Novels by Vigiani Nurike

The air in the hallway had curdled into a sickly, yellow-green fog. Tristan pulled his tactical scarf over his nose and mouth, his eyes stinging as the aerosolized nerve agent began to bite. Every breath was a gamble, but he didn't slow his pace. He vaulted over a fallen vending machine, his boots skidding on the slick floor, and slammed his shoulder into the door of the primary holding block."Victoria!" he barked, his voice muffled by the fabric."I’m still here, you big lug," came a strained, breathless reply from the darkness. "But I really hope you brought some breath mints or a miracle, because this gas smells like a gym bag that sat in the sun for a month."Tristan pushed through the heavy-duty door. The room was bathed in the harsh, strobing red of a containment alarm. Victoria was slumped against the reinforced wall, her hands cuffed to a vertical pipe. She looked pale, her hair matted with sweat, but the moment she saw him, her lips curved into that familiar, infuriatingly b

The silence in the aftermath of the skirmish was absolute, save for the rhythmic, annoying drip of a leaking pipe somewhere in the shadows of the estate. Tristan pushed himself up from the marble floor, his vision swimming in a sea of jagged gray fractals. He tasted copper and failure."Pathetic," he rasped, his voice echoing against the cold stone. "You had one job, Ghost. Keep her safe. You managed the exact opposite."He wiped the blood from his brow, his hand shaking with a cold, hollow rage. The scent of jasmine was fading, replaced by the sterile, antiseptic smell of the facility. He didn't care about the ledger anymore. He didn't care about his father’s cryptic games or the grand design of the syndicate. There was only one variable left in the equation: Victoria. And she was gone.He pulled himself to his feet, leaning heavily against a marble column. He looked at his reflection in a darkened display case—a man who looked like he’d been dragged through a war zone."Okay, Trista

The mahogany desk felt like a relic of a ghost, the photo burning a hole in Tristan’s palm. "He’s working with the man who took everything from me," Tristan muttered, his voice hollow. "All these years, I thought he was a martyr."Victoria gripped his forearm, her gaze darting to the shadows in the corners of the study. "Don't get sentimental, Ghost. Martyrs are just people who didn't have a good enough exit strategy. Right now, he’s just a target with a very nice collection of fountain pens.""You have no chill, you know that?" Tristan let out a jagged laugh, though his eyes remained fixed on the darkened doorway."Chill is for people who aren't currently trespassing in a high-security bunker," she retorted, nudging him toward the exit. "Let’s keep moving. I have a feeling the welcome mat is about to be retracted."They stepped back into the hallway, the marble floor cold beneath their boots. Tristan’s pulse was a frantic drumbeat in his ears. He looked at the walls, recognizing the

The crawlspace was a tomb of dust and rat droppings, but Tristan barely noticed. He was pinned against the metal plating, his breath coming in shallow, jagged hitches as the ghost of his father’s voice echoed in his skull."Dad?" he whispered, his finger still hovering over the comms button. "That’s... that’s impossible."Victoria shimmied back toward him, her elbows scraped and her hair a disaster of cobwebs and static-charged curls. She peered at him, her expression softening from tactical focus to something uncomfortably tender. "Tristan. Hey. Look at me.""He’s been dead for fifteen years, Vic. I buried him. I watched the casket go into the ground.""People like us," she said, tapping his chest with a dirt-smudged finger, "we don't get the luxury of clean burials. Did you see a body? Like, a real, 'I’m checking the pulse' body?"Tristan went quiet. He stared at the dark vent ahead, his jaw working. "No. It was a closed-casket service. Agency protocols. They said the blast… they sa

The fluorescent lights of the city library’s archives hummed with a sound that grated against Tristan’s nerves. He sat at a mahogany desk scarred by decades of student frustration, the stolen ledger splayed open before him like an unwanted prophecy."You realize," Victoria said, leaning against a bookshelf and flicking a stray lock of hair from her eyes, "that choosing a library as a base of operations is classic. It’s like the 'let’s hide in the villain’s lair' trope, just with more dust and less evil furniture."Tristan didn't look up, his fingers dancing across a portable, high-speed decryption deck he’d scavenged. "It’s quiet. And nobody looks for a guy who smells like motor oil and desperation in the genealogy section.""Speak for yourself," she retorted, tossing a snack-sized bag of pretzels onto the desk. "I smell like high-end jasmine and tactical survival, thank you very much. Did you find anything?""I’m getting there. My father’s cipher isn't just a code; it’s a living docu

The water was already at their knees, swirling with the dark, oily refuse of the industrial sub-level. The heavy steel door wasn't just locked; it was reinforced with industrial-grade bolts that seemed designed to hold back an ocean.Tristan waded toward the wall, his boots slipping on the slick floor. "Okay, this is officially the most inconvenient way to die. I had plans for the weekend, you know."Victoria splashed through the rising tide, her heels long discarded. She waded up beside him, shivering slightly as the frigid water lapped at her waist. "And what were these grand plans? Let me guess. Staring at a wall and contemplating your tragic, mysterious past?""I was going to find a decent coffee shop and sit there for three hours without someone trying to turn me into a human colander," Tristan grumbled, his hands frantically searching the doorframe for a weakness. "What about you? What’s on the Victoria agenda?""Oh, you know," she said, her voice echoing in the small, metallic