A Clean Slate Has a Price

The compound is cool and immaculate — a sharp contrast to the dust-caked flats you crossed to reach it. Harlan Voss sits across a polished table like a man conducting a routine transaction, not the architect of twelve murders. He looks older than you remember, but his eyes carry the same flat certainty they always did.

He slides a sealed envelope across the table without preamble. Full pardon. Clean record. Enough to start over somewhere no one knows your name. He says it the way a man offers a tip — casually, almost generously. All you have to do is deliver Eli Cord before sunrise. Not captured. Delivered.

The silence between you stretches. He doesn't apologize for Colvin. Doesn't explain. He simply watches you, confident the math will work in his favor the way it always has. The envelope sits there like a loaded weapon pointed at everything you've spent three years trying to survive.