The van's engine hummed like a restrained growl, tires whispering over damp asphalt. Berlin was a smear in the rearview now—Vilnius still shadows ahead. Inside, no one spoke. Blackout curtains cloaked the world outside. The only light came from the cold glow of Ghost's laptop screen.
He slid Nadia Vetrova's decrypted key into the hardened port. The system blinked alive, directory cascading open:
> PHOBOS > Case 147 > ETHAN_DRK_NYPD_INV001
Ghost leaned forward. His breath quiet, almost reverent.
Across from him, STAR sat hunched, elbows on knees, hands clasped. The screen's light reflected in his steel-blue eyes, but he didn't blink. Didn't move. Just stared as the file header unfurled like a trigger.
> Callum Reyes – Behavioral Control Protocol / Ref: VINE-RIFT (alpha)
The name hit like a sniper round through armor. His jaw flexed. Still, he said nothing.
Ghost kept reading, his voice low, like reciting a confession he didn't want to believe.
> "Target: DET. CALLUM REYES. Behavioral Leverage Asset. Engineered proximity via DRK. Result: Emotional volatility, mission non-compliance. Event: Queens Termination. Data harvest complete."
He stopped. Shifted in his seat.
> "This wasn't random," Ghost muttered. "Valk used him. Framed him just to see what you'd do."
The screen flickered—just once. Then again. The van hit a bump. The laptop stuttered.
STAR's hand shot out, faster than Ghost could stop him. He ripped the laptop off the tray, the plastic casing groaning under his grip. And then—
He threw it.
It crashed against the interior wall of the van. Screen cracked. Drive hissed.
> "I don't need the files," STAR said, voice low, razor-edged.
"I lived it."
Silence swallowed the space between them. Only the engine dared make a sound.
Ghost didn't flinch. Didn't reach for the wreckage.
STAR leaned back, pressing fingers to his eyes. A tremor ran through one hand, barely perceptible. He didn't curse. Didn't shout. The kind of fury that doesn't scream—it simmers.
The kind that changes men.
And somewhere behind his eyes, the flashback lit up like a muzzle flare—five years back, Brooklyn rooftops and blood in the rain.
---
Brooklyn, Five Years Ago
The rain wasn't falling—it was hanging, suspended in a haze that made the streetlamps bleed. Brooklyn glowed like an old film reel gone soft at the edges. Ethan Drake leaned against the rust-bitten railing of a second-story brownstone, the city muttering beneath him.
Callum Reyes stood beside him, arms folded, Glock holstered tight under the jacket. His tie was still cinched, like he hadn't learned how to relax. He probably hadn't.
Below, cruisers blinked red and blue over wet pavement. Another suicide, or so the brass said. Ex-ranger, decorated, supposedly bit down on a service revolver last night in his apartment. Apartment with no powder traces. No blood spatter. No bullet found.
Callum's jaw worked quietly on a toothpick. "You ever feel like someone rewrote the ending to your life," he muttered, "and forgot to tell you?"
Ethan didn't look at him. "Every time Internal Affairs calls." He dragged from a cigarette, flicked ash off the edge. "You think the VA suicides are connected?"
"They don't just share service records," Callum said, pulling a photo from his coat. "They share a ghost."
He handed it over. Black-and-white. Group shot. Dusty uniforms, dark glasses. The back read: Outpost Theta – Black Site Personnel. No External Distribution.
One name had been circled in blue pen. Alaric Voss. Ethan's gut tensed.
"Voss was on our contact sheet from the 86th case," Ethan said. "The one buried in counterintel red tape."
"Guy didn't just vanish. He was scrubbed. Not retired. Not relocated. Scrubbed," Callum replied. "Every request I filed came back blank or sealed."
"Sounding a lot like conspiracy, partner." Ethan tried to smirk. It didn't stick.
Callum wasn't smiling. "You know what gets me? All these deaths—same cause, same exit wounds, same caliber. But one thing's always missing."
Ethan waited.
"The shell casings." Callum looked at him, eyes flat. "Like someone wants it to look messy—but not provable."
Ethan exhaled smoke through his nose. "They're not suicides."
"No," Callum said, voice dry. "They're signatures."
A long beat passed. Sirens wailed in the distance, somewhere toward Gowanus. Ethan ran a hand through his damp hair, paced once across the balcony. Then turned.
"You think Voss is still out there?"
"I think he never left."
They didn't say much after that. The case had already crawled deeper than either of them wanted to admit. But Ethan felt it—like static building in the air before a bolt hits.
Callum finally broke the silence. "Promise me something."
Ethan arched a brow. "What, you dying?"
"Not yet. Just promise me," Callum said, voice low. "If we get too deep... if this gets dirty—you finish it. No matter what happens to me."
Ethan didn't flinch. "You don't make me promises like that, Reyes."
Callum held his gaze. "I already did."
The rain started up again. Harder this time. A steady percussion against the rusted gutters. The moment felt like a prelude—one neither of them knew would be the last.
---
Queens. Rain turned the alley to a gutter of broken light and diesel runoff. Streetlamps flickered. Somewhere behind the chainlink and brick, a train screeched by like it knew what was coming.
Ethan crouched in shadow behind a rusted dumpster, rain sliding off his hood in sheets. Across the alley, Callum Reyes stood beneath a busted security light, arms at his sides, face unreadable. Waiting.
Internal Affairs had sent a burner number. Meet here. Quiet. Off-book. They'd said someone had information on the suicides. Ethan didn't trust it. Reyes had insisted.
A black sedan rolled up, slow. Engine idled. A man stepped out—short trench, bald, clipboard tucked under one arm. IA, or at least wearing their skin. Callum stepped forward. They exchanged a look. No handshakes. Just tension, thin as piano wire.
Then: tires screeched.
Three SUVs, no tags, boxed in the alley like choreography. Doors flew open. No warning. No protocol. Black-clad shooters spilled out, rifles raised.
Ethan moved before he thought, gun drawn, sprinting—
Pop. Pop.
Two shots, chest.
Reyes staggered, caught breath, stumbled.
Third shot. Head.
He dropped without sound.
Ethan skidded behind a trash bin, took a knee, fired back—suppressed rounds clipping wall. One of the shooters flinched but didn't go down. They didn't fire at him. Just pulled back fast. SUVs peeled off, water kicking up behind tires like smoke.
Silence rushed in, too loud.
Ethan moved. Fast. Gun still up, steps heavy. He dropped to his knees beside Reyes. Blood slicked the pavement, dark, already mixing with the water. No badge on the shooters. No bodycams. Just execution.
Reyes's badge lay nearby, scorched on the corner, half-melted.
Symbolic.
Ritualistic.
Planned.
Ethan stared at it, rain soaking his sleeves.
"You said we'd finish this together, man," he whispered.
Callum's eyes didn't close. They stared up like they still had something to say.
He stayed there too long—sirens started faint on the horizon. Not emergency sirens. No lights.
Clean-up sirens.
Ethan stood. Backed into the dark. Rage clawed behind his ribs but didn't break through—not yet. His pulse wasn't adrenaline. It was precision.
He disappeared into the night.
By morning, he was suspended. IA claimed Reyes was a rogue asset under review. Ethan's files were locked. Every trace of the case—gone.
No funeral.
No mention on the precinct wall.
Just erasure.
And for Ethan Drake, that was the moment the badge stopped meaning anything at all.
---
The van's interior buzzed low with static—engine hum, the faint whine of encryption tools struggling to keep pace with truth. Rain lashed the windshield in pulses. No one spoke.
STAR sat opposite Ghost, the cracked laptop screen still flickering weakly beside them like a dying signal flare. Pieces of Reyes's file scrolled—fragmented text, half-redacted diagrams, neurochemical schematics scribbled with military shorthand.
Ghost nudged the USB back toward STAR.
"Drive's still breathing. Damaged, not dead."
STAR didn't reach for it. His eyes locked on nothing. Not blank—focused inward. Like he was lining up a shot through memory.
Ghost watched him for a second, then spoke low. No comfort in it. Just facts shaped like weapons.
"You weren't broken," he said. "You were sharpened."
The words cut sideways.
STAR opened his duffel, slow. Not for a weapon. Not for gear. Just a battered field notebook, pages creased and water-stained. Inside—sketches of constellations. Missions logged not with coordinates, but stars.
He flipped to the back. A torn edge. Ink faded but legible.
Reyes's badge number.
He held it for a beat, then slid the page beside the laptop. Ghost leaned forward, eyes narrowing as he caught the line that had surfaced in the final decoded string:
> "Subject DRK passed threshold. Emotional trauma triggered full pattern compliance. Recommend continued observation via MOSUL footprint."
Ghost exhaled hard through his nose. His voice lost its edge. "You were the test run for Spectre. Mosul was just… them watching."
The van rolled on through Eastern European dusk, tires thudding over wet asphalt. No headlights. No noise but the storm outside and the quiet unraveling inside.
STAR lit a cigarette. Flame kissed filter. He didn't inhale.
His hand trembled.
Not panic. Not fear.
Memory detonating behind his eyes.
He stared at the ember. Then crushed the cigarette dead between thumb and glove, grinding it against steel plating.
"No more running," he muttered. "They watched long enough."
Ghost gave a nod. Tight. Enough said.
The van kept moving, slicing east through rain and silence like a blade with no sheath.
---
The van rolled quiet through the outskirts of Vilnius—headlights off, comms dead, road slick with the residue of an earlier storm. Ghost watched the skyline flatten, then sharpen again in jagged angles of concrete and razor-wire. The safehouse perimeter loomed ahead—NATO signature burned into an armored gate, or what was left of it.
Smoke curled lazily from the rooftop. No lights. No sentries. No movement.
Wrong.
Too quiet, even for their kind of quiet.
Ghost slowed the van, engine idling as STAR leaned forward. His hand moved to his sidearm, thumb checking the safety like a heartbeat tick.
"Thermals?" STAR asked.
Ghost lifted the tablet. Blank. Like someone had erased the heat from the map.
"Dead zone," Ghost muttered. "If anyone's in there, they're cold—or cooked."
They approached on foot. STAR crouched low, sniper instincts twitching at the smell—acrid chemical burn, layered under something worse. Human. Recent.
The blast pattern at the safehouse door wasn't random. Controlled det. Precise entry. Message written in fire.
Inside, the air bit down hard—ash, ozone, copper.
A bunker wall still stood at the back, just past the comms room, scorched black but intact. On it, in paint that shimmered like dried blood under UV, someone had scrawled five digits.
STAR's old badge number.
His jaw clenched. No words. He stepped closer, slow, like the wall might whisper.
At the blast center, a single sheet of paper waited in the debris. Heavy charcoal sketch. A chess pawn, cracked down the base.
Nothing else. No bodies. No data. Just invitation disguised as aftermath.
Ghost knelt, eyes narrowing at the pawn.
"This isn't cover-up," he said. "It's staging."
STAR didn't respond right away. He looked at the pawn. Then at the wall.
Then at the broken silence they were standing in.
"They're not after us," Ghost said, quiet now. "They want you to come see what's next."
STAR stood.
Rain hissed on the roof above them. Distant thunder rolled like artillery warming up.
"Good," he said. "Let's burn their board."
He turned and walked out, the scorched number still glowing faint behind him. The pawn crumpled in Ghost's fist.
They didn't need a trail anymore. The enemy had lit one for them.