The ops van stank of coffee grounds and ozone. Every surface hummed with low-grade interference, enough to screw with passive scans but not enough to be obvious. Laswell's setup.
Star hunched over the tablet, light flickering off the curve of his spine. His thumb flicked through the mock manifest lines like he was reviewing a cold case—scanning for tells, anything that might crack the illusion. Nothing did.
> "Spain to Djibouti. Humanitarian UAV components, priority personnel flagged. NATO watermark's clean. Border logs forged at Melilla and Ceuta," he muttered.
Ghost leaned over his shoulder, silent. Reading upside down, because reading was never the point. Pattern recognition was.
Ethan swiped open a new field. Dragged in a biometric hash—one flagged KIA six months ago at the Tanganyika sterilization zone. Ex-Ghost. No burial. No record. Just missing.
He injected the hash into the shipping line with a tap.
> "You don't hook monsters with meat," he said, voice low. "You use memory."
Ghost didn't reply. Didn't need to.
Across the van, Laswell sat cross-legged in front of a signal rig, fingers dancing across keys. Six Vine nodes pinged back one by one—confirmation chimes, each dull and metallic like a coffin nail.
She didn't look back as the final connection logged.
> "All relays spoofed," she said. "Movement flagged. Our fake's officially a priority target."
Star exhaled through his nose. A slow grin pulled at the corner of his mouth, more instinct than humor.
> "Clock starts now."
Ghost slid a fresh mag into his rifle. The snap echoed louder than it should've.
The van fell quiet—just the static throb of encrypted jammers and the weight of what they'd built.
---
The depot sat dead still in the Algerian dark—no dogs barking, no crickets, not even wind. Just the low whine of distant transformers bleeding into the silence.
Star watched the tablet. One blip. Then none. Then one again.
No drone. No jet. No bird.
Just a sudden bloom of heat three klicks west, where there hadn't been so much as a power line five seconds ago.
He keyed his mic. Voice flat.
> STAR: "You seeing this?"
Ghost didn't answer right away. Somewhere below, his boots barely scuffed the concrete. A breath, then:
> GHOST: "He's here."
Star adjusted the AX-50's bolt with a soft click, then lined up behind the rusted edge of the depot's rooftop nest. His breath fogged the lens for a heartbeat—then vanished. Steel blue eyes locked into the optic.
> STAR (low): "Came in colder than God."
Ghost drifted through the lower corridors like smoke—tripwires set, fallback points marked. He passed a shattered security mirror and didn't flinch at the reflection. He looked like a rumor dressed in death.
Every meter he crossed screamed wrong. The kind of wrong that didn't come from motion, but the absence of it. The whole building felt held, like it was waiting to exhale.
Then it came. At 0237.
Not an alarm. Not a breach. Just a soft chime from the southern gate—wrong pitch, almost like it had been breathed through, not tripped.
Star checked his scope—no door movement, no gate swing, no shadow.
> STAR (into comms): "Gate never moved."
Ghost's reply crackled, low and dry.
> GHOST: "That's the point."
Star didn't respond. He was already rotating his scope leftward, pulse steady. Not calm. Controlled.
He'd seen this kind of game before—back when killers wanted their entrance quieter than their exit. Back when murder wasn't loud. It was personal.
---
Static whispered once in Star's comm, then cut. Banyan's channel flatlined.
Star froze mid-scan, eyes hard behind the glass of his optic. He cycled the northwest quadrant—no silhouette, no glint, just cold steel rooftops under colder skies.
Then—movement. One frame. Less.
A smear of motion darted across the third hangar roof—blurred, boneless, fast like a shadow dropped too late. No thermal signature. No sound. Like watching a ghost forget it was dead.
> STAR (tight): "We're not flanked. We're dissected."
He packed that sentence with steel and flicked to infrared. Still nothing.
Below, Ghost broke into a sprint. Three turns, two levels, thirty seconds to reach Banyan's perch. He knew the cadence of friendly movement—and this wasn't it.
The northwest corner reeked of copper and oil. The wall bore a slash-mark soaked deep and wide—clean garrote drag across the throat, angled just so. Textbook. Silent. Fast.
Dog tags lay at Ghost's boot. No blood on the chain. Wiped.
He bent, fingers brushing the links.
Tucked in the fold—paper. Folded, creased, crisp.
Ghost read it once.
> "THE VINE PRUNES ITS OWN."
Star exhaled through his teeth as Ghost held the note to the feed. He caught the corner instantly. Burned initials: E.D.
Not ink. Heat-brand. The acid had feathered the metal edges.
Targeted.
This wasn't cleanup.
This was a message.
Star's thumb flexed against the AX-50's safety. He didn't say a word. Didn't need to.
---
The wind shifted. Not enough to move a flag, just enough to scatter fine dust off the depot's upper ridge.
STAR tracked the shimmer first—barely a ripple in the haze. Then a man took shape. Still. Watching.
Warpaint, matte-black. No gear glint, no emblem. Just a face carved from calm. The kind you saw once and then never again.
> STAR (into mic): "Got eyes. Top ridge. Blackout rig. He's not hiding. He's studying."
He adjusted the AX-50's focus—faster than breath, slower than instinct. But Gravehound blinked first.
Not fear. Just timing.
He moved—and the world lost him.
One blink and the ridge was empty. Ghost's voice crackled, already chasing echoes in the alleys.
STAR flipped to strobe-thermal. One flicker—south roofline. Another—east stairwell. A burn trail that didn't match human stride.
Then—whine.
Steel kissed air beside STAR's left ear, taking a chunk of wall behind him. Blade, not bullet. Curved edge, silent throw.
He dropped flat, rolled once, weapon tight to chest. Up again in a crouch, scanning corners—nothing.
His mic stayed quiet.
But the message landed: Gravehound wasn't testing range. He was drawing closer.
---
The depot's northern hangar stank of metal and silence. Ghost found it first—a trail of stripped body armor, each plate placed like offerings: tactical vest, thigh guards, gloves. Bloodless. Clinical.
He didn't radio. Just drew his sidearm and followed the breadcrumbs.
Two floors above—BOOM.
A burst charge concussed through STAR's sniper nest, hurling him back in a blast of glass and concrete. His rifle clattered across the floor, useless.
Smoke. Movement.
Gravehound didn't enter. He poured in, low and fast, karambit already slashing through air.
STAR blocked with forearm, caught steel, pain flaring. He pivoted, jammed his shoulder into the Enforcer's chest—solid like slamming into a wall.
No grunt. No sound.
Another slice—this time cheekbone. Warmth spilled. STAR backed up, found a snapped beam from the ceiling collapse. Swung.
It connected with ribs—metal rang against flesh.
Still nothing. No break. Just recalculation.
Smoke hissed again—compact, black canister. The room fogged into gray blindness. STAR staggered, beam raised. Pulse hammering. No footsteps. No breathing.
Then a whisper—threaded through static. Not from comms. Bleeding into them.
> ENFORCER (faint, corrupted): "You trained me to vanish. Now I teach you consequence."
By the time Ghost reached the floor, STAR stood alone—blood running down his jaw, lungs clawing for air. The rifle was gone.
Near his feet, the depot's forged manifest burned slow in a palm-shaped scorch, ink curling like old secrets catching fire.
STAR didn't speak. Just watched it burn. The message had already landed.
---
The mission bled out in silence.
The depot's northern corridor still reeked of burn powder and cold sweat. No alarms. No sirens. Just Ghost's boots grinding through soot and ash.
The last image on STAR's scope lingered—a frozen frame: Banyan's face mid-breath, eyes sharp, mouth half open like he meant to say something. Then nothing. The next frame—just the wall.
Gone.
Ghost crouched low, fingers curling around the dog tags left like a gravestone. His grip tightened until the edges bit flesh. He didn't let go.
Outside, the sky had turned gunmetal gray.
STAR sat on the van's rear bumper, knees apart, a sketchpad balanced on one thigh. His hands moved on autopilot—charcoal dragging jagged constellations into paper. This one had no pattern. No name. Just violent angles.
Ghost watched from the steps, arms crossed, mask up.
> GHOST: "He knew us. Too well."
STAR didn't look up. Just pressed the charcoal harder, line splintering like cracked glass.
> STAR: "He's not killing for orders. He's killing for meaning."
No one replied.
In the wind, the depot smoldered. The heat signature was gone—but something colder had taken its place.
---
The encrypted ping came through dead air—no alert, just coordinates stitched into static. Laswell's voice followed, low and flat, as if even she didn't like saying the name.
> LASWELL : "You want the truth? She'll sell it to you. If you survive the small talk."
Berlin. Cold streets. Colder debts.
They crossed into the old sector at twilight. No headlights. No GPS. Just analog scribble on Soviet notepaper, coordinates next to a hand-drawn chess knight. Star turned it over once, twice, then tucked it into the dash like it might bite.
Ghost cinched the strap on his rifle case, jaw locked behind the balaclava.
> GHOST: "Nadia Vetrova."
STAR didn't blink. Just stared out the windshield, cigarette smoldering, fingers twitching like he was still sketching.
> STAR: "The only liar who never lied to me."
They didn't speak after that.
The van rolled through rusted checkpoints and rotted chain-link. The city crept past like a bad memory—watchful windows, graffiti like warnings, snow curling off the gutters. Somewhere deep in the industrial rot, a Cold War ghost waited.
The Enforcer had names. But Nadia?
She had the why.
---
[This is extra chapter]