When Hale woke again, the world was gray.

Not the metallic gray of the safehouse walls, but the kind of pale, washed-out light that comes just before dawn — colorless, fragile. His head throbbed like someone had taken a hammer to his skull.

He rolled onto his side, coughing, and the sound echoed in a room too quiet to be alive.

“Gray?” he rasped.

No answer. Only the distant hum of power lines and the occasional drip of condensation from a ruptured pipe. The air smelled faintly of ...