The Killing Antidote -

She stopped on the landing.

She slammed her palm against the bathroom tile. The crack echoed like a gunshot.

Lena traced the scar on her ribs—a memento from Cairo, from a man she’d strangled with a fiber optic cable. For five years, that memory had tasted like victory: clean, sharp, deserved. Now, looking at it, she felt something warm and unwelcome coil in her stomach. The Killing Antidote

Shame.

She walked back down the stairs, out the building’s service exit, and into the rain. Elias Voss would live tonight. Not because he deserved to, but because Lena no longer trusted herself to decide who deserved to die. She stopped on the landing

And for the first time, Lena wasn’t sure she wanted to fight it.

She pulled out the Catalyst syringe. The liquid inside looked like crushed pearls. One injection, and the Antidote would be overridden. She’d walk into that penthouse cold and clean, put a round through Voss’s left eye, and feel nothing but professional satisfaction. Lena traced the scar on her ribs—a memento

But the Antidote was already in her bloodstream, a slow-acting ghost.