The morning sun didn't bring warmth; it brought judgment. I stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of my office at Aegis Global, watching the news ticker crawl across the bottom of the television screen.
"Arson Attack at Brooklyn Community College: Police suspect vigilante 'Hotdog' in connection with the destruction of historic archives."
The world saw a terrorist. I saw a necessity. But the price of that necessity was written in the shadows under Emily's eyes at breakfast. We hadn't spoken since she walked out of the library last night. The silence between us was no longer a wall; it was an abyss.
"You're trending for all the wrong reasons," Ethan said, walking into my office without knocking. He looked as exhausted as I felt. He tossed a file onto my desk. "Vance isn't backing down. The fire didn't scare her; it humiliated her. And a humiliated hunter is twice as dangerous."
"What's in the file, Ethan?" I asked, not turning away from the window.
"Vance's phone records from last night," Ethan replied, his voice dropping an octave. "She didn't just call the hospital. She made a call to a secure line at the J. Edgar Hoover Building. She's reaching out to the FBI, Oliver. Specifically, an agent named Marcus Thorne. He's a specialist in domestic terrorism and organized vigilantes."
I finally turned around. "A federal intervention. That changes the stakes."
"It triples them," Ethan said. "If the FBI gets involved, my 'liaison' status at the precinct won't mean a thing. They'll seize our servers, audit the Thompson accounts, and they won't need a warrant to put a tail on Emily. They'll use 'National Security' as a skeleton key to every door we've locked."
Before I could respond, the office door opened again. It wasn't William.
It was Emily.
She wasn't wearing her lab coat. She was dressed in a simple, sharp suit—the armor of a Thompson. She looked at Ethan, then at me.
"Ethan, give us a minute," she said. It wasn't a request.
Ethan looked at me, gave a slight nod, and retreated, closing the door behind him.
The room felt smaller the moment we were alone. Emily walked to my desk but didn't sit down. She placed her hands on the polished wood and looked me dead in the eye.
"I lied to a detective last night, Andrew," she said, her voice trembling with a mixture of anger and hurt. "I sat there and watched her eyes, knowing that if I blinked, my career, my life, and William's safety would be over. I did it because I love this family. I did it because I wanted to believe you were doing this for the right reasons."
"I am, Emily," I stepped toward her. "Everything I do is to make sure—"
"Stop," she cut me off. "Don't tell me it's to keep me safe. You're not keeping me safe; you're keeping me in a cage of lies. You're becoming the very thing you said you'd protect us from. You're a man who burns buildings to hide his shadow."
The words stung more than the glass shards Ethan had pulled from my arm.
"What do you want from me, Emily?"
"A week," she said. "Seven days. No masks. No missions. No notes left at crime scenes. I want you to be Oliver Thompson. I want you to sit at dinner and actually be present. I want to see if there's still a man under that black hood, or if the ghost has already eaten him alive."
"The Obsidian Circle won't wait a week, Emily. The shipments—"
"The world won't end in seven days, Andrew," she shouted, her eyes filling with tears. "But I will. I can't live like this. If you can't give me one week of peace, then you've already lost. If you go out tonight, or any night this week... don't expect me to be there when you come back. I won't lie for a ghost twice."
She turned and headed for the door. I reached out, my hand hovering in the air, wanting to grab her, to tell her about the FBI, about the danger closing in. But I knew that if I did, it would only prove her point.
"One week," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "Seven days, Emily. I promise."
She stopped at the door, her back to me. "Don't promise me, Andrew. Show me."
Day 1: 21:00 Hours
I sat in the dining room with William and Emily. The table was filled with food I couldn't taste. My phone was vibrating in my pocket—alerts from the police scanner Ethan had set up. There was a robbery in progress in the Diamond District. Three men, armed, matching the description of Obsidian mercenaries.
My muscles screamed to move. My mind was already calculating the fastest route to the roof.
I looked at Emily. She was watching me, her fork paused. She knew. She could see the tension in my jaw.
I took a slow breath, forced a smile, and reached for the wine decanter. "William, tell me more about that new software update for the Aegis servers."
William looked surprised, then caught Emily's eye. "Oh, right. Well, we're implementing a new layer of encryption..."
I listened. I stayed. But inside, I felt like I was suffocating. Every siren I heard in the distance felt like a failure.
Day 3: 02:00 Hours
I was in the gym, punching the heavy bag until my knuckles bled through the wraps. The lights were off, the only illumination coming from the moon.
I was fast. I was strong. But without the mask, I felt naked.
"You're hitting it too hard," a voice came from the doorway.
It was Emily. She was leaning against the frame, wearing an oversized sweater. She walked over and handed me a towel.
"I can't sleep," I admitted, my chest heaving. "The silence is too loud."
"It's not silence, Andrew. It's peace. You've forgotten what it feels like," she said softly. She reached out and took my hand, unwrapping the bloody bandages. She began to clean the wounds with the practiced grace of a surgeon. "You don't have to carry the whole city on your shoulders every night."
I looked down at her. In the moonlight, she looked like the only real thing in my life. I reached out with my clean hand and tucked a stray hair behind her ear.
"I'm trying, Emily. For you."
"Try for yourself, too," she whispered.
For a moment, the danger of Detective Vance and Agent Thorne felt a million miles away. But as I looked over Emily's shoulder at the security monitors in the corner, I saw a black sedan idling at the edge of our property.
The hunter wasn't taking a week off.
Day 5: 11:00 Hours
The pressure was reaching a breaking point. Ethan called me from a burner phone.
"Oliver, we have a problem. Marcus Thorne—the FBI guy? He's not waiting. He just authorized a wiretap on Emily's phone. He thinks she's the weak link. He thinks if he puts enough pressure on her, she'll break and give you up."
"I told her I'd stay down for a week, Ethan," I hissed, pacing my office.
"Then you better hope she's as good a liar as you are," Ethan said. "Because Thorne is coming to the hospital today. And he's not going to be as polite as Vance."
I gripped the phone. "If he touches her—"
"You'll do nothing," Ethan interrupted. "If you break the 'Hotdog' silence now, you confirm everything they suspect. Stay in your suit, Oliver. Stay in the light. It's the only place they can't kill you."
I hung up and looked at the clock. Day five. Two days left.
I felt like a man watching a slow-motion car crash, unable to move my feet. I had promised Emily a week of peace, but the world was bringing the war to her doorstep, and I was forced to watch it happen from the sidelines.
I grabbed my car keys. I couldn't put on the mask, but I could be there. I could be the man she needed, even if I couldn't be the hero the city wanted.
As I drove toward the hospital, I realized that the hardest thing I had ever done wasn't fighting ten men in a dark alley. It was standing still while the people I loved were in the line of fire.