CHAPTER 23: TO BE YOUR EQUAL

The year 2026 settled into Richard’s memory with the clarity of a scar, vivid and impossible to forget. From the outside, it was the year he finally broke away from the version of himself who drifted through life without direction.

But from within, from the eyes of an omniscient witness, it was the year he let go of the boy he used to be and stepped into a world that would devour him before remaking him. He was eighteen then, painfully young, burning with ambition yet hollowed by uncertainty.

City X towered over him like a restless titan, neon lights flickering against cracked sidewalks. He walked those streets with the weight of desperation in his chest, clutching dreams too big for his worn-out shoes. He told friends and family he was taking a gap year, a little pause before choosing his path. But the truth was simpler and harsher. He didn’t know where he belonged.

College felt too small. Too slow. Too ordinary for what he believed he needed to become.

That was when he heard the whispers.

The Division.

It wasn’t a group you stumbled upon by accident. They didn’t post recruitment booths on campus. They didn’t hand out flyers. They found you only when you fit a very particular mold, untethered, hungry, and willing to walk into the dark without asking why.

Their invitation arrived like a ripple from another world. A brief message. A location. A time. And a choice.

Richard didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even flinch. Somewhere between fear and longing, he thought of Ahce, of the life she was building, the pages she was writing, the way she was rising into the person she always wanted to be. He wanted to stand beside someone like that someday. Someone unafraid of her own brilliance. How could he do that when he barely recognized himself?

He signed the papers. Let them cut his hair, scan his body, catalog his weaknesses. The moment the ink dried, the boy named Richard folded into a corner of his mind, and the recruit stepped forward.

The first months inside The Division tore everything soft out of him. Their training wasn’t designed to strengthen. It was designed to break. Cold mornings that bled into colder nights. Drills that pushed the human body past its limits.

Wilderness isolation meant to rob them of comfort. Combat training that left bruises blooming like dark flowers along his ribs. Surveillance work that demanded precision bordering on paranoia. Cyber operations that rewired how he thought about danger.

Some recruits quit. Others... simply didn’t return.

Richard stayed.

When his bones ached and his lungs burned, he thought of her. Her name was the string that kept him tethered to himself. Her face flickered behind his eyes during every grueling push-up, every midnight run, every simulated mission where failure meant humiliation or worse.

"Purpose is your weapon," their instructor would growl. "Lose it, and you’ll break."

His purpose was carved into him like a heartbeat.

By the end of training, his reflection looked back at him like a stranger. Sharper jawline. Eyes that didn’t flinch. Shoulders squared not from confidence but from conditioning. The softness of youth burned away, replaced with the quiet hardness of someone who had learned how to survive.

They called him an asset now. A tool. A name on a classified roster.

Missions followed, fast, brutal, unpublicized. Recovery operations in the dead of night. Information extractions that blurred the lines between justice and necessity. Containment assignments that pushed him closer to danger than any civilian would ever understand. Each mission ended with a paycheck, a new scar, and another step toward a future he was building with bloody hands.

But once the adrenaline faded, once the silence seeped back into his small apartment, the doubts crept in. Would she even recognize him now? Would she run if she saw the shadows in his gaze?

Because every secret he carried felt like another door closing between them.

The story of his ambition went deeper still. Before The Division, before City X, before the sleepless nights and moral lines blurred to smudges, he had been just a boy from City C with a simple dream.

He wanted to build a life for his family, a comfortable one, free from the anxiety of overdue bills and scraped-together meals. He’d watched his parents weather storms with quiet dignity and hoped he could be the one to give them a gentler future.

He dreamed of flying one day, of sitting in a cockpit with skies unfolding beneath him. His family loved that dream but grounded it gently, urging him to become an aviation mechanic first. Something practical. Something safe.

"Start there," his father said. "One day, you might fly the planes you fix."

It was a good dream. Honest. Respectable.

But Richard wanted more.

Leaving City C had shattered him quietly. Every street held pieces of his childhood. Every family dinner was a world of warmth he knew he might never get back. But he pushed forward, telling himself he’d return as someone stronger, someone who made their sacrifices worth it.

He never expected his path to lead to covert missions and secrecy.

Signing that contract was the beginning of a double life. By day, he was the college kid with calloused hands and a tired grin. By night, he slipped into coded missions, encrypted briefings, and the fragile morality of shadow work. Every relationship he had outside The Division grew thin. Every connection became a lie.

But now everything was different.

Marriage changed the equation.

Someone was waiting for him.

Someone who deserved honesty and warmth, not a man with secrets stacked like landmines in his chest. Ahce didn’t remember everything, not their past, not the wounds, not the promises, but she still looked at him with this baffling, open trust. And every time her eyes lingered on his face, he felt the pressure of everything he couldn’t say.

He wanted so badly to deserve her.

Yet sometimes, late at night, staring at his own reflection under dim bathroom light, he saw a stranger in the glass. Someone who had traded pieces of his soul for strength. Someone built in shadows, shaped by violence and purpose.

He feared he had already lost more than he’d ever gained.

But if he could cling to one truth, one promise, it was this...

When she remembered, when her memories returned piece by painful piece, he wanted her to see a man who stood firmly on his own two feet. Not the frightened boy she once loved, not the weapon The Division forged, but someone who chose love over fear.

Someone who fought through hell just to be worthy of her in the end.