Nikos Leos

The missing piece of the Leos family.

Nikos Leos is the patriarch of the Leos family — father of Dardanos and Danae, uncle of Val, and the man who built the Leos Security Group into something that has survived for over a hundred years. His disappearance after the events of Badia's Gambit is the wound that the family hasn't closed. It sits in every conversation Danae has with Dr. Clarence, in every strategic calculation Dardanos makes, and in every job the Leos group takes without knowing whether their father is watching from somewhere they can't reach.

What is known: Nikos is a professional's professional. He operates by a code within the mercenary world — he'll take a job, he'll take serious money, and he'll execute with precision. What he won't do is an assassination. When Lillian and Zane cross lines during the French base operation, Nikos is the one who looks away first. When Dr. Clarence calls him a trusted friend, that's not a lie — but it's also not the whole picture. Nikos agreed to help steal the Augment exo-suit one time, specifically because he wanted to see it up close. He didn't sign up for the rest of it. He left before the rest of it arrived.

Clarence knows more than he's saying about what happened to Nikos. Danae has asked. Clarence doesn't answer. That silence is its own kind of information. The Leos group continues to operate — Dardanos and Danae leading, Val in the field — but the question of Nikos is the thing that lives underneath every family conversation nobody finishes. He's not dead. At least, nobody has been told he is. And in the Leos family, the difference between missing and gone is the difference between a door that's closed and one that's locked.

He hasn't been seen since Badia's Gambit.