2025-11-24 14:28:13
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CHAPTER EIGHT: THE MAN WHO SHOULDN’T BE ALIVE
The safehouse sat on the edge of a dead industrial district, hidden behind rusted shipping containers and a row of abandoned vehicles burned down to their metal bones. Adrian Kaine moved through the shadows, boots silent against the cracked ground. The place smelled of rot, old oil, and secrets.A perfect hiding spot.Or a perfect grave.The coordinates had come from a scrambled message intercepted during the night, an encrypted note marked with a codename Adrian hadn’t heard in almost two years.“Specter.”A name that should not exist.A man who should not breathe.A soldier who died with the rest of the Shadow Unit.Adrian stopped at the safehouse door, listening.No movement.No heartbeat within range.Only the cold bite of silence.He pushed the door open.The darkness inside swallowed everything. Dust floated in the air like dead memories. Exposed wires hung from the ceiling. A cracked table sat in the center, littered with old surveillance photos—photos of him.Adrian stepped cl
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE BLOOD OATH
Rain slammed against the windows of the abandoned warehouse, each drop shattering like tiny bullets. The building was dark, save for a single flickering lamp in the center of the dusty floor. Adrian Kaine stood beneath it, stripped of emotion, blood still drying on his knuckles from the fight that brought him here.He had killed four men in the alley behind the harbor.All of them had the same symbol tattooed behind their ear.All of them belonged to Cipher’s private kill unit.He wiped his blood-stained hand on his shirt and stepped deeper into the warehouse. Everything smelled of rust and old oil. The silence was so thick it pressed against his skin.It was the perfect place for a meeting.Or an ambush.With Cipher, it was always both.A low metallic click echoed behind him.Adrian didn’t turn.He didn’t have to.He knew the rhythm of that breathing.The weight shift.The scent of gun oil mixed with cold sweat.Marcus Hale stepped from the shadows.Same man who left him to die in Ch
CHAPTER SIX: THE MAN WHO SHOULD HAVE DIED
Night settled over the outskirts of the city like a thick, suffocating fog. The industrial district lay quiet, abandoned warehouses, rusted cranes, broken windows that stared out like dead eyes. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.Except him.Adrian Kaine stood in the shadows beneath an old loading gantry, the cold wind biting into his skin through the torn sleeves of his shirt. His ribs still ached from the explosion hours ago, and the dried blood across his knuckles felt like a second skin, tight and cracking. But pain was a luxury he no longer allowed himself.Pain meant he was still alive.Anger meant he still had purpose.He checked the magazine in his rifle, then raised his head slightly. A convoy approached in the distance, four armored SUVs, engines rumbling low like beasts in the dark.They were coming exactly where he wanted them.Inside the last SUV was the man he needed: Colonel Mason Kade, the government officer who signed the orders that sent Shadow Unit to their death. The
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 be
CHAPTER FOUR: THE MAN IN THE BLACK MASK
Night dropped over the city like a curtain pulled too fast.Adrian moved through the old industrial district with a limp in his left leg and blood drying across his jaw. His ribs throbbed from the explosion, but pain only sharpened him. Pain reminded him he was still alive.He reached an abandoned railway yard, the meeting point Elias Ward forced into his pocket before dying.A message written in the Commander’s handwriting:“If you survived… come here. Midnight.”Adrian didn’t trust it.He didn’t trust anything anymore.But Ward was the only person who might still hold a piece of the truth.A piece Cipher hadn’t managed to burn.The air smelled like rust and rain.Wind rattled chains hanging from cranes long out of use.Adrian scanned every rooftop, every shadow, every broken rail car.Nothing moved.Which meant danger was waiting.He stepped between two rusted containers, boots silent on gravel. His hand brushed the pistol at his hip. Every sense stretched thin.ThenA faint click.
CHAPTER THREE: THE MARK OF A DEAD MAN
The forest swallowed the world in darkness as Adrian pushed deeper into the night, his breath steady, his mind cold. The blast still rang in his bones, the fire still burned behind his eyes. He had crawled out of death again, but not clean.Marcus Hale.The one man he trusted with his life turned his gun on him.And not just for money.Not just for orders.Marcus was working with Cipher.Adrian’s hands curled into fists as he walked. The cold air cut through his clothes, but it couldn’t reach the heat boiling under his skin. Betrayal had a taste, metallic, sharp, unforgettable.It was the same taste he had swallowed the night his team died.He stopped under a tall pine tree, listening.Stillness.Silence.But not peace.Someone was following him.He shifted his weight without sound, stepping behind a fallen log. His fingers touched the knife on his belt, the only weapon he had left after the explosion.A crunch of leaves broke the quiet.Adrian waited.A shadow moved between the trees
