All Chapters of The Ghost Consigliere : Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
77 chapters
Chapter 11: Steel Lungs and Empty Promises
Hhhhk... khhhk...The sound of breathing came like a broken diesel engine being forced to start underwater.On a folding cot in the corner of an old garage in Sector Three, Elias’s chest rose and fell at an unnatural pace. Cold sweat drenched his pale face. The thin oxygen tube in his nose was no longer doing much. The air around him felt thick, but his lungs refused to absorb it."Hold on, El. Open your mouth, breathe through your mouth!" Sloane shouted under his breath, his hands expertly flicking a syringe.Two days after Dante’s death on the nightclub rooftop, Elias’s body had finally come to collect the price of that massacre. His nervous system was burning from the inside from the effects of Ghost Rot. The black veins spreading across the left side of his neck now throbbed painfully, as if strangling his trachea.Jab.Sloane drove the syringe filled with a high-dose corticosteroid straight into the side of Elias’s neck.Elias convulsed for a moment, his eyes rolling wide, before
CHAPTER 12: Infiltration Inside a Coffin
The grinding sound of a massive cargo truck’s tires against wet asphalt dominated the silence of the night on the outskirts of the Lower Sector. Rain poured hard, washing the remnants of pollution from the air of Saint-Bastian.Inside the rear container of the truck, marked with fake plates, total darkness reigned. The only sound was the droning hum of a giant refrigeration unit blasting freezing air in every direction. The temperature inside had dropped to minus five degrees Celsius.Amid rows of thick wooden crates packed with frozen slabs of beef, one crate looked slightly different. There was no slaughterhouse stamp on its surface.Inside that narrow wooden box, Elias was shivering violently.His lips had turned blue. His pale skin was now nearly as white as snow. Trapped in his wheelchair, he hugged knees he could no longer feel. Resting in his lap was a small emergency oxygen canister. He wore a thick parka, but the cold still felt like invisible needles piercing through the fab
Chapter 13: Hacker of Flesh and Bone
Twitch.Roman’s gloved index finger moved slightly. Inside the dark loading bay, lit only by the small flashlight beams of his two comrades, the motion looked unnatural.“Hold on, he’s still breathing!” one guard shouted, pressing at Roman’s neck, trying to find a carotid pulse. “His neck bones shifted, but, ”Before the guard could finish the sentence, Roman’s hand shot upward and clamped tightly onto the front of the man’s ballistic vest.“Roman? You’re fighting through the pa, ”KRAK!Roman’s corpse sat upright in an instant.His head hung ninety degrees to the right, limp and dead because the supporting bones were shattered. But his strength was not dead at all. Using the last remaining blood flow in the host body, Elias forced Roman’s two hands to twist the kneeling guard’s head.The crack of breaking bone echoed sharply through the darkness.The guard died without ever managing to scream. His eyes bulged, and his body collapsed on top of Roman.“What the hell!”The second guard
CHAPTER 14: Blood in the Narrow Corridor
DOOOM!The blast of the shotgun was deafening. The buckshot tore through the chest of a Spetsnaz guard who had been about to shoot Sloane in the back from behind a door. The man was thrown backward into a steel rack, his blood spraying across the grim walls of the meat processing corridor.Sloane threw aside the shotgun she had just taken. It was empty. Her breathing came fast and ragged. Concrete dust and blood smeared her face.“Fall back, Cal! Fall back to the generator room!” Sloane shouted. Her right hand drew a suppressed pistol as she kept firing toward the emergency stairwell. Pfut! Pfut!On the upper floor of the meat packing plant, panic erupted. The Obsidian Vault alarm wailed, followed by the thunder of dozens of military boots rushing up from below, sweeping every inch of the building in pursuit of the two impostor technicians.Sloane shifted behind a concrete wall. She glanced at Caleb.The one-eyed man was slumped against a stack of wooden pallets, his breathing like we
CHAPTER 15: Embracing a Friend’s Death
Inside the wooden coffin kept at minus five degrees, Elias’s breath caught for a moment. The frozen air seemed to drive straight through his chest and into his heart. His blood-covered hands gripped the wheels of his chair so tightly his knuckles ached. Sloane’s words had just torn apart the ego that had swelled sky-high only moments ago, shredding it into tiny pieces.Caleb was gone.Elias swallowed, his throat full of sharp gravel. He had only known the one-eyed man for a few hours. Caleb had been an arrogant smuggler who charged an insane price for his ventilator, but Caleb had also been the man willing to break through Vancroft security to save Elias’s life. And more than that... Caleb had been the anchor of Sloane’s sanity.“Sloane.” Elias’s voice trembled through the earpiece. Pure panic replaced his arrogance. “Get away from there. I’ll take over a guard’s corpse downstairs and bring the squad up to you.”“No need to bother, Boss,” Sloane whispered faintly.Upstairs, Sloane sti
CHAPTER 16: The Ghost’s Rampage, The Machine’s Tears
Caleb’s massive body launched forward like a machine with no brakes. Blood and bodily fluids sprayed across the concrete floor each time his heavy feet struck the ground.The Spetsnaz guard whose rifle barrel was still trapped in Caleb’s grip had no time to pull away. Elias, using one hundred percent of the dead muscles’ strength, yanked the rifle downward, dragging the guard toward him at the same time.BAM!Elias smashed Caleb’s forehead into the man’s face. The enemy’s tactical visor shattered, slicing open the guard’s skin. The Russian screamed, but Elias gave him no mercy. Caleb released the rifle barrel, then drove a blood-soaked uppercut upward with his right hand.The guard’s lower jaw shattered instantly. His neck snapped backward, and his body flew into the hallway wall.“Fall back! Shoot its head!” the Vault Master shouted from the rear line. His normally calm voice now carried panic at the sight of a lifeless corpse moving that fast.The two remaining guards immediately ra
CHAPTER 17: Bloody Harvest in the Black Vault
Tick... Tick... Tick...The sound of blood dripping from bodies strewn across the corridor rang clearly through the silence, creating a monotonous and terrifying rhythm. Black and red stains smeared the concrete walls, mixed with flecks of brain matter.Sloane still sat on the cold floor of the electrical control room. Caleb’s stiff body rested in her lap. Her tears had dried, leaving dirty tracks across her pale face. The former combat medic’s eyes were empty now, staring straight into the corridor without blinking.As if her soul had died with her oldest friend. But slowly, her survivor’s instinct returned.She could not stay here. The alarms had stopped, but Vancroft reinforcements or Saint-Bastian police would already be on the way.Sloane gently lowered Caleb’s head onto the concrete floor, removed her shredded coverall jacket, and draped it over the one-eyed man’s face.“I’ll finish this for you, Cal,” Sloane whispered without emotion. Her voice was flat and cold as ice.She ros
CHAPTER 18: Burial Without a Headstone
A light drizzle fell slowly, casting a gray veil over a barren stretch of land on the outskirts of Saint-Bastian’s Industrial Sector. Smoke from distant chemical factory stacks made the air smell like rotten eggs and rust.In the middle of that empty ground, Sloane stood gripping an iron shovel. Her body was wrapped in a long black raincoat. Her face was hidden beneath the shadow of the hood. Raindrops struck the large black umbrella set on the ground, sheltering a mound of red earth that had just been dug and filled again.A burial without a headstone, without prayers, accompanied only by the sound of rain.Three meters from the grave, Elias sat silently in his wheelchair. His body was wrapped in a thick, filthy wool blanket. A pair of clear oxygen tubes once again looped around his ears and into his nose, fed directly by a portable ventilator resting in his lap.Elias had passed the half-comatose stage.But physically, he was ruined.The black Ghost Rot veins that had once crawled o
CHAPTER 19: The Ghost’s Signature
The fifth-floor investigation room at Saint-Bastian Central Police Headquarters reeked of stale coffee, thick cigarette smoke, and cheap paper. Inspector Kael Thorne stood silently before a giant bulletin board layered in green cork. His sharp eyes moved across dozens of horrifying Polaroids pinned up at random.The left side of the board was filled with photos from the crime scene at Club The Apex. Dante Vancroft’s shattered body on the helipad platform, piles of guards with torn ballistic vests on the stairwell, and the ruined faces of other guards who had shot each other at close range.The right side was covered in much fresher horror, the Obsidian Vault crime scene. Photos of the red-beret commander whose head had been blown apart by his own men, photos of the Vault Master with a combat knife through his throat, and of course, the photo of the vault corridor with its massive door hanging wide open, not a single dollar left inside.Thorne connected the two massacre sites with stra
CHAPTER 20: The Wheelchair Throne and the Hunting Dog
Pssssshh... click.The hiss of pneumatics broke the silence inside the underground bunker in Sector Three, now converted into their new headquarters. The air smelled of synthetic oil and disinfectant, far cleaner and more sterile than the basement of the old antique bookstore.Elias sat quietly, his right hand guiding a small matte-black joystick mounted on the armrest. His wheelchair rolled forward without the slightest squeak. Hydraulic shock absorbers beneath the frame exhaled softly, smoothing every vibration from the uneven concrete floor. At the lower back of the chair, a kevlar-plated metal box hummed steadily, a portable medical-grade ventilator connected directly to the clear oxygen tubes running into Elias's nose."How's the ride, Boss?" Sloane emerged from behind her mechanical workbench. She wiped grease from her hands with a dirty rag. "I recalibrated the suspension. If we have to run over broken roads, your spine won't feel like it's snapping anymore."Elias stopped the