[Cassian Vinter's POV—Somewhere Beneath the City]
Failure has a smell.
Most people think it smells like blood or smoke.
They're wrong.
Failure smells like silence.
The kind that lingers after a phone stops ringing. After a message doesn't arrive. After men who were supposed to report back… simply don't.
I sat in the dark, fingers steepled, watching the city lights pulse through the one-way glass. Twenty-three floors below, people laughed, drank, and lived.
Above them all—I waited.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
The phone vibrated.
Finally.
I answered without lifting it from the table. "Speak."
Silence. Breathing. Shallow. Terrified.
"…Sir."
I smiled.
Not because I was relieved. But because fear had a tone. And this man was soaked in it.
"Why," I asked gently, "do you sound like you're about to die?"
A swallow. Audible. Pathetic, "T-The team is gone."
Gone. Such a small word for so much incompetence.
"Explain," I said.
