The prisoner knelt in the center of the room.Bound. Bruised. Alive.Ethan stared at him from across the concrete floor, shadows breathing softly at his back. The man was young—too young. Fear trembled through him in shallow, uneven breaths.“Name,” Ethan said.“L—Lucas,” the man stammered. “Lucas Ferrin.”Cole stood near the wall, arms crossed. “Courier turned relay runner. Low-level. Didn’t even know who Serpent was working for until two weeks ago.”Evelyn watched silently from the observation platform, her expression unreadable.Mia stood beside Ethan.That mattered.“What was your assignment?” Ethan asked.Lucas swallowed. “Deliver a message. That’s it. I swear. They said if I didn’t—if I refused—they’d kill my sister.”The words hit like a hammer.Ethan felt the weight immediately.“Where is she?” Mia asked softly.Lucas shook his head violently. “I don’t know. They moved her. Please—please, I didn’t hurt anyone.”Ethan closed his eyes briefly.Serpent’s lesson was clear.Not pow

The city went dark at 2:17 a.m.Not a blackout—something cleaner. Surgical. Power grids isolated, emergency lines throttled, cameras blinded one district at a time. The kind of darkness that didn’t panic civilians because they never noticed it had arrived.Ethan felt it lock into place.“He’s exposed,” Evelyn said, voice tight through the comm. “Serpent just severed his own blind spots. That means he’s anchoring somewhere.”Ethan stood at the edge of a rooftop, coat snapping in the wind, shadows rolling beneath his boots like a living tide.“Where,” he asked.Evelyn didn’t hesitate. “The old tribunal hall.”Cole swore softly over the channel. “That place is a graveyard. Symbolic as hell.”“Of course it is,” Ethan replied. “He wants witnesses. Even if they’re ghosts.”Mia’s voice came through, firm despite the fear she couldn’t fully hide. “End this. And come back.”Ethan closed his eyes for a fraction of a second.“I will,” he said. “I promise.”Then he stepped into the dark.The trib

The city was quiet again. Too quiet.Ethan moved through the streets in the pre-dawn haze, shadows trailing him like loyal guards. The Rose estate sat behind him, secure—but the edges of the city told another story. Murmurs of unrest had begun to surface, subtle yet persistent. People whispered of disappearances, unexplained influence, and the sudden void Serpent had left.He could feel it. The city’s heartbeat had shifted, but not stabilized. Something lingered—like smoke that refused to dissipate.Cole approached, hand on his shoulder. “There are reports… unusual activity in the financial district. Low-level enforcers, new faces. No insignias, no records. Just movement.”Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “Unseen forces. Coordinated, but subtle.”Mia fell in step beside him, her gaze scanning the empty streets. “You feel it too?”“Yes,” Ethan admitted. “Serpent was a storm you could see. This… this is the whisper in the dark before a storm breaks.”Evelyn’s voice came from the secure comm, calm

Ethan didn’t sleep.He stood at the highest balcony of the Rose estate as dawn bled slowly into the city, shadows stretched thin and restless beneath him. The Whisper’s absence was louder than any threat they had made.An enemy who vanished cleanly was worse than one who stayed.“They didn’t leave fingerprints,” Cole said behind him. “No digital residue. No comm signatures. It’s like they were never here.”“They were here,” Ethan replied. “They wanted me to know that.”Mia joined them, her face pale but resolute. “They’re not trying to kill you. They’re trying to study you.”“Yes,” Ethan said. “And that makes them dangerous.”Inside the war room, Evelyn projected layers of data across the wall—movement anomalies, delayed response times, power fluctuations that skirted the edge of detection.“This isn’t a hierarchy,” she said. “No kingpin. No lieutenant structure. It’s modular. Cells that don’t know each other fully.”Cole frowned. “A hydra.”“Worse,” Ethan said. “A mirror. They learne

Ethan didn’t announce the shift.He didn’t mobilize the city, didn’t issue warnings, didn’t posture.He simply stopped reacting.The Whisper noticed within hours.Their surveillance nodes—subtle, patient, nearly invisible—began to vanish. Not destroyed. Not hacked.Unanswered.One by one, blind spots appeared where none should exist.Evelyn watched the data with quiet awe. “They’re losing sightlines. Not all at once. Just enough to make them doubt their map.”“That’s intentional,” Ethan said. “Fear grows fastest in uncertainty.”Mia stood beside him, arms folded. “You’re hunting them.”“Yes,” he replied. “But not directly.”He reached into the shadows—not spreading them across the city, but folding them into narrow vectors that slipped between networks, people, and probability.Ethan wasn’t dismantling the Whisper.He was isolating it.Cole returned from the field, breathing hard. “They’re scrambling. Cells going dark without explanation. Others overcompensating—moving faster than the