Bucharest Rooftops
Midnight pressed heavy over Bucharest—low fog curling like cigarette smoke between brutalist towers. Ghost crouched on a roof that groaned under his weight, concrete cracked and dusted with pigeon shit. Across the alley, four stories down, a safehouse leaned like it regretted standing this long.
No lights. No movement. Just decay.
Ghost adjusted his optic. The lens cracked at the edge, but it held focus. A man stepped from a side alley and paused beneath a busted streetlamp. Long coat, rifle case balanced easy at the shoulder. He didn't glance up. Didn't need to.
The spine tattoo showed through the thin shirt, even in this light. Constellations inked like scars.
Patterned movement. Left corner check. Window sweep. Dead drop gait.
Not paranoid—practiced.
Ghost keyed the mic low, barely more than breath.
> "Target acquired. Moving to confirm ID."
Laswell didn't reply. Off-books meant off-grid. No second eyes. No safety net.
He unclipped the rappel line and anchored it to a rusted beam. Cable whispered through the brake as he slid down the alley wall—shadows swallowing him whole. Below, trash bins reeked and dogs barked somewhere distant, but no one looked up.
He landed in a crouch beside a collapsed pallet, scanned high windows. Still clear.
The fire escape groaned underfoot as he climbed. Two steps from the landing, Ethan vanished inside the safehouse.
Ghost exhaled once, slow. Gloved hand found the grip on his sidearm.
> "No more chasing."
He moved in.
---
Inside smelled like rust and old oil—metal fatigue and gunpowder soaked into concrete. Ghost moved through the dark without breathing heavy, pistol raised, boots silent. Crates stacked high against the far wall—ammo, rations, odds and ends from dead wars. A worn leather chair faced a corkboard stitched with faded maps and red thread like veins.
Dead center: Lara Seneca's press badge, pinned to plywood by a combat knife. Bloodstain washed out, but the crease across her name hadn't healed.
Click.
Behind him, a slide racks slow.
> "Took you long enough," Ethan said. "You're lighter on your feet now, Ghost."
Ghost turned, smooth and ready. Both weapons raised—two barrels in a quiet room, both men still.
Ghost's voice hit cold.
> "Last time I saw that shoulder scar, you were bleeding out on a highway in Mosul."
Ethan didn't flinch.
> "Wasn't my blood. Not all of it."
Seconds dragged, like the air was waiting for someone to die.
Then Ethan lowered his rifle. Not casual—measured. Like trusting a ledge not to give.
Ghost didn't move.
> "You gonna tell me why you're walking in shadows again?"
Ethan walked to the corkboard, touched the badge, not gently.
> "She's dead. They made sure of that."
He tapped the knife's handle.
> "But she didn't die quiet."
Ghost holstered, barely. His jaw worked, silent grind.
> "You using Lara as bait? Or cover?"
Ethan turned, eyes flat steel.
> "She gave me the shovel. I'm just digging."
Ghost stepped in close, enough that the room felt smaller.
> "What're you digging for, Star?"
Ethan smirked, but it didn't hit his eyes.
> "Graves. Old ones. Some of 'em still breathing."
No more questions. Just air full of heat and history. Both men stood in it. Neither blinked.
---
The room felt tighter now—war maps bleeding ink, the cracked window casting gridlines across Ethan's jaw. He moved like someone used to crosshairs, not conversation.
Ghost folded his arms. Didn't sit. Didn't blink.
> "Talk."
Ethan flipped open a battered laptop pulled from a crate. Booted without logo, just lines of code and Lara's name in a folder.
> "She tracked the route through Moldova. Old Soviet freight lines. No manifests, no customs. Just bodies with new names and zero past."
Ghost leaned over, caught a glimpse—infrared overlays, faces blurred by movement, but uniforms sharp. PMC insignia cut and stitched over NATO patches.
> "These move through refugee zones?"
Ethan nodded.
"Camps, quarantines, anywhere the world's already burning. Valk doesn't need cover. He is the smoke."
He scrolled further—Lara's notes in clipped shorthand. "V-exfil confirmed Bucharest," "Ghost ops rerouted," "Volkner clearing backend—why?"
Ghost tapped the screen, frowning.
> "Volkner signed off on Mosul scrub orders. Name's buried in the archive shell. I thought it was admin error."
> "It wasn't."
Ethan's voice dropped.
He pulled a flash drive from around his neck, clicked it into the port. Pulled up an ops file. Redacted chunks stared back like missing teeth.
> "I wasn't assigned to secure Mosul. They sent me to burn it."
Ghost's voice tightened.
> "And?"
Ethan's jaw worked, slow and deliberate.
> "Didn't pull the trigger. Someone beat me there. Wiped the safehouse. Then torched the evidence."
Ghost's eyes locked on his.
> "Who?"
Ethan didn't blink. Just said it:
> "One of ours. Not anymore."
The silence hit like gunfire that hadn't landed—yet. Ghost exhaled through his nose, hand resting near his sidearm out of habit, not threat.
> "Give me a name."
Ethan didn't.
He just pointed at Lara's badge on the wall.
> "She died chasing the wrong shadows. I'm making sure the right ones burn."
They stood there, heat rising between old sins and unburied facts. The map crinkled as Ethan folded it, slid it into his coat like a warrant.
Ghost stared at the wall. At the knife. At the badge.
> "If you're lying…"
> "Then shoot me now," Ethan said. "But if I'm right? We're already late."
---
The buzz snapped high, electric and wrong—off-frequency, predator tone. Ghost's gaze flicked up.
> "Drone."
Ethan didn't wait for confirmation. He shoulder-checked Ghost just as the round cracked the window—glass shattered into the war map behind them. Splinters scored the concrete where Ghost's head had been a second earlier.
No more standoffs. No more talk.
Ethan rolled toward the stairwell, fingers already jamming the EM spike into the socket by the breaker box. The device hissed, spat sparks—then silence. Above, the drone hiccupped mid-air and dropped like a stone.
Ghost moved fast—through muscle memory, not trust. He slid to the opposite wall, rifle up. Two shadows breached the north door—silencers coughing. Ghost didn't flinch. Two tight shots, center mass, downed both. The second never saw the trigger pull.
> "Three-point breach!" Ethan barked.
Floorboards creaked above. Ghost signaled: west stairwell. Ethan nodded, flipped a flash from his belt, cooked it mid-count, and lobbed.
> Boom—stutter—glass rain.
Second wave came hard—Enforcer's kill team, black armor, Ghost-trained patterns. Ethan darted across the kitchen threshold, drew fire, counted two, maybe three boots. He dove low, fired twice from under the island. One went down choking. Another fell back screaming—thigh shattered.
> "You rusty or just suicidal?" Ghost growled, sweeping the far corner.
Ethan popped up, reloaded with a grin that didn't reach his eyes.
"Still breathing, aren't I?"
They met at the stairwell. Ghost dropped prone, rifle resting on the second step. Movement—top left. Squeeze. A helmet dropped, followed by the rest of the corpse.
> "Enforcer's signature."
Ethan pointed to the knife slash left on a downed merc's collar—deliberate, clean, mockery in the old Ghost style.
Ghost's voice dropped to gravel.
> "He's here."
> "He always is," Ethan muttered, pressing his back to the wall. "We're just catching up."
Outside, tires squealed. Backup—or bait. The safehouse had maybe seconds left before full collapse.
Ghost scanned the map again—before the blast. One exit left. Sub-level, laundry chute.
He yanked the cover off. Looked at Ethan.
> "Go."
Ethan didn't argue.
They dropped into black. The kill team breached the kitchen five seconds too late.