THE GHOST PROTOCOL

CHAPTER FIVE: THE DEAD MAN’S TRAIL

The night dragged itself across the ruined industrial district like something wounded, wheezing between broken brick walls and rusted steel frames. Smoke from the hotel explosion still hung over the skyline, thick, dark, suffocating, the kind that clung to lungs and skin long after the flames died.

Adrian Kaine didn’t slow down.

Not even as blood dripped from his shoulder and slid under the fabric of his tactical shirt.

Not even as his ribs ached from the blast and his ears still rang.

He moved through the shadows with the same cold precision he had been trained with years ago, years long before betrayal and blood rewrote his fate. His boots made no sound, his breathing stayed steady, and his eyes scanned every exit, every rooftop, every shadowed alley.

Most men who survived an explosion like that stumbled, crawled, begged for help.

Adrian wasn’t most men.

He was a dead man walking.

And dead men didn’t feel pain.

They only hunted.

He reached the far side of the district and stopped beside a collapsed warehouse, sinking behind the remains of a concrete pillar. Rain soaked his face as he dug a small metal shard from his arm with a knife, steady, silent, no flinch.

Behind him, distant sirens wailed and emergency drones zipped over the flaming remains of the hotel.

“Cipher knew,” Adrian muttered under his breath, voice low, almost swallowed by the wind. “He knew I’d come… and he sent Marcus to watch me burn.”

The name tasted like smoke and betrayal.

Marcus Hale.

A brother once.

Now an enemy wearing the same uniform Adrian once bled for.

Adrian clenched his jaw until it hurt. The rage simmering under his ribs was colder than ice.

Marcus had fired first.

Marcus had aimed to kill.

Marcus had given Cipher the confirmation Adrian feared,

That the ghost was alive.

And Cipher reacted fast. Too fast.

That meant one thing:

Adrian wasn’t hunting a man.

He was hunting a system.

He pulled the secure drive from his pocket, the one he salvaged from the ruins of Shadow Unit HQ. It was dented, cracked on one edge, but still intact.

This drive was the reason Cipher wanted him dead.

Somewhere in its encrypted walls was the truth.

If Adrian could open it, he’d rip the mask off the entire conspiracy.

But he needed someone who could break military encryption.

Someone is still breathing.

Someone who hadn’t betrayed him.

Which meant his list of candidates was very, very short.

He knew exactly where he had to go.

But first,

He needed to get out of the open.

Adrian rose and slipped deeper into the industrial maze, heading for the old freight tunnels beneath the city. His body protested with every step, shrapnel, bruised ribs, a burn across his back, but he pushed it all aside. Pain was just another language he had learned to ignore.

He descended a rusted ladder into the underground.

The tunnels were silent except for dripping water and the hum of distant power lines. Rats scampered across old tracks. Darkness lived here, undisturbed, thick as tar.

It suited him perfectly.

He walked for several minutes, breathing in the cold underground air. His mind sharpened with each step.

He needed to get to Liora Sato, the only intelligence analyst who hadn’t turned on him before the massacre. She had been sidelined, transferred off Shadow Unit months before the ambush. Some said it was random.

Adrian didn’t believe in randomness

He believed in strategy.

And something told him she had been removed because she saw something she wasn’t supposed to.

She could break the drive.

She could give him answers.

But reaching her meant crossing half the city, and every surveillance drone and black-ops kill team would be hunting him.

Cipher wanted him erased.

Which meant Adrian had to move faster.

He reached a metal service door, forced it open, and stepped into a disused subway maintenance corridor. Yellowed maps and peeling safety posters lined the walls.

As he walked, the hum of distant electricity grew louder.

Then,

A faint crunch echoed behind him.

Adrian stopped.

Soundless breaths. Slow heartbeat. Controlled posture.

Someone else was down here.

He turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing.

Another crunch.

This time closer.

They were trying to move quietly.

Trying and failing.

Adrian dropped to one knee behind a support column and drew the knife strapped to his boot. The blade glinted dimly in the emergency lights.

Footsteps approached.

Soft.

Measured.

Then,

A voice whispered through the dark.

“Adrian…?”

His grip tightened.

That voice.

He knew it.

Captain Elias Ward.

His former commander.

A man who had ordered him into the ambush. A man who had signed off on the mission that killed the entire squad.

A man Adrian once trusted more than anyone else alive.

Ward stepped into the weak light, hands empty, face lined with exhaustion and guilt.

“You’re alive,” Ward breathed. “They said the explosion killed you.”

Adrian said nothing.

Didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Ward swallowed hard. “I need to talk to you. I can explain”

“Explain?” Adrian finally spoke, voice flat and cold. “Explain why you sent us into a kill box?”

Ward flinched visibly.

“I didn’t know,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “Adrian, I swear, I didn’t know it was a setup.”

Adrian stared at him, unreadable.

Ward continued, voice cracking, “Cipher contacted the command chain months before the mission. Files. Orders. Intel. Everything looked legitimate. I thought, God, I thought I was sending you on a standard clearance operation.”

Adrian stepped out from behind the column, knife still in hand.

“Marcus knew,” he said quietly. “He was on the ground with us. He watched my team burn.”

Ward’s eyes softened with something like pain. “Marcus wasn’t part of the original betrayal. He was… turned. After.”

Adrian’s jaw tightened again.

Ward took one slow step forward. “Listen to me. Everything changed after you disappeared. Cipher started controlling assignments. Moving personnel. Erasing records. Shadow Unit didn’t die in that explosion, it was buried.”

Adrian’s eyes darkened.

“Why come to me now?”

“Because,” Ward whispered, “you’re the only one Cipher fears.”

Before Adrian could respond,

A metallic click echoed through the corridor.

Ward’s eyes widened. “Move!”

He shoved Adrian aside just as a burst of automatic fire tore through the tunnel.

Adrian hit the ground and rolled behind a steel cabinet, drawing his pistol in one smooth motion.

More gunfire.

More footsteps.

Ward dove behind cover across the corridor.

A kill squad had found them.

Three attackers moved in formation, night-vision lenses glowing faintly green, suppressed rifles cutting through the dark.

“Adrian Kaine confirmed,” one whispered into his headset. “Orders from Cipher: shoot on sight.”

Adrian’s rage sharpened into focus.

Ward shouted through the noise, “They followed me! They must have tracked my comms!”

Adrian didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to.

He fired twice,clean headshots, dropping the first soldier instantly.

The other two responded with coordinated suppressing fire, forcing Adrian lower.

Ward tried to peek out to counterattack

A bullet ripped through his thigh.

He screamed and fell back against the wall, clutching the wound.

Adrian moved like a shadow slicing through darkness.

He sprinted across the corridor, sliding behind a power box, then launched himself forward in a burst of controlled violence.

He slammed into the second soldier, driving the knife between the plates of the man’s vest. Blood sprayed as Adrian twisted and ripped the blade free.

Before the body hit the floor, Adrian snatched the soldier’s rifle and fired at the last attacker.

The third man ducked behind a pillar. “We need backup, he’s”

Adrian’s bullet pierced the pillar and dropped him mid-sentence.

Silence returned.

Cold. Heavy. Final.

Ward groaned and pushed himself upright, face pale. “Adrian… The cipher won’t stop. You need to”

A soft beeping echoed in the tunnel.

Adrian froze.

The corpses each wore a small device on their vests.

Red lights blinking in sync.

A nearly silent warning.

Ward’s eyes widened in horror.

“Adrian… RUN!”

Adrian recognized the blinking pattern instantly.

Explosive relay chargers.

Timed detonation.

Trigger linked to loss of vitals.

Cipher hadn’t sent a kill squad.

He had sent walking bombs.

Adrian grabbed Ward by the collar and hauled him up.

Ward stumbled, gasping, “Go! Leave me”

Adrian didn’t hear him.

He was already moving.

He dragged Ward down the corridor at full speed as the beeping grew faster, shrill, unholy, echoing off the steel walls.

The tunnel shook.

Heat surged behind them.

Flames tore through the darkness.

Adrian pushed Ward ahead, hard, as the world detonated in a roar of fire and shattered concrete.

The shockwave hit like a hammer.

The ceiling split overhead.

Metal screamed.

The ground collapsed beneath Adrian’s feet.

Ward fell through the collapsing floor first, vanishing in a cloud of dust and fire.

Adrian tried to jump after him,

but the floor buckled violently.

And Adrian Kaine fell through blackness

plunging into a lower tunnel

as debris, flames, and steel crashed around him.

His last thought before impact was ice-cold:

Cipher didn’t just want him dead.

Cipher wanted him erased.

Darkness swallowed him.

And someone was waiting in the darkness below.