Page 1 of Hollow State

PROLOGUE

Darwin Oswald used to enjoy the silence of his office. He was one of the few people who didn't play music to tune out the faint buzzing of the lights or the constant hum of the air flowing through the vents. Over the years, he'd learned to ignore the little noises that surrounded him and focus solely on the work at hand.

It was all that ever mattered.

Now, all he heard was the squeak his chair made every time he shifted one direction or the other and it drove him crazy.

He stared at the messaging app open on the screen and tried not to move. The cursor blinked at the end of a line of text, mocking him with its steady rhythm.

Darwin: Call me back. We need to talk.

He hit send. The message appeared at the bottom of a painfully one-sided thread. Six messages. Three voicemails. Two full weeks of dead air. One full month of guilt.

He leaned back in his leather chair, wincing at the sheer volume of the screech, and scrubbed a hand over his face. Gideon Rhodes hadn't just been a colleague. He'd become one of Darwin's best friends. Four weeks ago, Hyperion Security had escorted Gideon out the door like a common criminal, and Darwin had stood there like an idiot, watching it happen.

Gideon’s parting words still rumbled around Darwin's mind.

“The truth is buried in a server called Bralorne Backcountry Protocol. If you ever come across that, you’ll learn why I was fired for no valid reason.”

Gideon had felt betrayed. Darwin understood that. But ignoring Gideon wasn’t the answer. Darwin needed to know more. That single string of words—Bralorne Backcountry Protocol—had stayed with Darwin for a month, and what had started as paranoia was beginning to look like a grain of truth.

Darwin stood and paced the length of his office. He took in the framed degrees on the wall, the awards for medical innovation, the photos of him shaking hands with government officials. This room represented his entire existence. He had poured every ounce of his soul into the research he did at Hyperion.

Before that, he'd given his life to research and development with the government and his medical practice. He’d surrendered his relationship for it. Sarah had packed her bags five years into their marriage and stood in the doorway of their apartment, accusing him of loving his career more than he loved her.

He hadn’t argued. She’d been right.

There’d been a lot of things that had broken up their marriage. They'd both said and done things that couldn't be taken back. But his career had always been the one thing that centered him, and he couldn't deny that.

Until recently, he hadn’t harbored a single regret. He was a doctor. He went into medical research to save lives, to alter the landscape of battlefield trauma. VALKYR and KATHARSIS were supposed to change the world.

Now, the silence from Gideon made the walls of this corporate fortress seem closer, darker.

Darwin straightened, adjusted his glasses, and stepped out into the sterile, brightly lit hallway. He needed a walk. He rounded the corner toward the elevators and paused.

Thirty yards down, Isaac Young—the senior analyst who’d swiftly, almost gleefully, stepped into Gideon’s vacated role—strode toward the stairwell. That wasn't unusual. Isaac liked to move around and play the commander. What caught Darwin's attention were the two men walking three paces behind Isaac.

Security. But not the usual Hyperion guards with their polite nods and blue blazers. These men wore dark tactical suits and Kevlar, and carried weapons. They moved with the heavy, calculated strides of men who anticipated violence.

Darwin shrank back against the wall, his pulse picking up a sudden, frantic rhythm. At forty-three, he wasn't a young man, and it had been a long time since his military days, which had never been a natural fit. A necessary means to the end of attending medical school. It had also been a decision that changed the direction of his career. One he'd never regretted since it had led him to medical research and helping soldiers on the battlefield who otherwise might not make it out alive.

He sucked in a deep breath and glanced around the corner. His heart lurched right back into his throat.

Darwin hadn't ever liked Isaac. Found him to be a bully. More brawn than brains. He was intimidating, but right now, it was the guns in the other men's hands that frightened Darwin.

Isaac punched a code into the keypad beside the heavy steel door leading to the stairwell. The light flashed green, and the three men slipped inside.

Curiosity, sharp and dangerous, overrode Darwin’s usual caution. He moved down the hall, his loafers silent on the polished tile. Gideon used to tease him about his choice in footwear. He caught the door before the magnetic lock could re-engage, slipping into the concrete tomb of the stairwell.

He kept a full flight between him and Isaac, tracking the sound of their boots echoing down the shaft. They went down past the R&D labs, past the main servers, down six flights of stairs, straight to Sub-level 3.

Darwin stepped through the stairwell door and hesitated on the landing. Sub-level 3 housed the isolated network systems used throughout Hyperion. Internal messaging systems, data regarding ongoing programs, internal documents on policy and procedure—while it was considered highly classified, it wasn't where the brains of Hyperion lived.

That was in the private data center, where ORACLE was housed.

As a senior medical director, Darwin's badge granted him wide access, but this floor was strictly off-limits to anyone outside of operations command considering the direct link between it and ORACLE.

Technically, Darwin fell under operations command, but with how he'd been treated lately, he wouldn’t have been surprised if some of his access had been revoked.