The Ghost Consigliere

CHAPTER 22: The Voice from a Torn Throat

TRATATATATA!

A barrage of assault rifle fire erupted from the shadows of the station’s iron pillars, ripping through the darkness like a chain of lightning strikes.

Inspector Kael Thorne reacted on pure predator instinct. Before the first bullet pierced where he stood, he had already dropped to the ground and rolled fast behind a steel support pillar near the tracks.

Crack! Concrete fragments rained down on him as 5.56mm rounds hammered his cover without pause.

“Police! Drop your weapons!” Thorne shouted, his voice swallowed by the roar of gunfire. He killed his tactical flashlight, drew his revolver, and fired back blindly. BANG! BANG!

Empty. His shots hit nothing.

“He’s alone! Move in and finish him!” the Black Dog commander roared from the far end of the platform.

Eight Vancroft mercenaries began tightening the circle. They advanced in a fan formation, sealing every escape route. Thorne checked the cylinder of his revolver. Four rounds left. Eight enemies with automatic weapons and full armor. Any math said this was a dead end.

Then their attention shifted.

Behind two advancing militiamen, a thin shadow rose from its own pool of blood.

Ren’s body, his jacket soaked black, staggered upright. His neck was nearly severed, his head tilted back at an unnatural angle, barely held in place by shredded muscle. Blood streamed down his chest in a steady flow.

One of the militiamen stepped backward and bumped into him. He turned, startled, rifle snapping up. “What the hell?! Ren’s not—”

The sentence never finished.

Ren’s thin arm shot forward with mechanical speed. He grabbed the man’s belt, ripped a tactical knife free, and in one broken but forceful motion, drove it up beneath the NVG helmet, through the jaw, into the brain.

The man died instantly.

Elias wasted no time. Using his host’s hands, he pulled a Beretta from the dead man’s holster, twisted Ren’s torso, and aimed straight at the back of the second soldier three meters ahead.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Three precise shots punched through the gaps in the man’s armor. Spine shattered. Heart torn open. The second enemy collapsed onto the steel tracks.

Inside the armored van, eighty-eight meters from the platform.

“Uhk… khhh!”

Elias coughed up fresh blood into his lap.

The pain from Ghost Rot had reached something beyond reason. This was not the pain of bullets or blades. He felt his own throat being split open. He could not swallow. Each reflexive breath taken by Ren’s corpse forced air through the gaping wound in its neck, creating a burning, acidic agony that seared through Elias’s larynx.

“El! Your heart rate is spiking!” Sloane shouted from the driver’s seat, staring in horror at the flashing EKG. “You’re using a body with a severed airway! Your brain thinks you’re suffocating! Cut the connection now!”

“N-no.” Elias forced out the word, dragging shallow breaths through his nose. His red eyes stayed locked on the drone feed. “The detective… needs me.”

Inside the station, chaos erupted.

The Black Dog commander and his remaining men turned, shaken. Two of their own were dead. The informant who should have been a corpse now stood upright, holding a smoking pistol.

“He’s still alive! Shoot that bastard!” the commander roared, swinging his rifle toward Ren.

TRATATATATA!

Bullets tore into Ren’s body. His oversized jacket shredded apart. But the host did not falter. No scream, no hesitation.

Elias let the corpse become a sponge for bullets. He advanced through the storm, raised the Beretta, and fired again. BANG! One shot drilled through the forehead of a third Black Dog.

Behind his pillar, Kael Thorne stared, stunned. The man who never believed in ghosts felt his sanity fracture. His cowardly informant now moved like something immortal, slaughtering elite killers without blinking.

“That’s not Ren,” Kael rasped. “Damn ghost.”

Realizing bullets would not stop it, the commander barked an order to a man in the rear. “Fire the rocket! Blow him apart with an RPG! Now!”

The soldier slung an RPG-7 from his back, dropped to one knee, and aimed straight at Ren.

Elias saw the launcher through the corpse’s eyes. He knew the body would be obliterated. There was no time. He had to get Kael out.

He twisted Ren’s ruined legs, limping forward through gunfire toward the pillar where Kael hid.

“Stop right there!” Kael aimed his revolver at Ren’s blood-covered head, his hand shaking. “Whoever’s in there, back off or I’ll blow your brains out!”

Ren stopped one meter from the barrel.

Elias fought the unbearable pain in his own throat. He had to warn him. He had to force sound through destroyed vocal cords.

Inside the van, Elias dug his fingers into his thigh, trying to redirect the agony. He opened his real mouth and pushed a signal through.

Ren’s corpse opened its mouth.

Black blood bubbled and spilled from the torn throat. The shredded vocal cords scraped against broken cartilage. The sound that came out was not human. It was like a warped tape dragged across metal. Harsh, cracked, horrifying.

“Fo… llo… me.” The mechanical rasp echoed in Kael’s ears, cold enough to freeze bone. Ren’s whitening eyes locked onto him. “If… you… want… to… live… De-tec-tive.”

Before Kael could process it, a sharper sound cut through the air.

WUUUSSSHH!

The RPG fired.

The missile streaked forward, trailing smoke, racing straight for the pillar.

Elias knew it could not be avoided. The blast radius would kill Kael.

He made his choice.

With every ounce of strength left in the corpse, he lunged forward and slammed into Kael, hurling him off the platform and down onto the lower tracks, out of the blast zone.

A second later, the rocket hit.

BLAAARRR!

The explosion turned half the station into hell. Fire swallowed the pillar. Rusted steel and concrete tore apart like wet paper. Shockwaves hurled burning debris in every direction, while shattered glass rained down like knives.

Ren’s body was obliterated midair. From the waist up, it vanished in a flash of heat.

At that exact instant, Elias’s necrotic connection snapped. Not by choice, but because the brain anchoring it had ceased to exist.

Zzzt… BOOOM!

Inside the van.

Elias’s body arched violently off the wheelchair, the safety straps straining to their limit.

“AAARGHHH!”

The scream tore from him, raw and broken. It was not just his voice, but a throat that felt like it had been drowned in molten lava.

The memory of annihilation flooded his cortex. Burning, tearing, disintegration in a fraction of a second. His eyes bulged, the black veins of Ghost Rot swelling and bursting beneath his skin, spreading dark bruises across his face.

Thick black blood poured from his nose and mouth, staining the ventilator mask. The machine shrieked an alarm as his breathing spiraled out of control.

“Elias!” Sloane let go of the wheel, spun around, and grabbed his shoulders as he convulsed. “Open your eyes! Don’t bite your tongue!”

Inside the station.

Kael Thorne coughed violently. Dust and sulfur smoke filled his lungs.

He had been thrown six meters, landing hard on jagged stones between the rails. His head rang, his ears buzzing as blood trickled down his collar. He tried to rise, but sharp pain in his ribs forced him back down.

He looked up.

Through the smoke, he saw the aftermath. Where he had stood seconds ago, there was now a burning crater, and a single severed leg still wearing a worn shoe.

He had just been saved by a man whose throat had been cut open.

No forensic theory could explain this.

“Sweep the blast zone! Find the detective’s body!” the commander’s voice rasped through the haze.

Kael clenched his teeth and forced himself to crawl, searching blindly for his revolver.

Bootsteps approached.

The Black Dog commander and four surviving men emerged from the smoke. The commander held his rifle in one hand, Ren’s blood still dripping from the curved blade in the other. He saw Kael on the ground and smirked behind his balaclava.

“I’ll admit it, that ghost trick was annoying,” he said with a low chuckle, spitting toward the severed leg. “Mr. Gideon expected something strange. That’s why he told me to bring heavy weapons. Not to kill that whining informant, but to kill anything that tried to save you, Inspector.”

Kael swallowed, staring back with defiance. “You Vancroft dogs never had the guts to fight fair.”

“This isn’t the Wild West, Inspector.” The commander cocked his rifle and aimed straight at Kael’s chest. “This is Vancroft’s city.”

His finger tightened on the trigger.

Kael closed his eyes.

Inside the van.

Elias was still choking on his own blood, his vision spinning. The EKG beside him screamed in erratic rhythms.

Sloane had just cleared blood from the ventilator line, allowing him to take a ragged breath.

“They killed him,” Elias rasped, clutching her sleeve weakly. “The detective’s dead.”

Sloane glanced at the drone feed. The commander’s rifle was already trained on Kael Thorne.

She knew the path to the station was blocked by burning debris. If Kael died, they lost their only access to police intel. They would never track Gideon. The city would burn.

“Damn it,” Sloane muttered.

She did not hesitate.

She released Elias, jumped into the driver’s seat, and twisted the ignition.

VROOOM!

Elias turned, panic cutting through his haze. “W-what are you doing?!”

“I told Caleb I’d never leave anyone behind again,” Sloane said coldly. Her brown eyes burned with the reckless resolve of someone ready to die. “Hold on, boss. I’m going to pick him up.”

She slammed the accelerator to the floor.

The armored van’s tires shrieked against wet asphalt, then surged forward like a charging beast, cutting through the rain and heading straight for the station’s crumbling brick wall.

“SLOANE!” Elias shouted.

BAMMMM—KRAAAAK!