CHAPTER 1: The Guardian of Ward 4
The rain in Seattle doesn’t wash things clean; it just makes the grime slicker. That’s how the night felt—slick, dangerous, and expensive.
The tires of the armored Cadillac Escalade screeched against the wet pavement of the emergency bay at St. Jude’s Medical Center. This wasn’t the entrance for regular people. This was the VIP bay, reserved for senators, tech moguls, and the Sterling family.
“Get the stretcher! Move! Do you know who we are?”
Elena Sterling’s voice cracked like a whip, cutting through the heavy sound of the rain. She was drenched, her Chanel coat ruined by mud and her son’s blood. In her arms, ten-year-old Leo was limp, his face pale as a sheet of paper.
But the first thing out of the car wasn’t the boy.
It was a blur of tan and black muscle.
Titan.
The Belgian Malinois hit the asphalt with a heavy thud, his claws scrabbling for traction. He didn’t bark. He didn’t look around. He immediately circled to the back door where the paramedics were trying to pull Leo out. Titan’s ears were pinned back against his skull, his eyes wide and frantic, scanning every shadow, every nurse, every orderly rushing toward them.
“Get that animal out of here!” a triage nurse shouted, backing away as the ninety-pound dog let out a low, vibrating growl that could be felt in the chest.
“He stays with Leo!” Richard Sterling roared, stepping out of the driver’s seat. Richard was a man used to being obeyed. He was the CEO of Sterling defense, a man who signed checks that could buy small countries. But right now, he looked like any other terrified father. “Don’t you dare touch the dog. Just save my son!”
The scene was pure chaos. The sliding glass doors hissed open, and the sterile smell of antiseptic clashed with the metallic scent of blood and wet dog fur.
They rushed Leo onto a gurney. The wheels clattered across the linoleum.
Titan didn’t need a leash. He was glued to the side of the stretcher, trotting perfectly in sync with the wheels. His muzzle nudged Leo’s hanging hand every few seconds, checking for a pulse, checking for life.
“Code Blue, Trauma One! We have a pediatric male, severe lacerations to the abdomen, possible internal bleeding!”
The team of nurses and residents swarmed the hallway. They were used to VIPs, but they weren’t used to a military-grade attack dog accompanying a patient into the trauma unit.
“Sir, you can’t bring the dog in there!” A security guard, a beefy guy named Miller, stepped forward, hand on his belt.
Titan stopped. He didn’t look at Miller. He didn’t look at the nurses. He just planted his feet between the stretcher and the world, his body becoming a physical shield. He let out a sharp bark, short and commanding.
Back off.
“Let him through!” Richard screamed, shoving Miller aside. “If that dog wants to go into the OR, he goes into the OR! I’ll buy this damn hospital and fire every single one of you if you waste another second!”
Money talks. In America, money screams.
The doors to the trauma wing swung open.
But the real danger wasn’t the wound in Leo’s side. It wasn’t the blood loss.
It was waiting for them inside.
Dr. Aris Thorne was the on-call trauma surgeon. Or at least, that’s what his ID badge said.
He stood by the scrub sink, watching the reflection in the steel mirror. He adjusted his surgical cap, smoothing back hair that was dyed a little too dark, checking teeth that were veered a little too white. He looked the part. He had the jawline, the steady hands, the arrogance that people mistook for competence.
“Dr. Thorne, the Sterling boy is coming in. ETA ten seconds,” a nurse called out.
Thorne’s eyes flickered. “Sterling? As in Richard Sterling?”
“Yes, Doctor. It’s bad.”
Thorne smiled beneath his mask. A Sterling. That meant chaos. That meant distraction. And that meant access to things—drugs, exit routes, money—that he desperately needed.
“Prep the theater,” Thorne said, his voice smooth as velvet. “I’ll handle this personally. No residents. I want the room cleared except for essential staff. Privacy is paramount for a family like this.”
It was a class play. He knew how the rich operated. They wanted exclusivity. They wanted the best. They didn’t want a teaching hospital crowd staring at their broken heir. By demanding privacy, Thorne was actually ensuring there were no witnesses.
He walked into the Trauma room just as the doors banged open.
“BP is dropping! 80 over 50!”
“He’s losing consciousness!”
Thorne stepped forward, snapping latex gloves onto his wrists. “Clear the way. I’m taking over.”
The nurses parted like the Red Sea. They saw the “Attending” badge and the white coat, and they deferred to the hierarchy. In the medical world, the surgeon is God.
Thorne approached the stretcher, his eyes locked on the boy’s expensive watch, the diamond studs in the mother’s ears, the sheer smell of wealth radiating off them. He reached out to check the boy’s pupil response.
GRRRRRRRR.
The sound wasn’t loud, but it was primal. It was the sound of a tectonic plate shifting before an earthquake.
Thorne froze.
For the first time, he noticed the dog.
Titan had leaped onto the rolling stool next to the bed, putting him at eye level with the doctor. The dog’s lips were curled back, revealing rows of teeth designed to crush bone. Saliva dripped from his jowls.
Titan wasn’t looking at the boy. He was staring directly into Aris Thorne’s eyes.
Dogs know.
Humans rely on words, on uniforms, on badges. We rely on social cues. If a man wears a white coat and speaks with authority, we assume he is a healer. We are easily tricked by the costume of class.
But a dog? A dog smells the pheromones. A dog smells the spike in cortisol. A dog smells the adrenaline of a predator.
Titan smelled the prison rot on Thorne. He smelled the fear. He smelled the lie.
“What is this beast doing in my O.R.?” Thorne snapped, his voice cracking slightly. He took a step back, masking his fear with indignation. “Get this animal out! Now! This is a sterile environment!”
“He won’t leave,” Elena sobbed, gripping Leo’s hand. “He won’t leave him.”
“Mrs. Sterling,” Thorne said, adopting his most condescending, authoritative tone. “Your son is dying. Do you want him to die because a dirty animal brought infection into the wound? Security! Remove this dog or I cannot operate!”
It was the perfect ultimatum. It used their fear against them.
Richard Sterling looked at Titan. He looked at his dying son. He looked at the “Doctor.”
“Titan, heel!” Richard commanded.
Titan didn’t move.
The dog’s muscles were coiled tight as steel springs. His hackles—the fur along his spine—stood up like a razor’s edge. He let out a snap, his jaws clicking shut inches from Thorne’s outstretched hand.
“Jesus!” Thorne jumped back, knocking over a tray of instruments. Clamps and scalpels crashed to the floor.
“Get him out!” Thorne screamed, his facade slipping. “Shoot him if you have to!”
“No!” Elena shrieked.
Security guards Miller and two others rushed in, batons drawn.
“Grab the collar!” Miller shouted.
The guards lunged. Titan moved with terrifying speed. He didn’t attack them, but he spun, using his heavy body to block them from the stretcher, snapping at the air, creating a perimeter of teeth and fury. He was barking now—a deafening, rhythmic booming that echoed off the tiled walls.
WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!
He was saying: STAY BACK. HE IS THE ENEMY.
But the humans couldn’t understand. They only saw a dangerous animal out of control.
“He’s gone rabid!” Thorne yelled, seeing his chance. He grabbed a syringe from the crash cart. “I’m sedating the dog! Hold him down!”
Thorne wasn’t reaching for a sedative. He was reaching for Potassium Chloride. Enough to stop a heart. He needed the dog dead. The dog was the only one who saw through him. The dog was the witness.
Thorne lunged forward with the needle, aiming for Titan’s flank.
That was his mistake.
You don’t lunge at a Malinois.
Titan saw the weapon. He didn’t wait for the prick.
With a roar that sounded more like a lion than a dog, Titan launched himself off the stool. He didn’t go for the arm holding the needle. He went for the throat.
“NO!” Richard screamed.
Titan hit Thorne in the chest, 90 pounds of missile force. The doctor went down hard, his head cracking against the floor. The syringe skid across the room.
Titan stood over him, paws pinned on Thorne’s chest, jaws clamped around the doctor’s neck—not biting down to kill, but holding him there. A hostage situation.
Thorne lay frozen, eyes bulging, terrified to breathe. He could feel the hot breath of the dog on his jugular.
“Shoot it!” A nurse screamed. “He’s killing the doctor!”
The security guards unholstered their guns. The glint of steel under the fluorescent lights was terrifying.
“Clear the shot!” Miller yelled, aiming his Glock at Titan’s head.
“WAIT!”
The scream didn’t come from the parents.
It came from the boy.
Leo, who had been unconscious seconds ago, had been jolted awake by the chaos. His voice was a weak, thready whisper, but in the sudden silence of the standoff, it was deafening.
“Titan… stop…”
The dog’s ears twitched. He whined, a high-pitched, crying sound, but he didn’t let go of the doctor’s throat. He looked at Leo, then back at the doctor, his eyes pleading.
He’s the bad man, Leo. Can’t you see?
“Officer, take the shot!” Thorne gargled from the floor, sweat pouring down his face. “Kill the beast!”
Miller tightened his finger on the trigger.
BOOM.
The double doors at the end of the hallway exploded inward.
But it wasn’t hospital security.
“POLICE! DROP THE WEAPON! EVERYBODY DOWN!”
A dozen SWAT officers in tactical gear flooded the trauma room, assault rifles raised.
Richard Sterling threw his hands up, confused. “Don’t shoot! It’s just a dog!”
The lead SWAT officer didn’t aim at the dog. He stepped right past Richard, right past the nurses, and aimed his rifle directly at the man lying on the floor.
The man wearing the doctor’s coat.
“Michael Vance!” the officer shouted at the ‘doctor’. “Do not move! Let me see your hands!”
The room went deathly silent.
The nurses looked at each other. Michael Vance? Who was Michael Vance?
“Get the dog off him so we can cuff him!” the officer ordered.
Richard, stunned, looked at Titan. “Titan… off.”
Titan slowly released his grip. He stepped back, gave a single, satisfied sneeze, and trotted back to Leo’s side, licking the boy’s face as if nothing had happened.
The police swarmed Thorne—or Vance—yanking him to his feet and slamming him against the wall. As they cuffed him, the “doctor’s” wig slipped askew, revealing a shaved head underneath.
“Who is that?” Elena whispered, trembling.
The SWAT leader lowered his weapon and looked at the terrified parents.
“That’s not Dr. Thorne, ma’am,” the officer said, grimly. “Dr. Thorne was found bound and gagged in his car in the parking garage twenty minutes ago. This man is Michael Vance. He’s an escaped convict from State Pen. He killed two guards to get out. He was looking for drugs and a hostage.”
The officer looked at Titan, who was now resting his head gently on Leo’s chest, his tail giving a slow, rhythmic thump.
“If your dog hadn’t stopped him,” the officer said, his voice dropping, “Vance would have overdosed your son and taken you all hostage to get out of the building. That animal didn’t attack a doctor. He just arrested a fugitive.”
The room spun. Richard Sterling looked at the man he had almost ordered security to shoot. He looked at the creature he had called a “dirty animal.”
He fell to his knees beside the stretcher, burying his face in Titan’s fur. The dog tolerated the hug, but his eyes stayed open. Watching the door. Watching the nurses.
Always watching.
But the story wasn’t over. Because as they finally moved Leo into surgery—with the real doctors—Titan refused to leave. And as the night wore on, the Sterlings would realize that Vance wasn’t just a random convict. He was a hired gun.
And the person who hired him was still in the waiting room.
CHAPTER 2: The Viper in the Waiting Room
The adrenaline that had turned Richard Sterling into a titan of industry, a man who could stare down hostile takeovers and market crashes, suddenly evaporated. In its place, a cold, hollow terror rushed in.
The Trauma Room was a wreck. Stainless steel trays were overturned. The floor was slick with saline, betadine, and the scuff marks of the SWAT team’s boots. But the most terrifying thing wasn’t the chaos; it was the stillness of the boy on the gurney.
Leo hadn’t moved.
“We’re losing the window!” a new voice barked.
This time, it was a real doctor. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the Chief of Surgery, who had been dragged out of a charity gala in his tuxedo, now throwing a sterile gown over his dress shirt. He didn’t have the slick, movie-star hair of the convict Vance. He looked tired, frantic, and absolutely competent.
“Get him to O.R. 3! Move, move!” Dr. Gupta shouted, his hands already on the gurney, checking the IV lines. “Who is bagging him? Respiration is shallow!”
“I am, Doctor!” a nurse cried out, squeezing the Ambu bag rhythmically.
The gurney began to roll. The wheels clattered over the threshold of the trauma room, heading deeper into the sterile heart of the hospital.
And then, there was the sound.
Click-clack. Click-clack.
Titan.
The Malinois didn’t wait for permission. He didn’t wait for a command. He shook his fur, sending a spray of rainwater and stress-shed hair into the air, and fell into step beside the gurney. His head was low, his ears swiveling like radar dishes, tracking every person who moved toward the boy.
“Mr. Sterling!” Dr. Gupta shouted over his shoulder as they ran down the corridor. “The dog cannot come past the red line! It’s a sterile zone!”
Richard Sterling was running too, his Italian leather shoes slipping on the linoleum. He looked at the doctor, then at the dog.
He remembered the needle. He remembered the convict posing as a savior. He remembered that everyone—the nurses, the security guards, even himself—had been fooled. Everyone except the dog.
“The dog goes where my son goes!” Richard yelled, his voice cracking. “If you stop the dog, you stop the surgery, and I move him to Mercy General!”
“That will kill him!” Gupta argued, pushing through the double doors.
“Then figure it out!” Richard roared. “Put a suit on him! Sterilize him! I don’t care! But that animal is the only reason my son isn’t dead right now, and I am not separating them!”
It was insane. It was against every protocol in the book. It was the kind of demand only a billionaire could make.
And because this was America, where money bends reality, the hospital bowed.
“Fine!” Gupta snapped. “Nurse, get a drape! Get the chlorhexidine! We scrub the dog down and he stays in the corner. If he moves one inch toward the open cavity, I will sedate him myself!”
The Observation Deck
Thirty minutes later, the Operating Room was a hive of controlled violence.
Leo’s small body was almost swallowed by blue drapes. Monitors beeped in a rhythmic, high-pitched cadence that set everyone’s teeth on edge. The smell of cauterized flesh—the smell of burning—seeped through the air filtration system.
Richard and Elena Sterling stood in the observation gallery above, separated from the surgery by a wall of thick glass.
Down below, in the corner of the O.R., sat a surreal sight.
Titan sat rigid as a statue. He was wearing a makeshift sterile gown tied around his muscular chest, and booties over his paws. A surgical cap had been comically, tragically placed over his head, but his ears poked through.
He didn’t look ridiculous. He looked terrifying.
His amber eyes were laser-focused on Dr. Gupta’s hands. Every time the surgeon reached for a scalpel, Titan’s muscles twitched. Every time a nurse passed a sponge, the dog’s head tracked the movement. He was processing threats at a speed humans couldn’t comprehend.
“He knows,” Elena whispered, pressing her hand against the cold glass. Her makeup was streaked, her eyes swollen. “Look at him, Richard. He’s watching them like… like he’s waiting for another one to turn.”
Richard didn’t answer. He was gripping the railing so hard his knuckles were white. He was replaying the last hour in his head.
How did a convict get a doctor’s coat? How did he know Leo was coming? How did he know exactly which trauma room?
This wasn’t a random escape. Convicts escaping prison run away from people, not toward billionaire children in high-security hospitals.
“Mr. Sterling?”
Richard spun around.
Standing in the doorway of the observation deck was a man in a rumpled trench coat, holding a coffee cup that looked like it had been reused three times. He had the tired, gray skin of a man who hadn’t slept since the previous administration.
“Detective Harrow, LAPD Major Crimes,” the man said, flashing a badge. He didn’t look impressed by the luxury of the VIP wing. He looked annoyed.
“Is he talking?” Richard demanded, stepping forward. “The man in the trauma room. Vance. Did he talk?”
Harrow took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. “Michael Vance isn’t talking yet. He’s currently being treated for a crushed larynx. Your dog nearly took his head off. But we found something on him.”
Harrow walked over to the glass, looking down at the surgery, then at the dog in the corner. He shook his head. “Hell of an animal.”
“What did you find?” Richard pressed, his patience snapping.
Harrow reached into his pocket and pulled out an evidence bag. Inside was a crumpled piece of paper. It wasn’t a map. It wasn’t a list of demands.
It was a printout of a schedule.
Leo Sterling. Soccer Practice. 4:00 PM. St. Jude’s Emergency Route B.
Richard felt the blood drain from his face. “That’s… that’s Leo’s itinerary. Only the family security team has that.”
“Exactly,” Harrow said, his voice dropping to a gravelly low. “Vance didn’t just stumble in here. He was waiting. He knew the boy was coming in. He knew the route. And most importantly, he had a security badge to override the back elevator.”
Harrow turned his dead, tired eyes onto Richard.
“Mr. Sterling, you’re a powerful man. You have enemies. But this wasn’t an enemy from the outside. Vance didn’t break in. Someone let him in.”
Elena gasped, covering her mouth. “An inside job?”
“We’re locking down your security team now,” Harrow said. “But I need to know… who else knew Leo was coming here tonight? Who knew he was sick?”
Richard’s mind raced. Leo hadn’t been sick. It was an accident. A fall at the estate. It happened two hours ago.
“No one,” Richard whispered. “Just Elena. Me. The staff at the house. And…”
He stopped.
The elevator doors down the hall dinged softly.
“Richard! Elena!”
A voice, smooth as aged scotch, echoed through the quiet corridor.
Richard turned. Walking toward them, looking the picture of concern, was a man who looked like a slightly softer, slightly less successful version of Richard. He wore a bespoke suit that cost more than Detective Harrow’s annual salary, and his face was arranged in a perfect mask of brotherly worry.
Julian Sterling.
“My God,” Julian said, rushing forward, his hands outstretched. “I saw the news. A convict? In the hospital? Is Leo okay? Tell me he’s okay.”
Richard stared at his brother.
Julian hugged Elena, who collapsed into his arms, sobbing. “Oh, Julian, it was horrible. He had a needle… he was going to kill him…”
“Shhh, shhh,” Julian soothed, patting her back. He looked over Elena’s shoulder at Richard. “I came as soon as I heard. I was at the club. I dropped everything.”
Richard’s eyes narrowed.
“The club?” Richard asked. His voice was flat.
“Yes, the Crimson Room. Why?” Julian blinked, looking confused.
“That’s forty minutes away with traffic,” Richard said. “We’ve been here twenty.”
The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
Julian’s smile didn’t falter, but the corners of his eyes tightened. Just a fraction. A micro-expression of calculation.
“I took the helicopter, Richard. You know I hate traffic.” Julian laughed, a nervous, breathless sound. “Jesus, look at you. You’re paranoid. And rightfully so. This city is going to hell.”
Julian walked past Richard, toward the glass. He looked down into the operating room.
“Is that… is that the dog?” Julian asked, pointing.
Down below, Titan’s head snapped up.
Through the soundproof glass, through the sterile air, through the distance—Titan locked eyes with Julian.
The dog didn’t bark. He didn’t growl.
He stood up.
Titan walked to the center of the room, right up to the glass partition that separated the sterile field from the gallery above. He stood on his hind legs, placing his front paws on the wall, staring directly up at Julian.
His lips peeled back.
It wasn’t the frantic aggression he showed the convict. This was different. This was recognition.
“Why is he looking at me like that?” Julian whispered, stepping back from the glass.
Detective Harrow watched the scene closely. He looked at the dog. He looked at Julian. He looked at the timestamp on the security footage on his tablet.
“Mr. Julian Sterling,” Harrow said, stepping in between the brothers. “You said you took the helicopter?”
“Yes,” Julian straightened his tie. “From the appalling rooftop of the Crimson Room.”
“Strange,” Harrow said, tapping his screen. “Because air traffic control has all private flights grounded tonight due to the storm. No helicopters have flown in Seattle for three hours.”
The silence that followed was louder than the heart monitor.
Richard stepped toward his brother. The grief in his chest was being replaced by a burning, white-hot rage.
“Julian,” Richard said, his voice trembling. “How did you get here?”
Julian’s face changed. The mask of the concerned uncle slipped, revealing something ugly, something resentful and rotting beneath.
“I drove,” Julian snapped, his voice losing its polish. “I drove like a maniac. Does it matter? My nephew is lying there cut open, and you’re interrogating me about my commute?”
“It matters,” Richard said, stepping closer, “if you knew he was going to be here before we did.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Julian scoffed. He turned to Elena. “Elena, tell him he’s crazy. I love Leo.”
Elena looked at Julian. Then she looked down at the dog.
Titan was still standing against the glass, his eyes fixed on Julian, scratching at the wall as if trying to dig through the concrete to get to him.
“The dog hates you,” Elena whispered. “He never liked you. But he’s never looked at you like that.”
“It’s a dog!” Julian shouted, his composure cracking. “It’s a dumb animal that eats its own vomit! Stop listening to the dog and listen to your family!”
“That dog,” Detective Harrow interrupted, “just took down a man who killed two armed guards. I’d say his instincts are better than most people’s.”
Harrow moved his hand to his waist, near his handcuffs. “Julian Sterling, I’m going to need you to empty your pockets. Now.”
Julian froze. His hand twitched toward his jacket pocket.
“Don’t,” Harrow warned.
Julian laughed. It was a dry, bitter sound. “You think I have a weapon? I’m a Sterling. We don’t carry guns. We hire people for that.”
He froze. He realized what he had just said.
Richard’s face went stone cold. “What did you just say?”
Julian’s eyes darted to the exit. The elevator was twenty feet away.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Detective,” Richard said, never taking his eyes off his brother. “Check his phone. Check his texts.”
“You have no warrant!” Julian spat, backing away.
“I don’t need a warrant to detain you for reasonable suspicion in an active domestic terrorism investigation,” Harrow said, stepping forward.
Julian bolted.
He didn’t run like a track star. He ran like a coward, shoving Elena aside, sprinting for the stairwell door.
“He’s running!” Harrow shouted, giving chase.
“Julian!” Richard screamed, chasing after them.
Down in the O.R., chaos erupted again. Titan saw the movement above. He saw the “bad man” running. He saw his master chasing.
The dog went berserk.
He forgot the surgery. He forgot the sterile field. He launched himself at the heavy O.R. doors, slamming his body against them, trying to break out to join the fight.
“Restrain the dog!” Dr. Gupta yelled, as the monitors on Leo began to wail. “BP is dropping! I nicked the artery! He’s crashing!”
The sound of the flatline—a long, singular, piercing tone—filled the room.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
Richard stopped at the stairwell door. He heard the beep echoing from the speakers.
He was torn. His brother was escaping down the stairs. His son was dying in the room behind the glass.
He looked at Harrow. “Get him!”
Richard turned and slammed his fist against the observation glass. “Leo! LEO!”
Titan heard the flatline too.
The dog stopped throwing himself at the door. He turned back to the table. He saw the doctors frantically pumping Leo’s chest.
Titan didn’t attack the doctors this time. He understood.
He ran to the table, ignoring the sterile boundary, and shoved his head under the surgeon’s arm, resting his muzzle directly on Leo’s bare shoulder. He let out a low, mournful howl—a sound that wasn’t aggressive, but a call.
A call to the pack. Don’t leave.
Up in the gallery, Richard Sterling watched his world crumbling. His brother was a traitor. His son was dead on the table. And the only pure soul in the entire building was a dog covered in booties and a surgical cap, trying to howl a boy back to life.
But as Detective Harrow kicked open the stairwell door, he found something that changed everything.
Julian wasn’t running down.
He was running up. toward the roof.
And he wasn’t alone.
CHAPTER 3: Blood on the Helipad
The sound of a flatline is the most lonely sound in the world. It is a single, electronic note that signifies the end of a universe.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
In Operating Room 3, that sound filled every corner, bouncing off the stainless steel, the glass cabinets, and the terrified faces of the nurses.
“Asystole!” Dr. Gupta shouted, his voice cracking the sterile calm. “Start compressions! Push 1mg of Epi! Now!”
The nurse jumped onto the stool, locking her hands over Leo’s small, fragile chest, and began to pump. One, two, three, four. The boy’s body jerked with each compression, a doll in the hands of desperate giants.
But in the corner, the dog did not howl again.
Titan stopped making noise. The Belgian Malinois, usually a creature of perpetual motion and high-drive energy, went unnaturally still. He lowered his head, his black nose pressing against the cold metal rail of the bed, right near Leo’s arm.
He closed his eyes.
To the doctors, it looked like the dog was giving up. But Titan wasn’t giving up. He was listening.
A dog’s hearing can detect the heartbeat of a mouse under three feet of snow. Titan was listening for the flutter of the heart that he had guarded since it was the size of a fist. He was pouring every ounce of his energy, his loyalty, his very soul into that silence, willing the rhythm to return.
“Come on, Leo,” Gupta gritted out, sweat dripping from his forehead onto his mask. “Don’t you do this to me. Not tonight.”
“Two minutes down,” the circulating nurse called out, her voice trembling. “Still no rhythm.”
“Charge to 200!” Gupta ordered, grabbing the paddles. “Clear!”
THUMP.
Leo’s body arched off the table.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
Nothing.
The Rooftop
While death hovered in the O.R., the storm raged on the roof.
The door to the helipad slammed open, the wind catching it and ripping it from Richard Sterling’s grasp. The rain up here was horizontal, stinging like buckshot. The city of Seattle lay below, a grid of blurred lights through the downpour.
“Julian!” Richard screamed, his voice swallowed by the gale.
Ten yards away, standing near the edge of the helipad, was his brother. Julian Sterling didn’t look like a corporate executive anymore. His expensive Italian suit was soaked, plastering to his body. His hair was wild. He looked like a man who had stared into the abyss and decided to jump in.
He was holding a flare gun.
“Don’t come any closer, Richard!” Julian shouted, raising the orange pistol. “I swear to God, I’ll burn you!”
Detective Harrow burst onto the roof behind Richard, his service weapon drawn in a two-handed grip.
“Drop it!” Harrow yelled. “Police! Drop the weapon!”
Julian laughed. It was a manic, fractured sound that chilled Richard more than the rain.
“You think I’m scared of a cop?” Julian yelled back, stepping dangerously close to the edge. The drop was forty stories. “Do you know who backs me? Do you have any idea what you’ve walked into?”
Richard stepped forward, hands raised. “Julian, listen to me. Leo is downstairs. He’s dying. My son—your nephew—is dying. How could you? You set this up? The convict? The hospital?”
“He was supposed to die in the accident!” Julian screamed, the truth finally vomiting out of him. “He was supposed to fall! But that damn dog caught him by the shirt! That beast ruined everything!”
Richard felt his knees go weak. “You… you pushed him?”
“I didn’t touch him!” Julian spat. “I just… greased the railing. Gravity was supposed to do the rest. It was clean! It was simple!”
“Why?” Richard whispered, the word tearing out of his throat. “We gave you everything. The trust fund, the VP position, the penthouse…”
“Everything?” Julian’s face twisted into a mask of pure hatred. “You gave me allowances, Richard! You treated me like a child while you groomed him!” He pointed a shaking finger toward the floor, toward the O.R. “A ten-year-old boy! You were going to leave the Sterling Empire to a brat who plays with Lego, while I have been cleaning up your messes for twenty years!”
It was the oldest story in the book. Cain and Abel. Jealousy. Greed. The rotting core of the American aristocracy. Julian didn’t want the money; he had money. He wanted the power. He wanted the throne. And he was willing to kill a child to get it.
“He’s a child, Julian,” Richard said, tears mixing with the rain on his face. “He loves you. He calls you Uncle Jules.”
“He’s an obstacle!” Julian roared. He looked at his watch, then scanned the dark sky. “And now he’s a dead obstacle. And you… you’re just a grieving father who tragically fell off the roof while trying to save his suicidal brother.”
Julian raised the flare gun, aiming not at Richard, but at the sky. He pulled the trigger.
FWOOSH.
A red streak of phosphorus tore through the night, illuminating the low-hanging clouds.
“What is that?” Harrow shouted, stepping forward. “Who are you signaling?”
“My ride,” Julian smirked.
From the darkness above the clouds, a sound emerged. Not the thwack-thwack of a news chopper or a medical flight. This was the deep, guttural hum of a military-grade turbine.
A black helicopter, completely unmarked, descended through the rain like a hawk diving for prey. It didn’t have navigation lights on. It was a ghost.
“Federal Aviation has this airspace closed!” Harrow yelled, stunned. “Who the hell is flying that?”
“Private contractors,” Julian shouted over the roar of the rotors. “Money buys laws, Detective! You should know that!”
The helicopter hovered ten feet off the deck, the side door sliding open. A man in tactical gear, face covered by a ballistic mask, threw down a rope ladder.
“Goodbye, Richard,” Julian yelled, grabbing the ladder. “Don’t worry about the funeral. I’ll arrange the most expensive flowers.”
“NO!” Richard lunged.
He didn’t think. He didn’t calculate. He just saw the man who tried to kill his son getting away.
Richard Sterling, the man who had never thrown a punch in his life, tackled his brother just as Julian lifted a foot onto the ladder.
They hit the wet concrete hard. The flare gun skittered away.
The mercenary in the helicopter didn’t wait. He leveled a rifle at the pile of bodies.
“Richard, move!” Harrow screamed, firing three shots at the helicopter door. Bang! Bang! Bang!
The bullets sparked off the armored fuselage. The mercenary didn’t flinch. He aimed at Richard’s head.
Operating Room 3
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
“Charging to 300!” Gupta yelled. “This is it. If we don’t get him back now, he’s gone. Clear!”
THUMP.
The body jumped.
Titan let out a sharp, piercing bark. WOOF!
Everyone looked at the monitor.
The green line was flat.
Then, a tiny spike.
Then another.
Beep… beep… beep.
“We have a rhythm!” the nurse gasped, almost collapsing in relief. “Sinus tachycardia, but it’s a rhythm! Pulse is thready but present!”
“He’s back,” Gupta whispered, closing his eyes for a second. “Holy mother of God, he’s back.”
Titan didn’t celebrate. He didn’t wag his tail. He simply let out a long exhale through his nose, his body relaxing against the bed railing. He licked Leo’s limp hand once, rough tongue against pale skin.
Then, the dog’s head snapped up. His ears swiveled toward the ceiling.
He heard the rotor blades.
He heard the gunshots.
And he smelled something he hated more than the convict. He smelled the scent of the man who had been in the gallery. The “Uncle.”
Titan looked at Leo. The boy was alive. The heartbeat was steadying.
The dog made a choice.
He turned from the bed, his claws clicking on the floor. He looked at Dr. Gupta. The look said: You keep him alive. I have a job to do.
Titan bolted for the door.
“Stop the dog!” a nurse yelled.
“Let him go!” Gupta ordered, checking Leo’s vitals. “Whatever that dog is doing, he’s doing it for the boy.”
The Rooftop
Richard and Julian were rolling on the wet concrete, a tangle of limbs and expensive fabric. Julian was younger, stronger, and fueled by desperation. He landed a vicious elbow to Richard’s jaw, snapping his head back.
Richard scrambled back, dazed, tasting blood.
“You weak old man!” Julian spat, scrambling toward the ladder. The helicopter was swaying in the wind, the mercenary waiting for a clear shot.
“Take the shot!” Julian screamed at the pilot. “Kill him!”
The mercenary adjusted his aim. Harrow was pinned down behind a ventilation unit, reloading. Richard was exposed, on his knees, staring down the barrel of a suppressed assault rifle.
The mercenary’s finger tightened.
Suddenly, the stairwell door—the heavy steel fire door that required a keycard and fifty pounds of force to open—didn’t just open.
It exploded outward.
A blur of wet fur and muscle launched into the storm.
Titan didn’t assess the situation. He didn’t pause. He saw Richard on the ground. He saw the man in the sky with the boom-stick. And he saw Julian on the ladder.
The dog ignored the helicopter. He ignored Richard.
He launched himself into the air, clearing the ten feet between the door and the helipad edge in a single, gravity-defying bound.
Julian was halfway up the rope ladder, dangling five feet off the ground.
“Pull up! Pull up!” Julian screamed to the pilot.
The helicopter engine whined, lifting.
It was too late.
Titan leaped. His jaws—capable of exerting 300 pounds of pressure per square inch—clamped onto the only thing he could reach.
Julian’s ankle.
“AAAAHHH!” Julian’s scream tore through the night.
The weight of the 90-pound dog jerked the ladder violently. The helicopter lurched. Julian’s grip on the rope slipped.
Titan hung there, suspended in the air, his teeth locked into the leather of Julian’s shoe and the flesh beneath it. He wasn’t letting go. He was a maligator, a land shark, and he had caught his prey.
“Shake him off! Shoot the dog!” Julian shrieked, kicking wildly with his free leg. He kicked Titan in the face, in the ribs.
Titan didn’t flinch. He growled through the bite, his grip tightening, grinding down to the bone.
The mercenary in the doorway swung his rifle down, aiming at the dog dangling in mid-air.
CRACK.
A single shot rang out from the ventilation unit.
Detective Harrow hadn’t missed this time.
The bullet caught the mercenary in the shoulder. He spun back into the cabin, dropping his rifle out the door. The gun fell forty stories down to the street below.
“Abort! Abort!” the pilot shouted over the comms. “Taking fire! We’re burning fuel!”
The helicopter banked hard to the left, trying to shake the weight.
The sudden motion swung Julian and Titan out over the edge of the building.
For a terrifying second, they both dangled over nothing but the deadly drop to the Seattle pavement.
“Let go, you stupid mutt!” Julian sobbed, staring down at his death.
Titan looked down. Then he looked up at Julian.
The dog knew physics. He knew that if he held on, they might both fall.
But Titan’s mission wasn’t to kill Julian. It was to protect the pack. And Richard was safe. Leo was safe.
Titan opened his jaws.
He didn’t fall.
He dropped—six feet down—onto the very edge of the concrete parapet of the roof. He landed with cat-like grace, his claws digging into the cement to stop himself from sliding off the edge.
Julian, suddenly released from the weight, swung wildly on the ladder as the helicopter roared away, disappearing into the storm clouds, carrying the screaming traitor into the night.
Titan stood on the edge of the roof, silhouetted against the city lights, barking furiously at the retreating machine.
WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!
Richard crawled over to the dog, grabbing his collar, pulling him back from the edge. He buried his face in the wet fur, sobbing uncontrollably.
“He’s gone, Richard,” Detective Harrow said, walking over, holstering his gun. “But we got the tail number. And thanks to your brother’s big mouth, we know this isn’t just a family dispute.”
Harrow looked at the retreating helicopter lights.
“That was a mercenary extraction. Your brother isn’t just greedy. He’s working for the Syndicate.”
Richard looked up, confused. “The Syndicate?”
“An underground network,” Harrow said grimly. “They target high-net-worth individuals. Kidnapping, extortion, corporate theft. Julian must have promised them something big. Maybe your company.”
Richard stood up, his legs shaking. He looked at Titan. The dog was calm now, shaking the rain off his coat, looking toward the door.
Titan walked to the stairwell, stopped, and looked back at Richard. He whined.
Leo.
“Let’s go,” Richard said, wiping the blood from his lip. “Let’s go see my son.”
But as they descended the stairs, Richard knew this wasn’t over. Julian was alive. He had powerful friends. And now, he knew that the only thing standing between him and the Sterling fortune wasn’t a security team or a lock.
It was a dog.
And next time, Julian wouldn’t bring a flare gun. He would bring an army.
The Aftermath
Three hours later. The ICU.
The storm had passed. The hospital was quiet, save for the hum of machines.
Leo was stable. He was hooked up to a dozen tubes, but his color was returning.
Titan was asleep on the floor next to the bed. The nurses had given up trying to move him. Someone had even brought him a bowl of water and a warm blanket.
Richard sat in the chair, watching his son breathe.
His phone buzzed.
He picked it up. An unknown number.
He answered. “Who is this?”
“Hello, brother,” Julian’s voice came through, distorted by the signal, but unmistakable.
Richard’s hand tightened on the phone. “Where are you?”
“Far enough,” Julian said. He sounded in pain, his voice slurring slightly from the dog bite. “You won this round, Richard. Give the dog a bone for me.”
“I’m coming for you, Julian,” Richard said, his voice dropping to a cold whisper. “I will spend every dime I have. I will hunt you down.”
“Save your money,” Julian laughed softly. “You’re going to need it. The people I’m with… they’re very interested in that dog now. They’ve never seen a biological unit perform like that. They think he might be… genetically enhanced.”
Richard’s blood ran cold.
“Don’t you dare.”
“Watch your back, Richie,” Julian hissed. “And watch the dog. Because the Syndicate doesn’t like to leave loose ends. And they really, really want a puppy.”
The line went dead.
Richard looked down at Titan. The dog was twitching in his sleep, chasing rabbits in his dreams.
They didn’t just want the money anymore. They wanted the guardian.
Richard realized then that the war had just begun. He wasn’t just fighting for his company or his son. He was fighting for the soul of the family.
And the enemy was coming for the one thing that couldn’t be bought.
CHAPTER 4: The Convoy of Ghosts
The city of Seattle was asleep, but the Sterling family was at war.
It was 4:00 AM. The rain had finally stopped, leaving the streets slick and black, reflecting the neon signs of a city that didn’t know a billionaire’s son was being hunted.
Inside the loading dock of St. Jude’s Medical Center, the air smelled of diesel and fear.
“Is the route secure?” Richard Sterling asked, his voice rasping. He hadn’t drunk water in six hours. He hadn’t blinked in ten.
“We have three decoys,” the head of his new security detail, a former Navy SEAL named Graves, replied. Graves was a mountain of a man, covered in scars and carrying a Sig Sauer that looked like a toy in his massive hand. “One convoy heading to the airport. One to your estate in the Highlands. And us.”
“Us” was a fleet of three armored Mercedes-Benz G-Wagons, reinforced with B7-level plating capable of stopping armor-piercing rounds.
In the middle vehicle, Leo lay on a specialized medical transport bed, hooked up to portable life support. Dr. Gupta sat on one side, looking like he was about to vomit from nerves.
On the other side sat Titan.
The dog hadn’t slept. While the humans were planning routes and checking guns, Titan had been patrolling the perimeter of the gurney. He refused food. He refused water. His eyes were red-rimmed, but his focus was absolute.
“He knows we’re moving,” Graves said, eyeing the dog warily. “Look at him. He’s vibrating.”
Titan was indeed vibrating. A low-frequency tremor ran through his muscles. He could smell the ozone in the air. He could smell the testosterone of the twenty armed men surrounding them. He knew the pack was on the move, and he knew the territory outside was hostile.
“Let’s move,” Richard said, climbing into the back of the G-Wagon next to his son. “Get us to the Safe House.”
The garage doors rolled up with a metallic groan.
The convoy rolled out into the dark, wet streets.
The Interstate
The first ten minutes were silent.
The G-Wagons moved in a tight formation, taking the express lanes of I-5, doing eighty miles an hour. The city lights blurred past—streaks of red and white.
Inside the car, the silence was suffocating. The only sound was the rhythmic hiss-click of Leo’s portable ventilator.
“The Syndicate,” Richard whispered to Graves, who was riding shotgun. “My brother said they want the dog. Why? He’s just a dog. A well-trained one, but… a dog.”
Graves didn’t turn around. He kept his eyes on the mirrors.
“Mr. Sterling, in my line of work, we hear rumors,” Graves said, his voice low. “There’s a black market for everything. Organs. Weapons. Information. But biological assets? That’s the new gold rush.”
Graves tapped the glass.
“They don’t think he’s just a dog. They saw him take down a convict in a crowded trauma room without scratching the hostage. They saw him hold a man off a forty-story roof. To them, Titan isn’t a pet. He’s a prototype. A weapon that can’t be hacked, can’t be bribed, and doesn’t leave a paper trail.”
Richard looked at Titan. The dog was currently resting his chin on Leo’s shin, his eyes half-closed. He looked like a big, goofy rug.
“They’re wrong,” Richard said softly. “He’s not a weapon. He’s family.”
“To you,” Graves said ominously. “To them, he’s ten million dollars of unaccounted R&D.”
Suddenly, Titan’s head snapped up.
The dog let out a sharp, ear-splitting bark. WOOF!
He jumped off the seat and slammed his paws against the partition between the driver and the rear cabin, snarling at the windshield.
“What is it?” Richard asked, alarmed.
“Titan, down!” Graves ordered.
Titan didn’t go down. He began to pace frantically in the small space, whining, his hackles raised so high he looked twice his size. He was looking up.
“Sensors are clear,” the driver said. “Road is clear.”
“No,” Graves said, unholstering his weapon. “Trust the dog.”
BOOM.
The world turned white.
A massive explosion rocked the lead vehicle. The front G-Wagon, weighing three tons, was lifted into the air like a toy car, flipping end over end before crashing down in a shower of sparks and twisted metal.
“AMBUSH!” Graves screamed. “Evasive maneuvers!”
Richard threw his body over Leo as the driver slammed on the brakes. The tires screamed, smoke billowing as the armored SUV fish-tailed, narrowly avoiding the burning wreckage of the lead car.
“Where did it come from?” the driver yelled. “I didn’t see an RPG!”
“Drone!” Graves shouted, looking out the shattered (but intact) bulletproof glass. “It was a suicide drone! Look out!”
Above them, the night sky was buzzing.
Three quadcopters, dark and sleek, were diving toward the convoy. They weren’t filming. They were carrying C4 payloads.
“Get us under the overpass!” Graves commanded.
The driver floored it. The G-Wagon surged forward, the engine roaring.
BOOM.
The rear vehicle wasn’t so lucky. A drone slammed into its rear axle. The explosion didn’t flip the car, but it blew the tires and shattered the drive shaft. The car spun out, slamming into the concrete median.
They were alone.
“We’re cut off!” the driver shouted. “Target is the bridge! They’re trying to box us in!”
They screeched to a halt under the concrete canopy of the overpass. It was a trap. The road ahead was blocked by a jackknifed semi-truck. The road behind was blocked by the burning wreckage of their own security team.
“Get out!” Graves yelled. “The car is a coffin! If they have armor-piercing rounds, we’re dead sitting here!”
Richard unbuckled Leo. “Dr. Gupta, grab the ambu-bag! We have to move him!”
The door swung open.
The sound of gunfire erupted instantly.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT.
Bullets sparked off the pavement. Shadows were moving in from the embankments on both sides of the highway. Men in black tactical gear, moving with professional precision.
The Syndicate.
Titan didn’t wait for a command.
He burst out of the car like a cannonball. But he didn’t run away. He ran to the front of the vehicle and stood there, barking ferociously, drawing the fire.
WOOF! WOOF!
“He’s a distraction!” Graves realized, firing his Sig Sauer at the shadows. “Move the boy to the pillar! Go!”
Richard and Gupta dragged the stretcher out, keeping low. They scrambled behind a massive concrete support pillar.
Titan was a blur of motion. He was zig-zagging, making himself a hard target. Bullets kicked up dust around his paws, but he was too fast.
“Capture the asset!” a voice shouted from the darkness. It was a synthesized voice, coming from a loudspeaker on one of the drones hovering above. “Do not kill the canine! Secure the boy, neutralize the father, capture the dog!”
“They want him alive!” Richard realized, pressing his back against the cold concrete.
“Good,” Graves grunted, reloading. “That means they won’t use grenades.”
But they didn’t need grenades. They had numbers.
Six men were advancing from the truck blockade. Four more from the rear.
Graves took down one with a headshot. Bang. The man dropped.
But Graves took a round to the shoulder. He grunted, spinning back behind cover. “I’m hit! Mr. Sterling, take this!”
He shoved a backup pistol into Richard’s trembling hands.
“I… I don’t know how to use this!” Richard stammered.
“Point and pull!” Graves yelled, clutching his bleeding shoulder. “They are coming for your son!”
A shadow leaped over the hood of the Mercedes. A mercenary with a stun baton—he was going for the dog.
Titan saw him.
The mercenary swung the baton, crackling with 50,000 volts.
Titan ducked under the swing—a move that no normal dog should be able to execute—and launched upwards. He didn’t bite the arm. He bit the face.
The mercenary screamed, dropping the baton. Titan used the man’s momentum to push off, launching himself at the next attacker.
It was a dance of violence. Titan was a whirlwind of teeth and fur. He was biting hamstrings, crushing wrists, terrifying the attackers.
“The dog is too fast!” one mercenary yelled into his comms. “Deploy the net!”
A loud THUMP echoed.
A weighted net, fired from a launcher, flew through the air.
Titan was mid-air, taking down a gunman. He couldn’t dodge.
The net wrapped around him, the heavy weights wrapping around his legs, pinning him to the asphalt.
“NO!” Richard screamed.
Titan thrashed, snarling, biting at the high-tensile mesh. But the more he struggled, the tighter it got.
“Asset secured!” the synthesized voice announced. “Move in for the boy.”
The mercenaries stopped shooting. They began to close in on the pillar.
Graves was losing blood fast. His aim was wavering.
“Mr. Sterling,” Graves wheezed. “I’m out of ammo.”
Richard held the gun with two shaking hands. He pointed it at the advancing men.
“Stay back!” Richard yelled. “I’ll kill you!”
The lead mercenary, a towering figure in a ballistic mask, just laughed. He stepped over the struggling form of Titan. The dog snapped at his boot, but the net held him fast. The mercenary kicked Titan in the ribs—hard.
Titan yelped, a sound that tore through Richard’s heart.
“Don’t touch him!” Richard fired.
Click.
The safety was on.
The mercenary knocked the gun out of Richard’s hand with a casual backhand slap. Richard fell to the ground next to Leo’s stretcher.
“Pathetic,” the mercenary said. He looked down at Leo. “Pack the boy. The boss wants the whole set.”
“Please,” Elena’s voice echoed in Richard’s head. Save our son.
Richard looked at Titan. The dog was pinned, bleeding from the nose where he’d been kicked. But Titan’s eyes were locked on Richard.
Fight.
The mercenary reached for Leo’s IV line.
And then, a sound cut through the noise of the rain and the drones.
It wasn’t a siren.
It was an engine. A high-pitched, screaming engine.
VROOOOOOOOOOM.
Headlights blinded them from the opposite lane of the highway.
A motorcycle—a black Ducati—jumped the median divider, flying through the air like a missile.
The rider was dressed in black leather, wearing a helmet with a tinted visor.
The bike landed hard, skidding sideways, knocking two mercenaries off their feet like bowling pins.
The rider didn’t stop. They dropped the bike, sliding across the wet pavement, and pulled two submachine guns from holsters on their back.
BRRRRT! BRRRRT!
Controlled bursts. Precision fire.
Three mercenaries dropped before they even knew they were under attack.
“Contact rear!” the lead mercenary shouted, spinning around.
The mysterious rider moved with fluid, lethal grace. They weren’t fighting like a soldier. They were fighting like an assassin. They used the confusion to sprint toward the net.
The rider pulled a knife—a curved Karambit blade—and slashed the net trapping Titan.
“Go!” a female voice shouted from inside the helmet.
Titan shook free. He didn’t attack the rider. He seemed to sense an ally.
He lunged at the lead mercenary—the one who had kicked him.
This time, there was no net.
Titan hit him center mass, driving him into the concrete pillar. The sound of ribs cracking was audible.
The tide had turned.
The remaining mercenaries, realizing they were outmatched by a dog and a ninja, popped smoke grenades.
“Fall back! Extraction!”
Thick grey smoke filled the underpass. The drones buzzed away. The mercenaries dragged their wounded into a waiting van on the other side of the truck and sped off.
Silence returned to the highway, broken only by the heavy breathing of the survivors.
Richard crawled over to Leo. “He’s okay. He’s still breathing.”
He looked up.
Titan was standing over the body of the unconscious lead mercenary, daring him to move.
The mysterious rider holstered her weapons and took off her helmet.
Long, silver hair cascaded down her shoulders. She had a scar running through her left eyebrow and eyes that looked like shattered glass. She looked to be in her twenties, but her eyes were ancient.
She looked at Richard, then at the dog.
“You’re lucky,” she said. Her accent was thick—Eastern European. “Most people don’t survive the Syndicate’s A-Team.”
“Who are you?” Richard asked, clutching his bruised jaw. “Did my brother send you?”
The woman laughed. She walked over to Titan.
Richard flinched, expecting the dog to attack.
But Titan did something he had never done with a stranger. He sat down. He tilted his head. He sniffed the woman’s hand, and then… he wagged his tail.
“No,” the woman said, scratching Titan behind the ears familiar way. “Your brother didn’t send me. And I’m not here for you, Mr. Sterling.”
She looked Richard dead in the eye.
“I’m here for my dog.”
Richard froze. “Your… dog?”
“Titan,” she whispered, and the dog let out a happy yip. “His name isn’t Titan. It’s Ares. And I’ve been looking for him for two years.”
She stood up, her face hardening.
“Get your son in the van. We have to move. They’ll be back with a gunship in ten minutes.”
“Wait,” Richard stammered. “You… you trained him?”
“I didn’t just train him,” the woman said, reloading her weapons. “I built him. And now, we’re going to finish the war that started when they stole him from me.”
She threw a key to Richard.
“Drive. I’ll clear the road.”
Richard stared at the woman. The plot had just thickened. Titan wasn’t just a stray Leo had found. He was a lost soldier. And his general had just returned to the battlefield.
CHAPTER 5: The Ghost of Project Cerberus
The convoy of battered vehicles didn’t head toward the Sterling family’s high-tech bunker in the Cascades. They didn’t go to the airport.
Following the black Ducati, they turned off the highway onto an unmarked logging road deep in the Olympic National Forest. The trees here were ancient, towering giants that blocked out the moonlight and the rain. It was a place where cell signals went to die.
Richard drove the lead G-Wagon, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. Beside him, Graves was barely conscious, a tourniquet tight around his shoulder. In the back, Dr. Gupta was manually checking Leo’s pulse.
And Titan… Titan was pacing.
The dog wasn’t looking at Leo anymore. He was staring out the front windshield at the taillights of the motorcycle ahead. He whined—a sound of confusion, of a memory unlocking deep within his brain.
“Where is she taking us?” Gupta whispered, his voice trembling. “Mr. Sterling, this is insane. We need a hospital!”
“We need to disappear,” Richard said grimly. “And she’s the only one who knows how.”
They arrived at a rusted iron gate. The woman on the bike didn’t stop to open it; she rode right through a hidden gap in the fence. Richard followed, the SUV bouncing over ruts and roots until they reached a clearing.
It wasn’t a cabin. It was a concrete structure half-buried in the side of a mountain. An old Cold War listening post, long forgotten by the government but repurposed by someone who knew how to hide.
The woman parked her bike and walked toward them, her helmet off. In the harsh beams of the headlights, her silver hair looked like spun steel. She held a submachine gun in one hand and a medical kit in the other.
“Get the boy inside,” she ordered, her voice cutting through the wind. “And bring the dog.”
The Bunker
Inside, the air was cool and smelled of gun oil and old paper. But there was power—a generator hummed in the depths—and a fully equipped surgical bay that looked more advanced than the one at St. Jude’s.
Dr. Gupta didn’t ask questions. He immediately went to work hooking Leo up to the monitors.
Richard stood by the heavy steel door as the woman—who had introduced herself only as “Lena”—locked it down. She turned to Titan.
The dog was standing in the center of the room, vibrating with tension. He looked at Leo, then he looked at Lena.
“Ares,” Lena said softly. She used a hand signal—a sharp, complex twist of her fingers.
Titan’s ears pinned back. He sat. He didn’t just sit; he snapped into a perfect, rigid posture of military attention.
Richard felt a chill crawl up his spine. “You didn’t just train him,” he whispered. “You programmed him.”
Lena pulled a chair over and sat down, wiping grease from her face. She looked exhausted, but her eyes were sharp as flint.
“I didn’t program him,” she said, pulling a hydration pack from her vest. “I saved him. Sit down, Mr. Sterling. If we’re going to survive the night, you need to know what you really bought for your son.”
She took a breath and looked at the dog.
“His name isn’t Titan. It’s Unit K9-7. He was part of a black-budget program called ‘Project Cerberus,’ funded by a private military contractor. The Syndicate.”
Richard stared at the dog. “A weapon?”
“Not just a weapon,” Lena corrected. “An apex predator. They wanted a dog that could operate in environments where humans couldn’t. High radiation, chemical warfare, zero-visibility extraction. They used gene-editing therapy to enhance his muscle density, his oxygen efficiency, and his cognitive processing.”
She pointed to the scar on Titan’s shoulder—the one Richard had assumed was from a fence.
“He processes tactical information faster than a human soldier. He can smell fear, aggression, and deception. He can hear a heartbeat through a drywall. And he was designed to have zero empathy. To be a machine that follows orders.”
Titan looked up at the mention of “empathy.” He trotted over to the gurney where Leo lay sleeping. He rested his chin on the metal rail, his eyes softening into that familiar, goofy look of pure love.
“That’s the part they couldn’t engineer out of him,” Lena said, a small, sad smile touching her lips. “I was his handler. I raised him from a pup. I taught him commands, yes. But I also taught him… trust. When the Syndicate decided to move to Phase 2—implanting neural chips to control them remotely—I couldn’t let it happen.”
She leaned forward. “I staged a breakout. I tried to liberate the whole unit. It went wrong. There was a firefight. I took a bullet to the chest. I told Ares to run. To scatter.”
She looked at Richard. “I thought he was dead. For two years, I thought my boy was dead. Until I saw the news footage of a ‘hero dog’ in Seattle taking down a fake surgeon with a move that only I teach.”
Richard looked at Titan—no, Ares—guarding his son. The dog wasn’t a monster. He was a refugee.
“Why do they want him back so badly?” Richard asked. “If he’s just one dog?”
Lena’s face darkened. “Because of what he’s carrying.”
She walked over to Titan and knelt. She didn’t reach for his collar. She reached for the thick fur on the back of his neck, parting it to reveal a small, raised bump under the skin.
“He’s the prototype,” Lena said. “He carries the genetic master key in his blood. If they get him back, they can clone him. They can make an army of thousands of him, but without the ‘flaw’ of loving a human. They want to strip-mine his DNA and erase him.”
Richard felt sick. He looked at his son, sleeping peacefully because this “prototype” had refused to let him die.
“They won’t touch him,” Richard vowed, his voice low and dangerous. “I don’t care if I have to buy the Syndicate. They won’t touch him.”
“You can’t buy these people, Sterling,” Lena said, standing up and checking her weapon. “You can only kill them. And right now, they are hunting us.”
The Betrayal
Suddenly, the monitors on the wall flickered.
The bunker’s internal comms system crackled to life.
“Hello? Richard? Are you there?”
Richard froze. It was Julian’s voice.
“How…” Richard stared at the speaker. “This line is hardwired. It’s impossible to hack.”
“Nothing is impossible when you have the access codes,” Julian’s voice purred, smooth and arrogant. “Did you really think I didn’t know about Lena’s little hideout? We’ve been tracking her for months. We were just waiting for her to lead us to the dog.”
Lena swore in Russian. She grabbed a tablet and frantically tapped the screen.
“They’re not hacking the bunker,” she realized, her face draining of color. “They’re hacking the dog.”
“What?” Richard yelled.
“The chip!” Lena screamed. “I thought it was dormant! They just activated the GPS beacon in his neck!”
On the floor, Titan suddenly yelped. He pawed at his neck, whining. The implant was heating up.
“Turn it off!” Richard shouted.
“I can’t!” Lena yelled. “We have to cut it out!”
“Richard,” Julian’s voice came back, closer now. “Look at the perimeter cameras.”
Richard looked at the bank of screens on the wall.
The forest outside was moving.
Dozens of heat signatures. Mercenaries. Heavy armor. And something else.
A massive, armored vehicle was crushing the trees, heading straight for the bunker entrance. It looked like a tank, but sleek and black.
“We have the place surrounded,” Julian said. “Send out the dog, and we let you and the boy live. Keep the dog, and we bury you in that concrete tomb.”
Lena looked at Richard. She racked the slide of her submachine gun.
“He’s lying,” she said. “He’s going to kill us all anyway. No witnesses.”
Richard looked at his son. Leo was stirring. The boy opened his eyes, groggy from the anesthesia.
“Dad?” Leo whispered. “Where is Titan?”
Titan heard his name. He ignored the burning pain in his neck. He ran to Leo, licking his hand, telling him I’m here. I’m here.
Richard looked at the bond between them. It wasn’t genetic. It wasn’t programming. It was love. Pure, unadulterated loyalty.
Richard Sterling, the billionaire who solved problems with checks, picked up the gun Graves had given him. He checked the magazine.
“Lena,” Richard said. “Can you fight?”
“I was born fighting,” she replied.
“Good,” Richard said. He walked over to the console and hit the button for the intercom.
“Julian?”
“Yes, brother?” Julian sounded bored. “Ready to surrender?”
“No,” Richard said. “I’m telling you to run.”
“Run?” Julian laughed. “I have an army.”
“And I have a dog,” Richard said.
He turned to Lena. “Is there a back way out?”
“There’s a ventilation shaft,” Lena said. “It leads to the river. But it’s small. Only the boy and the dog can fit.”
Richard looked at his son. “Leo, I need you to be brave. You’re going to go with Titan. He’s going to take you to the river.”
“No!” Leo cried, trying to sit up. “I’m not leaving you!”
“You have to,” Richard said, his voice breaking. “Titan needs to protect you. That is his mission. Can you help him do his mission?”
Leo looked at the dog. Titan nudged him, sensing the urgency.
“Okay,” Leo whispered.
Lena quickly dressed Leo in a thermal jacket. She handed him a small tracker. “This is analog. They can’t hack it. Go to the river, find the boat, and wait.”
She knelt in front of Titan. She grabbed his face, pressing her forehead against his.
“Ares,” she whispered in Russian. “Zashchishchat’. Protect. Do not engage. Protect.”
Titan whined. He looked at Lena, then at Richard. He understood. He was leaving the pack behind to save the pup.
“Go!” Richard yelled as the first explosion rocked the blast door.
Titan barked once—a goodbye—and guided Leo into the dark tunnel of the ventilation shaft.
The Siege
As soon as the grate closed behind them, the main blast door buckled.
BOOM.
Dust rained down from the ceiling.
“They’re breaching!” Lena shouted, taking cover behind a metal workbench. “Aim for the legs! Their armor is heavy!”
Richard crouched beside her. He was terrified, but for the first time in his life, he felt alive. He wasn’t a CEO. He was a father holding the line.
The door blew inward with a deafening crash.
Smoke filled the room. Laser sights cut through the haze.
“Secure the asset!” a voice screamed.
Mercenaries poured in.
Lena opened fire. BRRRT-BRRRT. Two men dropped.
Richard fired blindly, the recoil hurting his hand, but he kept pulling the trigger.
“Where is the dog?” Julian’s voice screamed over the noise. He walked in behind the mercenaries, wearing a pristine trench coat, flanked by two massive bodyguards.
“He’s gone, Julian!” Richard shouted from cover. “You lose!”
Julian’s face twisted in rage. “Find the boy! He can’t have gone far!”
But before the mercenaries could move toward the ventilation shaft, a low, mechanical growl filled the room.
It didn’t come from the tunnel. It came from the entrance.
A shadow emerged from behind Julian.
It was another dog.
But this one was different. It was larger than Titan. Its fur was shaved patches of grey skin and scarring. Its eyes were glowing with a faint red light—cybernetic ocular implants. It wore a heavy, armored vest with a mounted camera.
“Meet Project Hades,” Julian sneered. “The upgrade.”
The anti-Titan.
The beast let out a roar that sounded more machine than animal. It sniffed the air. It smelled Titan’s scent.
It turned toward the ventilation shaft.
“Go get him, Hades,” Julian whispered. “Kill the copy. Bring me the boy.”
The monster-dog launched itself at the shaft, tearing the metal grate off with a single swipe of its claws.
“NO!” Lena screamed, breaking cover to shoot at the beast.
Julian shot her.
BANG.
Lena spun around, clutching her side, and fell.
“Lena!” Richard screamed.
He aimed at the beast, but his gun clicked empty.
The Hades unit disappeared into the tunnel, its metal claws clanking against the stone, chasing the scent of Leo and Titan.
Julian walked over to Richard, kicking the gun away. He looked down at his brother with cold, dead eyes.
“You didn’t save them, Richard,” Julian said softly. “You just trapped them in a hole with a monster.”
Richard lay on the floor, looking at the dark tunnel. He could hear the scrabbling of claws fading into the distance.
Titan was alone. He was injured. He had a child to protect. And now, he was being hunted by the thing that replaced him.
The real fight had just begun.
CHAPTER 6: The Alpha Protocol
The ventilation shaft was a nightmare of rusted iron and echoing darkness.
Leo crawled on his hands and knees, the jagged metal scraping his palms. Behind him, he could hear the heavy, rhythmic clank-hiss of the thing chasing them. It didn’t sound like a dog. It sounded like a piston engine wrapped in fur.
“Titan,” Leo whispered, tears streaming down his soot-stained face. “I’m scared.”
Titan—Ares—nudged the boy’s calf with his wet nose. He didn’t whimper. He didn’t bark. In the dark, his amber eyes seemed to catch the faint light from the grate ahead. He was calm. He was working.
Keep moving, Little Pack. Keep moving.
Suddenly, a metallic screech tore through the tunnel behind them.
SCREEEEEEECH.
Hades was tearing through the narrow sections, his cybernetic frame too bulky for the vintage infrastructure. He wasn’t slowing down; he was simply destroying the tunnel to make it fit.
“Run, Leo!” Richard’s voice echoed from a memory, or maybe just hope.
They reached the end. A grate looked out over the raging Sol Duc River. The drop was ten feet into freezing mud.
Leo kicked the grate. It was rusted shut.
“It won’t open!” Leo cried.
Behind them, two glowing red eyes appeared in the darkness of the shaft. A low, synthesized voice—a recording played from the collar—echoed off the walls.
“Target acquired. Terminate.”
Titan didn’t hesitate. He reared up on his hind legs and slammed his front paws against the grate. He threw his entire ninety pounds of muscle into the iron.
BANG.
The rust gave way. The grate flew off, tumbling into the night.
Titan barked at Leo. GO.
Leo tumbled out, falling onto the muddy bank below. He landed hard, rolling into the wet ferns.
Titan leaped after him.
But as Titan landed, a black shape exploded from the tunnel exit above.
Hades.
The cybernetic beast didn’t land with grace; he landed like a wrecking ball. He was massive—easily 130 pounds of engineered muscle and titanium plating. His jaw was half-metal, a hydraulic nightmare designed to crush Kevlar.
He landed between Leo and the river.
Titan stood between Leo and the monster.
It was David and Goliath. Nature vs. Machine.
Hades let out a roar that was half-animal, half-static. He charged.
The Bunker
“Checkmate,” Julian said, standing over Richard.
Richard was on his knees, hands raised. Lena was slumped against the workbench, clutching a bleeding side, her face pale.
“You really thought you could win?” Julian scoffed, checking his watch. “Hades is efficient. He’ll bring me the boy’s tracker in about two minutes. Then, we liquidate the assets and burn this place to the ground.”
“You’re forgetting one thing,” Lena wheezed, blood on her teeth.
Julian turned to her, raising an eyebrow. “And what is that, darling? The power of love?”
“No,” Lena smirked. “The power of federal jurisdiction.”
Julian frowned. “What?”
CRASH.
The ceiling vent above the main blast door didn’t just open—it blew inward with a concussion grenade.
BANG.
Flashbangs detonated in the room. White light blinded everyone.
“FBI! DROP THE WEAPONS! NOBODY MOVES!”
Julian staggered back, rubbing his eyes. “What? How?”
Ropes dropped from the skylights. Tactical teams rappelled down, moving with a speed that made the Syndicate mercenaries look like amateurs.
Leading them wasn’t a soldier. It was Detective Harrow, wearing a windbreaker that said JOINT TASK FORCE.
“Julian Sterling!” Harrow shouted, leveling a shotgun at the billionaire. “You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder, domestic terrorism, and violation of the Bio-Ethics Act!”
Julian’s mercenaries raised their rifles.
“Don’t do it!” Harrow warned. “We have a drone strike package orbiting this mountain. You fire one shot, and you all evaporate.”
The mercenaries looked at each other. They looked at Julian. They looked at the laser dots dancing on their chests.
They dropped their guns.
Julian fell to his knees, his face a mask of shock. “But… the signal… I blocked the signal…”
“You blocked the cellular signal,” Richard said, standing up and rushing to Lena. “You didn’t block the tracking beacon Lena put in Titan’s neck.”
Richard looked at his brother with pure disgust.
“We used the dog as bait, Julian. To draw you out. To catch you red-handed.”
“Where is my son?” Richard screamed at Harrow.
“Team Two is at the river!” Harrow yelled into his radio. “Get to the river! The target is engaged!”
The Riverbank
The fight was brutal.
Hades was stronger. Every time Titan lunged, Hades swatted him away with a metal-reinforced paw, sending the smaller dog skidding through the mud.
Titan was bleeding from a gash in his shoulder. His left ear was torn. He was panting heavily, his breaths coming in ragged gasps.
Hades circled him, his red ocular implant scanning for a kill shot.
Leo was huddled by a log, sobbing, clutching a heavy rock. “Leave him alone! Get away from him!”
Hades turned his head toward Leo. The kill command overrode the fight command. Eliminate the witness.
The monster lunged for the boy.
That was his mistake.
He turned his back on the Alpha.
Titan didn’t attack the body. He didn’t attack the legs. He remembered the training Lena had drilled into him for years. Find the weakness.
On the back of Hades’ neck, where the skull met the spine, there was a small, glowing port. The interface for the neural chip. The battery.
Titan launched himself.
He didn’t bite. He tore.
He hit Hades from behind, locking his jaws onto the plastic and wire housing of the implant.
Hades shrieked—a sound of electronic feedback and animal pain. He thrashed, slamming Titan against a tree.
CRACK.
Titan’s ribs broke. But he didn’t let go. He bit harder, his teeth grinding against the metal casing.
Snap.
Sparks flew into the rainy night.
Titan ripped the battery pack clean out of the monster’s neck.
Hades froze mid-stride. The red light in his eye flickered and died. The hydraulic jaw locked open. The massive beast seized up, twitched once, and collapsed into the mud like a puppet with its strings cut.
Silence fell over the riverbank.
Titan stood over the fallen machine. He dropped the smoking battery pack from his mouth.
He staggered. His legs shook.
He looked at Leo. He gave a soft woof.
Then, Titan collapsed.
“TITAN!” Leo screamed.
The boy scrambled through the mud, throwing his arms around the dog’s neck. Titan wasn’t moving. His breathing was shallow, bubbling with fluid.
“No, no, no,” Leo sobbed, pressing his hands against the bloody fur. “Don’t go. Please don’t go. You promised.”
Titan’s eye opened a crack. He licked Leo’s hand. Weak. So weak.
Suddenly, floodlights cut through the trees.
“MEDIC! WE NEED A MEDIC!”
Richard Sterling burst through the brush, sliding down the embankment. He fell to his knees beside his son and the dog.
“Dad! He won’t wake up!” Leo cried.
Richard looked at the dog who had saved his family. He looked at the wounds.
“Get the evac chopper!” Richard screamed at the FBI agents swarming the bank. “I don’t care about protocols! Get this dog to the trauma center NOW!”
Epilogue: The Pack
Six Weeks Later.
The sun was shining over the Sterling Estate in the Pacific Northwest. It was a rare, clear day.
The high-tech security fences were still there, but the guards were different now. They were vetted by Lena.
On the massive green lawn, a barbecue was in progress.
Richard Sterling stood by the grill, flipping burgers. He looked different. The stress lines were there, but the fear was gone. He wore jeans and a t-shirt. Julian was in a federal supermax awaiting trial. The Syndicate cell had been dismantled, their assets seized.
Lena sat on the patio, her side bandaged but healing. She was sipping iced tea, watching the lawn.
“He’s moving better today,” she said.
Richard looked out at the grass.
Leo was running, kicking a soccer ball. And beside him, moving with a slight limp but plenty of speed, was a Belgian Malinois.
Titan—Ares—had scars. A long, jagged line of white fur ran down his flank. His left ear had a notch in it. He would never be a show dog. He would never be a “pet.”
He was a warrior who had found his peace.
Leo kicked the ball too hard. It flew toward the dense woods at the edge of the property.
Leo ran to get it.
Titan stopped. He sat down. His ears swiveled toward the trees. He watched the shadows.
He didn’t chase the ball. He watched the perimeter.
Richard walked over to Lena. “Do you think he’ll ever stop? Being a soldier?”
Lena smiled, shaking her head. “No. That’s not in his DNA, Richard. He’ll always watch the door. He’ll always check the wind.”
She watched as Leo ran back, throwing his arms around the dog’s neck, burying his face in the fur. Titan closed his eyes, leaning into the hug, his tail giving a slow, rhythmic thump-thump against the grass.
“But,” Lena said softly, “he knows he doesn’t have to fight alone anymore.”
Richard nodded. He looked at his son and the dog who had walked through fire for him.
“No,” Richard said. “He’s part of the family.”
Titan opened his eyes. He looked across the lawn at Richard and Lena. He gave a short, sharp bark.
All clear. Pack safe.
And for the first time in his life, the dog laid his head down in the sun and truly slept.