playing them. Turning them. Making them believe they're part of something bigger."
Ben stiffened beside me. Just for a second.
Barely noticeable.
But I noticed.
Devon didn't.
He continued, "Tonight is about planning. We need to figure out what Eclipse is targeting next before—"
Before he finished, the lights flickered.
The entire room paused.
One flicker.
Two.
Then a hum rolled through the ceiling.
Andrew whispered, "What the hell—"
The projector in the corner, which wasn't even on, sparked to life.
And that carved, crescent symbol appeared again—Eclipse's mark—glowing cold and deliberate across the wall.
No message.
No warning.
Just presence.
Claiming the room.
Ben's breath caught beside me.
Lena gasped quietly.
Osei reached for his concealed weapon.
Devon's face turned white.
"They know we're here," he whispered.
Andrew inhaled sharply. "Then what do we do now?"
I looked around at the frightened faces, the symbol pulsing like an eye watching all of us.
What do we do now?
The truth settled in my mind like a weight I couldn't shake.
This wasn't the beginning of the investigation.
This was the moment the investigation found us.
And Eclipse wasn't just watching.
They were choosing.
---
The Eclipse symbol pulsed across the wall, dimming the room into a cold silence.
Every instinct in me screamed run, but Devon stepped forward like he still believed control was possible.
"We stay calm," he said. "This doesn't mean they're close. It could be a breach in the—"
But the lights flickered again, harder this time.
The air itself seemed to vibrate.
Ben whispered, "Devon… they're not just sending a message. They're showing us they can reach anywhere."
And then it happened.
A shadow moved across the upper balcony—too fast to identify, too deliberate to be a mistake.
Someone was watching us.
Andrew reacted first. He grabbed my arm.
"Waller," he breathed, "this place is compromised."
Devon shook his head. "No, we need to regroup. If we leave, we lose our chance to track—"
"Track what?" Andrew snapped, louder than I'd ever heard him. "An organization that can breach a secure meet, hijack a projector that's unplugged, and drop ghosts in the rafters? We're not chasing them, Devon. They're hunting us."
Ben swallowed hard.
"I hate to say it," he muttered, "but I'm siding with the raccoon tonight."
Andrew ignored him. His eyes were locked on mine.
"Waller. Look at the people in this room."
I did.
Half of them were shaking. A few were crying. Osei had his gun drawn but couldn't find a target. Lena was murmuring something—prayer or fear, I couldn't tell. Marv's tablet showed only static.
Andrew's voice lowered.
"This isn't a briefing. This is a trap. And staying makes us the bait."
He wasn't wrong.
Ben stepped closer, voice low but steady.
"If Eclipse can reach us here, surrounded by friendly eyes, they can reach us anywhere. We're not ready for this. And if we stay, we won't make it out."
Devon stared at us, frustration tightening his jaw.
"You're making a mistake. This is the moment where agents are defined. This is where the brave step forward."
Andrew shook his head slowly.
"No. This is where the stupid get buried."
The tension snapped.
Everyone chose a side without speaking.
Some stayed with Devon.
Some fled the hall.
Others froze, paralyzed by fear.
But the moment I saw movement on the balcony again—a glint of something metallic—I made the call.
"Ben. Andrew. We're leaving."
Devon's voice cracked.
"Waller—!"
I didn't look back.
We sprinted out through the emergency exit, down a rusted stairwell, into the freezing night.
Even outside, the air felt wrong—too still, too heavy, as if something invisible followed us into the dark.
We didn't stop running until blocks away.
Ben leaned against a wall, panting.
"Devon's gonna kill us."
"No," Andrew said. "Devon's the one who stayed in a room Eclipse already claimed."
And then he turned to me—eyes fierce, voice trembling beneath his calm.
"Waller… if we stay with this case, we're dead.
We pull out. All of us. Tonight."
His voice had never shaken before.
Ben looked at me, waiting for my call.
And for the first time since the Eclipse symbol appeared… I was afraid.
"We pull out," I said quietly. "This goes deeper than us. We regroup later, when we're ready. Right now… we survive."
Andrew exhaled in relief.
But something haunted his expression.
Like another thought he wasn't saying.
Years later, I'd understand what that look meant.
Because Andrew didn't stay out.
He couldn't.
The case consumed him quietly, slowly, piece by piece.
He started digging again on his own—late nights, strange calls, unexplained absences.
Until the night he didn't come home.
No body.
No message.
Just gone.
Exactly the way Eclipse wanted.
And the worst part?
Ben and I knew the moment we heard the news:
Andrew didn't vanish.
He was taken.
And he never would've been…
if we hadn't walked away that night.
---
Everything changed a month after we pulled out.
We tried to go back to normal—routine patrols, low-risk assignments, nothing that carried the Eclipse symbol in the shadows.
But Eclipse didn't vanish.
They shifted.
Quietly.
One early morning, our phones buzzed at the same time.
A priority call.
A homicide.
"Waller, Ben—get to the scene. Now," Dispatch ordered.
We arrived at a quiet apartment complex in Upper Manhattan.
Police tape already surrounded the entrance.
Officers were whispering, shaken.
We pushed through the door—
and the world slowed.
The victim wasn't just anyone.
It was Devon Michael's younger sister.
Emily.
A single mother. A schoolteacher.
A woman with no criminal ties, no enemies, no reason to ever be on anyone's target list.
Andrew arrived minutes later, breathless.
"Jesus… what happened here?"
The apartment was untouched.
No struggle.
No forced entry.
Just a single mark on the wall—drawn faintly in dust, almost invisible unless the light hit it right.
A crescent stroke crossing a dim circle.
Eclipse.
Ben froze.
Andrew took a step back.
And I felt something cold coil in my chest.
This wasn't a random attack.
This was a message.
Ben whispered, "They're trying to pull us back in."
Andrew added, voice trembling, "Or punish Devon…"
But it was worse than that.
Devon arrived minutes later.
His scream carried through the entire floor.
He broke past officers, shoved anyone in his way, and collapsed beside his sister's body, shaking like his soul was being ripped apart.
I felt my throat close.
Ben looked away.
When Devon finally lifted his head, his eyes landed on us—on me, on Ben.
"You were supposed to protect her…" he whispered.
"Devon," I tried, "we didn't know—"
"You did know!" he snapped. His grief turned sharp, violent. "You KNEW Eclipse was moving! You KNEW they were watching! And you pulled out!"
Ben swallowed, voice weak.
"Devon… we weren't ready. We would've died—"
"My sister did die!" he roared.
Silence crashed over the apartment.
Every officer stopped moving.
Devon wiped his face with trembling hands, fury burning through the grief.
"You and Waller were the assigned agents," he said, voice breaking. "You had access to every file, every link—
If you hadn't abandoned the case—
If you hadn't walked away—
She might still be alive."
The words hit like bullets.
And the truth?
Some part of me knew he wasn't entirely wrong.
Eclipse killed Emily.
But we gave them the space to choose her.
That night, Devon resigned from field work.
He stopped speaking to us.
Stopped returning messages.
Stopped meeting with Andrew entirely.
And it was the beginning of fractures we didn't realize were forming.
One year later, Andrew went missing.
We searched everywhere—his apartment, his car, his phone records.
But all we ever found was a single clue on his desk:
Emily's case file.
Open.
Marked.
Underlined in red.
And at the bottom, written in Andrew's handwriting:
"Devon was right.
We shouldn't have pulled out.
I think Eclipse is still inside the department."
He never wrote anything again.
Andrew was gone.
Devon vanished from all radar.
Ben grew more distant.
And I—
I was left carrying the weight of a case that had swallowed my friends one by one.
A case that never truly ended.
Eclipse made sure of that.
---