The Ghost Consigliere

CHAPTER 7: Life Support

Beep… beep… beep.

The rhythmic pulse of the EKG filled the silence like an artificial heartbeat. The air inside the armored van felt stifling, thick with the smell of metal, sharp disinfectant, and dried blood.

Elias lay rigid on a fold-out cot bolted to the van’s floor. His skin was pale as wax. A thin, clear oxygen tube looped around his ears, feeding air directly into his nostrils.

Along the left side of his neck, the mark of hell itself, blackened veins from the Ghost Rot spread beneath his skin like poisonous roots.

Elias slowly opened his eyes. His vision blurred, taking several seconds to focus on the gray steel ceiling above him. The first sensation he felt was numbness. Not just his legs. This time, he couldn’t feel his left hand.

He tried to move his fingers. Nothing. His left hand, veined with black, lay motionless beside him, just like his legs.

“Your nerves collapsed, El.”

Sloane’s voice came from the corner of the van. She sat cross-legged on the steel floor, wearing a new pair of jeans cut at the knees. Her left thigh was tightly bandaged. A large backpack rested in her lap as she packed ammunition boxes and medical supplies into it.

“Your left hand is temporarily dead,” she continued, not looking up. “I had to inject two ampules of epinephrine straight into your heart an hour ago to bring your pulse back. That grenade blast overloaded your nervous system. If you use that insane power again in this condition, you won’t just be paralyzed. Your brain will melt.”

Elias tried to sit up, but his body refused. He sank back against the thin pillow, staring at her. His breathing was heavy, assisted by the oxygen line.

“You’re packing,” he said hoarsely.

“Yeah.” Sloane zipped the bag shut with a sharp motion and stood, favoring her injured leg. She looked at him, her expression cold and unreadable. “This mission is suicide. I’m sorry, but our deal is off.”

Elias said nothing. His eyes stayed locked on her face.

“You think this is some action movie?” Sloane’s voice rose, breaking the stillness of the van. She pointed at the life support equipment beside him. “Dante isn’t some low-tier thug. He sent five tactical operators with machine guns. He almost blew my head off. And you… you blew yourself up through a corpse until your heart stopped! You’re a walking corpse, Elias! And I’m not getting buried with you!”

Sloane slung the backpack over her shoulder and turned toward the rear door. Her hand gripped the handle.

“Sloane.”

His voice was soft, but it trembled with raw desperation.

She stopped, but did not turn.

“If you leave…” Elias swallowed, suppressing the pain in his chest. With his braced right hand, he pulled the oxygen tube from his nose. “Kill me now.”

Sloane spun around, eyes blazing. “Are you insane? Put that back on!”

“I said kill me now!” Elias shouted, his voice cracking into a violent cough. He slammed his right hand against the metal cot. “Take your gun and put a bullet in my head! Because if you leave me here, my father will find me. He’ll drag me back to that hell of a house. He’ll strap me into this damn wheelchair, and I’ll just sit there watching him burn everything while he laughs!”

Tears welled in Elias’s reddened eyes, but they were not tears of sorrow. They were the tears of a man whose soul was trapped in a rotting prison of flesh. A man who had finally found a weapon, only for his body to betray him.

“I refuse to die at my family’s hands in a wheelchair,” Elias hissed. “So do it, Sloane. Draw your gun and end it. Or I swear, I’ll hijack the first corpse that walks past this van, and I’ll hunt you down until you’re dead.”

Sloane stared at him. The van seemed to shrink, filled with suffocating tension.

She watched his chest rise and fall unevenly. She saw the black veins crawling along his neck, and the hatred burning in his eyes. In that moment, she did not see a crippled mafia heir. She saw herself.

Three years ago, when her unit had been slaughtered by Vancroft, she had lain beneath the bodies of her comrades. Covered in blood, helpless, praying for a stray bullet to end her life. She had been discarded. Broken. Just like him.

Sloane exhaled slowly and dragged a hand across her face.

She dropped the backpack onto the steel floor with a heavy thud.

Then she walked back to the cot, took the oxygen tube from his hand, and shoved it back into his nose, a little rougher than necessary.

“Your pay is going to be insane, boss. Remember that,” she muttered, adjusting the oxygen valve.

Elias looked at her, his breathing gradually stabilizing. A faint smile touched the corner of his lips. “I’ll give you the entire Vancroft empire if you want.”

Sloane let out a short laugh and pulled over a folding chair, sitting beside him. “An empire that’s currently trying to carve us up. Great.”

Silence settled over the van again. This time, it was not suffocating. It was the quiet of two outcasts who had finally found a reason to trust each other. The alliance of the broken was sealed.

“Your hand will recover in a few days if you don’t force your way into another corpse’s head,” Sloane said, breaking the silence, her gaze drifting to his neck. “But those black veins are permanent. How bad does it hurt?”

“Like hot worms crawling under my skin,” Elias murmured. “But as long as I don’t lose connection when the host is completely destroyed, it won’t hit me like before. I just need a body within a hundred meters.”

Sloane went quiet, her tactical mind already working. She glanced at the small monitor connected to their stolen police frequency scanner.

“We can’t keep hiding,” she said. “Your bookstore is ash now. Dante knows we escaped in this van. He’ll have his people sweeping all of Saint-Bastian.”

“Then we don’t hide.” Elias turned his head toward the monitor. His gaze sharpened, cold and calculating again. “The enemy is most vulnerable when they think they’ve already won.”

“You want to strike back? In your condition?”

“Dante has to die,” Elias said without hesitation. “He’s my father’s smartest lieutenant. His mind is too dangerous if we let him keep hunting us. If we cut off his head now, Vancroft goes blind in the lower sector. And it sends a message.”

Sloane smiled, a thin, dangerous predator’s smile. She liked this kind of suicide plan.

She stood, pushing the chair aside, and walked to the van’s control panel. With a few inputs, the monitor flickered to life, displaying the blueprint of a building.

“This is The Apex, an exclusive nightclub in Sector Two. Dante’s main base,” she said, pointing at the screen. “Four floors. He’s always in the VIP lounge on the third. Ground floor is packed with armed security and high-profile guests. You won’t get through the front door without starting a war.”

“I don’t need the front door,” Elias replied. “I just need ninety-five meters. Park the van as close as possible without being seen. Then we use a Trojan horse.”

“And you need your first corpse for infiltration,” Sloane cut in, eyes gleaming. She tapped the suppressed rifle lying nearby. “Long-range shot. I drop one guard from outside, you take the body, you walk in through the back.”

“Exactly.”

“This is insane, El. If your connection snaps inside that building, you’ll seize up in this van and I won’t be able to save you. You’re risking your life just to send a message?”

Elias closed his eyes, feeling the crawling heat pulse through the veins in his neck.

“Not a message, Sloane,” he whispered, his voice as cold as ice beneath the storm. “A declaration of war.”

One week later.

Heavy rain pounded the roof of The Apex, the most luxurious nightclub in Sector Two of Saint-Bastian. The distant thrum of electronic music echoed faintly into the narrow alley behind the building, where piles of soaked garbage bags overflowed.

At the far end of that alley, exactly ninety-five meters from the club’s steel back door, an armored van sat in darkness. Its faded decals read “Pipe Cleaning Services.” The engine was off, but the electronics inside were alive.

Inside the van, the EKG beeped steadily. Elias lay on his modified cot, his breathing calm. He had recovered enough. Though his left hand remained weak, he was ready to pull the chain of death again.

In the driver’s seat, Sloane fitted a long suppressor onto the barrel of her custom sniper rifle. She cracked open the van’s sunroof slightly, letting in the cold night air and the scent of rain. Her eye aligned with the scope, locking onto a target.A bulky guard stood outside the back door, smoking.