The Reclamation Protocol

The SUV cut through the darkness like a ghost with headlights.. Her shoulder pressed against the window, breath fogging the glass in irregular bursts. The roads were nearly empty this deep into the industrial outskirts, just fractured lines and flickering sodium lamps passing like staccato beats in a song none of them wanted to hear. Jessica watched the road unravel like a film reel, scene by scene—empty warehouses, broken fences, places where stories went to die.

She sat in the backseat, her shoulder pressed against the cool glass, her breath fogging up the window in irregular bursts. Her hands were clenched in her lap, nails digging into the leather of her gloves. Next to her, Sam shifted, groaning softly as he dabbed the blood at the corner of his mouth. Leanna rode shotgun, eyes scanning the road, but her hand hadn’t left her pistol since they left the cabin.

Sam blinked slowly, still dazed. “I didn’t know him,” he muttered. “But Jess did. That name… Elias Raines. I’ve heard it before. Rumors. Ghost stories out of Langley. Operators who disappeared and came back different.”

“He didn’t come back different,” Jessica said quietly. “He came back loyal.”

She remembered what they called it—"reforged." Like a blade pulled from fire and hammered into something cold, exacting. That’s what they’d done to Elias.

Leanna finally glanced into the rearview, her eyes hard. “Elias was Vanguard’s failsafe. The one they send when subtlety stops working. Extraction. Elimination. Whatever the situation calls for.”

“I thought you left him in Patagonia,” Sam said, voice low.

“I did.” Jessica’s jaw tightened. “We left him in a collapsed base, unconscious. He remembered who he was right before the roof came down. I thought he’d been buried with the rest of them.”

Sam exhaled through his nose, his voice low. “His print was at the crime scene, Jess. Esparza, Reyes… Now he shows up, and it’s you he’s watching.”

Jessica blinked. She’d been holding that fact in the back of her mind like a live wire—too dangerous to touch. She shook her head once. “He wasn’t there for you.”

A heavy silence filled the vehicle.

Olivia glanced back in the mirror. “Then who was he after?”

Jessica didn’t answer immediately. Her reflection in the glass stared back, unfamiliar. Haunted. She looked like herself—at least the version the world knew. But tonight something cracked. The cold hand of Elias against her spine, the calculated calm of his voice, the way he didn’t shoot…

“He wasn’t there for Sam,” Jessica said quietly. “He was there to retrieve an asset.” She let the word hang in the air, bitter as poison. “Me.”

Sam leaned forward, his voice quiet. “Jess—”

She cut him off with a glance. “Not to kill. To recover. He had orders, and he followed them to the letter. No improvisation. No collateral. Vanguard doesn’t want me dead. They want me back.”

Leanna’s hand flexed around her pistol. “Because they still think they own you.”

Jessica didn’t respond.

A street light flickered above them, casting the interior in a harsh flash of yellow before plunging it back into dim gray. Sam studied her in the stuttering glow.

“This is what you were afraid of,” he said. “Back when you told me you didn’t know if you were real. That maybe you were made, not born.”

Jessica’s breath hitched slightly.

“You said you thought they built you to be something,” Sam continued. “And now they want their tool back.”

She let the silence stretch for a beat too long before finally speaking. Her throat was tight. Her voice, when it came, barely sounded like her own. “I didn’t think it would feel like this.”

“Like what?” Olivia asked gently.

Jessica didn’t answer right away. Her eyes were still on her own reflection. “Like maybe they’re right.”

Leanna turned in her seat, her voice sharp enough to cut. “No. Don’t give them that. They made something. But you made yourself. There’s a difference.”

Sam nodded slowly. “You’re not who they built. You’re who you’ve chosen to become.”

Jessica gave a humorless smile. “Tell that to the guy with the extraction protocol and the gun.”

The city skyline began to rise in the distance, a jagged line of cold light and darker intent. The illusion of safety. The echo of home.

“Vanguard’s testing our limits,” Leanna said. “They sent Raines to make us flinch.”

“We didn’t flinch,” Olivia said. “We pulled Sam out. We’re still breathing.”

Jessica closed her eyes and leaned her head against the glass. The war hadn’t ended in Patagonia. It had only gone quiet for a while. Now the ghost was back. And it remembered everything.

Leanna spoke up, her voice low. "We need to figure out what Esparza and Camille were caught up in before Vanguard erases all traces of them."

Jessica nodded, shaking off her thoughts. "We regroup, lay low for a night, and come up with a plan. If Raines is involved, this goes deeper than we imagined."

Sam winced as he shifted in his seat. "Jess… I don’t know how deep this rabbit hole goes, but I do know one thing—if that man was Elias Raines, then he’s not just working for Vanguard. He’s something else entirely."

Jessica stared out at the city’s jagged silhouette, the glow of its promise just another kind of lie. If Elias had come to reclaim her, then the question wasn’t whether she was real. It was whether she ever had a choice.