Edge of Sfax, Tunisia
The warehouse leaned west, like it remembered the blast. Walls blistered from fire, rebar curled like ribs. Ghost stepped through the threshold, breathing stale ash and rotted wood.
He moved quiet, bootfalls muffled by grit. Flies buzzed somewhere near the back, circling what used to be a desk.
No bodies. No blood trails. Just heat damage and the kind of emptiness that felt too intentional.
He knelt by a scorched crate. Ash flaked off a typewriter—keys warped, ribbon melted into slag. But the carriage had one last word inked into its metal: "volk—" burned off mid-name.
Behind a shelving rack, Ghost spotted a false panel—cheap plyboard and foam insulation behind cracked tile. He pressed. It gave with a groan.
Crawlspace.
He slid inside.
The air changed—cooler, heavier. A rat darted past, tail dragging soot. In the corner: a blood-smeared microcassette recorder, half-crushed under rubble. No label. Just a single word carved into its plastic casing with a blade tip: "E.D."
Next to it, a photo—edges scorched, but the image held.
Ethan Drake. Ghillie hood thrown back, crouched on a rooftop, rifle braced against crumbled concrete. Mosul skyline behind him, half the city in ruin. His left shoulder visible—bare, scarred. The same one Ghost had memorized.
Ghost stared. His grip tightened.
> "Ethan Drake," he muttered. "Son of a bitch… you're still breathing."
He stood, photo in hand.
Somewhere outside, a prayer call echoed across the dunes.
Ghost didn't bow his head. He didn't blink.
He just started walking.
---
Ghost knelt in the backseat of the SUV, doors closed, engine dead. The kind of silence that came only after firestorms and flight.
The microcassette clicked into the field reader. Static bled through first—hissing, fractured, then Lara's voice cut in. Rough. Rushed. Like she recorded it with one hand on a trigger.
> "...he didn't erase Mosul. He rearranged it. Name: STAR. Not sanctioned. Not listed. Buried with the rest…"
A thump in the background—metal striking stone. Then a hiss of breath, hers.
> "They moved the bodies but left the shadows. Someone needs to see the patterns. Find the Constellation File."
The recording warped, snapped, then looped dead air.
Ghost sat still.
He didn't blink. Didn't breathe.
Constellation File. Never heard the term. Not in black ops circles. Not in buried dossiers. But Lara didn't invent shit.
He keyed his comm. "Laswell."
Her voice answered after two rings, terse as always. "You're dark. This better be good."
"Lara referenced something called the Constellation File. Rings any bells?"
Pause.
Then: "One. Buried op, 2021. TESSERACT. Wasn't CIA's proudest chapter. Redacted so deep we're not even supposed to say the word. File was wiped. Handler was Volkner."
Volkner again.
Ghost looked at the photo of Ethan on the dash—Mosul skyline behind him, bullet scar like a signature. That same dead stare. The same calm under glass.
> "Cleanup crew…" Ghost muttered, voice low. "But not ours."
He ejected the tape. Set it down. No need to listen again.
The tape wasn't the point. The voice was. And Lara's voice didn't shake easy.
Which meant what came next was worse.
---
The trapdoor groaned as Farid climbed out of the drywell, arms streaked with dirt, a grimace carved into his face. He handed Ghost the journal like it might bite.
"Wrapped in tarp. No mold, just damp." His voice dropped. "And blood. Not hers."
Ghost flipped it open without ceremony. The pages clung together—ink bled through corners, margins smudged with ash and sweat. The smell of old paper, scorched edges, and gun oil—Lara's scent, if she had one.
Most entries were timestamps, coordinates, notes scrawled in a war reporter's shorthand. Layers of field logic.
Then one stopped him.
> "STAR follows Valk's trail. He doesn't know he's circling back to him. Mosul wasn't a coverup—it was a dress rehearsal."
The sentence hit like a suppressed shot to the sternum. Clean, surgical. Deliberate.
Ghost thumbed the next page. Torn out. Jagged edge, a smear of dried red streaking into the spine.
He stared for a long second, then kept flipping.
The final pages had turned into something else. Not notes. Not intel.
A map.
Drawn in pen and charcoal: Scorpius. Orion. Cassiopeia. Lines between stars like rifle scopes aligning.
Beside them, scribbled phrases—
> "He hunts him still."
> "Ghosts don't vanish. They echo."
> "He's not lost. He's looping."
Each line scrawled with urgency, as if Lara wrote while running out of time.
Ghost didn't say a word. Just traced Cassiopeia with his gloved finger.
Same shape Ethan used to sketch into sand between missions.
Same stars. Different hunt.
Different war.
---
The data shard clicked into Ghost's field reader with a soft whine. Screen flickered—static bled to grainy footage. Timestamp: 18 months post-Mosul. No unit tag. No metadata. Someone didn't want this found.
Helmet cam snapped into focus.
A two-lane road outside Erbil—cracked asphalt, charred wreckage, heat haze rippling off twisted metal. Gunfire already echoing in the background.
Then Ethan.
Dragging himself from a burned-out truck, ghillie torn, dust caked in the seams. Blood streaked down his left arm, dark and steady. His AX-50 hung low, barrel smoking.
He moved like a man who'd done this before. One shot—top of a ridge. A PMC dropped like a sack of meat. Another flanked—Ethan pivoted, double-tapped without a word.
No panic. No chatter. Just work.
The final body wore gray plate armor, helmet rolled off. Left shoulder gleamed—a stamped silver wolfhead. Valk sigil.
Ethan stepped in close. Bent over the corpse. Voice caught by the mic, low but sharp.
> "Tell Valk the stars don't sleep. I'm not done yet."
The feed glitched. Jumped frames. Then black.
Ghost leaned back, jaw tight behind the mask. The desert heat didn't reach him.
He stared at the reader like it might answer the questions pounding behind his eyes. It didn't.
Just showed the same frame, frozen: Ethan's silhouette, rifle slung, walking into scorched light.
> "Ethan's not hiding," Ghost muttered. "He's hunting him."
---
The photo hit Ghost's screen with a thunk of certainty. Blurred CCTV. Grainy timestamp. A man stepping into a crumbling Bucharest tenement, hoodie clinging to rain-soaked shoulders. The camera caught just enough—shirt lifting as he turned.
Spine inked in black: Orion, Cassiopeia, Scorpius. A hunter's map tattooed in stars.
Ghost exhaled slow. Cold.
Laswell's voice filtered in through comms, clipped and certain.
> "Alias he used was Leo Gates. Hit a black-market armorer two days ago—custom optics, suppressed rounds. Paid in crypto. American accent. MI6 flagged it."
Ghost didn't blink.
> "He's in Bucharest. Still moving. Still bleeding out pieces of whatever happened in Mosul."
Ghost leaned forward, jaw tight, gaze locked on the photo like it owed him something.
Ethan hadn't buried himself.
He'd gone to ground to reload.
> "I'm done chasing ghosts," Ghost said, voice flat as gravel. "I'm tracking one."
He killed the feed. Already pulling gear. No hesitation. Just motion.
---
The cargo ramp slammed shut like a verdict. Engines howled as the C-130 lurched off the tarmac outside Sfax, wheels lifting from the sand-scarred runway. Ghost didn't look back.
He sat alone near the rear, wedged between pallets of field gear and sealed crates that rattled with turbulence. Sweat clung under the armor, but he didn't bother peeling it off. He wasn't staying long wherever they landed.
He cracked open Lara's journal—last page, soft from handling, edges worn like breath had passed over them a hundred times. Ink bled in spots. Her scrawl was jagged, not afraid to accuse.
> "He talks to his rifle like it breathes. He's not afraid of Valk. He's afraid of what he'll do when he finds him."
Ghost read it twice. Then once more.
No denial. No comment. Just a long, cold stare into the words like they might flinch.
He closed the journal, slid it into his vest pocket.
Cargo lights dimmed.
---
Bucharest.
A basement lit by a single hanging bulb. Damp walls. Rusted shelving.
Ethan Drake sat cross-legged on concrete, AX-50 broken down on an oiled cloth. Each piece gleamed under the yellow light. His hands moved like memory—silent, sure.
He muttered to the bolt assembly, voice low, familiar. Not prayer. Not madness. Ritual.
> "Still zeroed. Still breathing."
A smile ghosted across his lips, but it didn't reach his eyes.
He locked the rifle back together with a crisp click.
> "Let's see if Ghost remembers how to bleed."