She stepped into the center of the chaos, no hesitation, no fear—just the silent knowledge of someone who had walked the same battlefield. She wasn’t in uniform anymore, but right now, she didn’t need one. Because Jack Maddox wasn’t going to listen to a doctor. He’d only stop for someone who knew exactly what that tattoo meant.

She speaks in a low voice that cuts through the din like a wire through ice. “Jack Maddox. Stand down.”

The soldier freezes. Not fully—but enough. His fist hovers mid-air, about to strike a panicked EMT who doesn’t even realize how close he’s come to a broken jaw. Maddox’s bloodshot eyes scan the room, wild and searching, until they land on Hannah.

She takes one slow step forward. “You remember Kabul. You remember the Raven Protocol.”

His mouth twitches. A muscle jerks in his jaw.

The security guard nearest to him shifts his stance, and Jack reacts on instinct—almost—but Hannah raises a hand.

“No one moves,” she warns, sharp as a blade.

Silence falls, eerie and absolute, broken only by the hiss of machines and the distant rumble of thunder. Bell glares at her, mouth open to object, but something in her face keeps him quiet.

She takes another step, keeping her hands open, visible. “Jack, I know you’re not here right now. You think you’re in a safe house or a blown op. But listen to my voice. You’re at Eastbridge General. You were in a car crash. You’re safe. And you don’t need to fight anymore.”

He’s still shaking. Still torn between worlds. But the wildness in his eyes begins to dim, just a flicker.

“You were Delta-One, weren’t you?” she says, softer now. “I was Sierra-Four.”

His breath catches. Recognition slams into him like a bullet.

Sierra-Four.

The name cuts through the fog like a flare. And with it, the last threads of combat hallucination fray and snap. He blinks once. Then again.

“Hannah?” he whispers, like her name is a lifeline.

“Yes,” she says. “I’m here. You’re not alone.”

He collapses backward onto the stretcher, the fight draining from his limbs like a tide pulling away. The room exhales all at once. A nurse rushes to clamp the bleeding artery. Another straps a pressure cuff onto his arm. Bell is barking new orders now, but his voice is subdued, threading caution into his usual storm of commands.

Hannah steps back and lets them work, her heart hammering so loud she feels it in her teeth.

He recognized me.

She shouldn’t be here. She’d told herself a thousand times she’d left that world behind. But that ink on his chest—that raven—dragged it all back. And if he’s here, bleeding and hunted, it means something’s gone terribly wrong.

Later, when the adrenaline fades and Maddox is stable, Bell corners her outside the trauma bay.

“What the hell was that?” he demands, voice tight with suspicion. “How did you know his name? And what in God’s name is the Raven Protocol?”

Hannah meets his gaze, steady and quiet. “Classified.”

“You’re a nurse. Not CIA.”

She just stares.

“You’re telling me you knew that man before tonight?” he asks.

“I’m telling you I saved your patient,” she replies.

Bell looks like he wants to keep pushing. But something in her voice—or maybe the way she hasn’t blinked in forty seconds—makes him back off.

“He needs to be transferred to ICU once he stabilizes,” he says instead. “But don’t think this conversation is over.”

She nods and walks away, pulse still thrumming.

In the break room, Hannah sits alone, staring at the vending machine without seeing it. Her mind is already running scenarios. Jack wasn’t on leave. He wasn’t in uniform. And the way he resisted care—he didn’t trust anyone. That tattoo wasn’t just a memory; it was a warning. A code among ghosts.

When her shift ends, she doesn’t go home. She waits. Watches the monitors outside ICU. At 3:12 a.m., when the hallway is dead quiet, she slips inside Maddox’s room.

He’s awake.

Barely.

But his eyes open when he hears the door, and they meet hers with that same flicker of recognition—and something else. Relief. Like he’d started to think she was a hallucination.

“I thought you were dead,” he murmurs.

She sits down beside the bed. “You’re not the only one who disappears.”

He tries to smile. Fails.

“They came after me,” he says. “I didn’t even know who they were at first. Black masks. Silent. Not government.”

“What did you see?” she asks.

“I wasn’t supposed to,” he croaks. “New program. Off-books. They’re eliminating anyone who knew the old ops.”

Her chest tightens.

“The Raven Protocol,” he adds. “It’s not dead. It’s evolved.”

Of course it has.

“You were in a car crash. That wasn’t an accident, was it?”

He gives the faintest shake of his head. “They’re cleaning house.”

She looks around the dim room. There’s no sign of a tail. No unfamiliar shadows. But her instincts scream otherwise.

“I can’t stay here,” he says. “They’ll find me.”

“Then we move you,” she replies. “Tonight.”

His breathing’s shallow, ribs wrapped tight under the gown, but his nod is clear.

She doesn’t involve Bell. Or security. Or anyone in the chain of command that might be compromised.

By 4:02 a.m., she’s wheeling Jack out the back loading bay under the guise of a patient transport. She’s still in scrubs, badge clipped to her pocket, head low. No one questions her. No one even looks.

The rain has stopped. The city is quiet, the kind of quiet that hums with danger. She helps him into her car and peels off the lot, merging onto a back road that snakes through the edge of Eastbridge’s forgotten neighborhoods.

“You got a safehouse?” he asks, voice rough.

“I’ve got something better.”

They arrive at a shuttered bookstore downtown, sandwiched between a pawn shop and an abandoned diner. The sign above the door reads Crooked Spine Books, letters faded, the front dark.

She unlocks the gate, then the front door. The inside smells of dust and old paper. Beneath the floorboards in the stockroom, a concealed hatch creaks open with a metallic groan. They descend into silence, into the hidden basement she swore she’d never return to.

Maps line the walls. Old files. Burners in a lockbox. A generator hums softly.

Jack lowers himself onto the cot in the corner, grimacing as his ribs flare in pain. She injects a mild painkiller—not enough to cloud his judgment, just enough to dull the worst.

“You kept this place?” he asks.

“I kept one place,” she says. “For the ones I couldn’t save in time.”

He nods. Eyes flutter shut.

But just as sleep starts to claim him, he jolts.

“Wait,” he says. “They mentioned a name. Before the crash. Someone still alive from our unit.”

“Who?”

“Seth.”

Hannah’s blood freezes.

Seth Crane. Sierra-One. The one who disappeared in Iraq. Presumed dead after a botched evac. But if he’s alive—if they’re hunting him too—

“He’s in trouble?” she asks.

Jack’s voice cracks. “No. He’s working for them.”

Her stomach lurches. The betrayal hits like shrapnel. Seth was the glue of the team. If he turned…

“They’ve reactivated him,” Jack says. “And now he’s hunting ghosts.”

She paces the length of the basement, thoughts crashing like waves. There’s a file buried in her old chest—photos, intel, transcripts. She pulls it free, spreads it across the table. Maps, timelines, movement reports. It all points to a pattern. Disappearances. Silent ops. Burned agents. All circling the same black hole.

“They’re rebuilding Raven,” she says.

Jack nods grimly.

“And they’re not cleaning house,” she finishes. “They’re choosing who gets to stay.”

Silence hangs thick between them.

Then Hannah lifts her eyes, steel now behind them. “We don’t run.”

Jack blinks. “What?”

“We go after them,” she says. “All of them. If Seth’s in command, then we take out the nest.”

Jack stares at her. Then grins. It’s a broken thing, but real.

“Thought you were just a nurse now,” he says.

She pulls a burner phone from the drawer, dials a number she hasn’t used in years.

“I was. Until tonight.”

The line clicks. A voice answers after two rings.

“You still owe me, Leo.”

A pause.

“Jesus. Coop?”

“I need gear, I need names. And I need it fast.”

“You back in?”

She glances at Jack, already sitting up despite the pain, eyes burning again with the fury of purpose.

“I’m cleaning up a mess,” she says. “And it starts now.”

Because ER chaos was just the beginning.

And the Raven never dies.