The Ghost Code

Chapter 4: Echoes in the Blood

2:11 P.M. at the Black site Bunker, Location Unknown

The room was cold. Concrete walls. One steel chair. A single light swinging above a woman bound at the wrists, her head slumped forward. Blood crusted her temple.

A man entered. Crisp suit. Ice-cold eyes.

“Agent Raines is alive,” he said.

The woman didn’t flinch.

“You said he was dead.”

She raised her head slowly.

Scars lined her jaw. Her left eye was a milky gray. But the other?

Sharp. Alert. Watching.

“I said what you needed to believe.”

He backhanded her. Hard. Her head snapped to the side, but her voice didn’t break.

“You can’t kill a man like Darius. Not unless he wants to die.”

“Where would he go next?”

She smiled through cracked lips.

“If he’s alive, then you’re already too late.”

2:42 P.M. at the Highway, En Route to Safehouse Echo

Darius’s shoulder throbbed as Amira patched him up again in the back seat. The stolen vehicle cruised under the radar, barely held together, its tires humming over empty asphalt.

He clutched a burner phone. News alerts rolled in.

FBI Denies Involvement in Ghost Code

Pentagon Launches Internal Inquiry

Congressman Graves Found Dead in D.C. Apartment

Darius muttered, “They’re cleaning house. Fast.”

Amira didn’t respond. Her brow was furrowed, face pale.

“You okay?” he asked.

She handed him a tablet. “I ran a data echo from the broadcast mirror.”

He scrolled through lines of recovered metadata. One tag stood out. Glowing red.

“ALPHA ZETA 13 – Subject: CASSIA RAINE.”

His blood turned to ice.

Cassia. His sister.

Dead. Six years. Confirmed. Identified by dental records after a Syndicate bombing.

He dropped the tablet. “No.”

Amira met his eyes.

“They lied to you, Darius. She’s alive.”

3:06 P.M. at the Echo Safehouse, Undisclosed Mountain Sector

The cabin was deep in the pines. Shielded from satellite, built underground, and armed with fail-safes that could wipe it from existence.

Darius stood at the map table, staring at the files Amira laid out.

Project Alpha Zeta. A human trial program tied to Ghost Code’s earliest days.

Test subjects were recruited—or taken—from ex-military families with above-average neurological compatibility.

Cassia’s name was at the top of the list.

“She was part of it,” Amira whispered. “And I think she’s still in it. You’ve seen how Ghost Code tracks bodies. Hers is still active in the system.”

He slammed his fist down. The table cracked.

“All this time… I thought she died because of me.”

“She didn’t. But if she’s alive, she’s not free. You know how they operate. She could be under chemical control. Memory wiped. Or worse…”

Darius took a breath. Measured. Controlled.

“Then we find her.”

3:38 P.M. the Surveillance Drone Feed, Operative Log

Subject: RAINES, D.

Location: Grid D7 — Mountain Sector 43

Status: CONFIRMED

Mission: TERMINATE

The feed shut off. A single word flashed across the tactical HUD.

DEPLOY.

4:12 P.M. the Forest Edge Near Echo Safehouse

Wind rustled the treetops.

Darius stepped out for air, gun at his side. But something felt off. Too still.

He turned just in time.

A blade hissed past his head.

He ducked. Rolled. Came up firing.

A figure darted from the trees—silent, fast, precise.

Black armor. Masked. Not a Reaper. Something worse.

A Shadow Operative.

Ghost Code’s elite.

The fight was vicious. Brutal. A dance of death under the pines. Darius took a slash across his ribs but countered with a knee to the gut, slamming the operative’s head into a tree.

He ripped the mask off.

A face stared back.

Scarred. Pale. Familiar.

“Cassia?”

She blinked. No recognition.

He hesitated. “Cassia, it’s me. It’s Darius.”

Her eyes twitched. Then a tremor passed through her.

She screamed.

Not in fear.

In agony.

She collapsed, seizing.

Amira ran out with an injector and stabbed it into her neck.

Cassia’s body went limp.

Darius fell to his knees beside her. “What did they do to you…”

Amira knelt too. “They buried her under commands. Someone activated her kill protocol.”

Darius looked down at the broken shell of his sister.

“We’re getting her back.”

4:50 P.M. at the Syndicate Central AI Core, Vault 09

The lead tech stared at the red alert across the neural grid.

SUBJECT C-13: NON-RESPONSIVE. UPLINK: DISCONNECTED.

He backed away from the console. Slowly.

Then the screen blinked.

A message appeared.

RAINES IS COMING.

5:12 P.M. at the Echo Safehouse Med Bay

Cassia lay still under the monitor’s glow. Her vitals were stabilizing, but her mind was fractured. Flashes of her old life fought against the programming she’d been forced to carry.

Darius sat beside her, barely blinking.

“Do you remember Mom’s garden?” he asked softly. “You used to sneak strawberries before they were ripe. Said the green ones tasted like rebellion.”

No answer.

He took her hand.

“I came back for you. I never stopped looking.”

A whisper.

“…Darius?”

His eyes snapped to hers.

Cassia blinked. Slowly. A tear escaped the corner of her eye.

“They made me forget.”

He gripped her tighter.

“They’ll never touch you again.”

5:40 P.M. at the Public Broadcast Intercept, Civilian Devices

Screens across the world flashed white. Then a new video began.

This time, it wasn’t data logs.

It was testimonies.

Survivors. Whistleblowers. Former Ghost Code engineers.

One by one, they appeared.

“We helped build it…”

“We didn’t know the scope…”

“They threatened our families…”

“I tried to stop them…”

“They used my daughter…”

Faces. Names. Stories.

And behind them, Darius’s voice.

“They erased their sins with silence. Not anymore.”

6:00 P.M. at the Global News Network Studios

The anchors could barely keep up. Headlines screamed across banners.

Cassia Raines Alive?

Whistleblower Confirms CIA-Backed Assassination Network

Anonymous Groups Offer Sanctuary to Darius Raines and Sister

Governments scrambled to issue statements. Leaks from inside Langston Vale’s old regime exploded across forums and dark web channels.

But in the silence between chaos, the people began to listen.

Really listen.

And they began to believe.

6:22 P.M. at the Mobile Command Unit, Somewhere Near Echo

Malik stood watching the feed from a secure satellite tap. He took a long drag of his cigarette, eyes fixed on Cassia’s face.

“She’s the key now,” he muttered.

The operative beside him raised an eyebrow. “To what?”

Malik smiled faintly.

“To making Darius do what no one else could. Finish it.”

7:00 P.M. at the Underground Tunnel Network, Off-Grid

Darius drove. Cassia asleep in the back seat, Amira beside him checking her laptop.

“Everything you released—it’s gone global,” she said. “Interpol. The Hague. Even the UN’s issuing a human rights investigation.”

He didn’t smile.

“We’re not done yet. Vale might be dead, but the machine’s still running.”

She nodded. “Then we pull the plug.”

“Where’s the core?”

Amira swallowed.

“There’s one location left. Vault 09. AI central. The heart of Ghost Code.”

Cassia stirred. Her voice was a whisper.

“I’ve seen it… in my dreams.”

Darius tightened his grip on the wheel.

“Then that’s where we go.”