Chapter 1: Ghost’s Return to Silence
"Mama...?"
The boy’s voice echoed in darkness—soft, frightened, and fading.
"Get away from me! Don’t touch him!"
The woman’s scream tore through the shadows. Her voice, blurry and desperate. Figures moved—faces unseen, muffled orders barked in a foreign tongue. The boy reached out, but hands pulled him away. A van door slammed. The world dissolved into gunmetal black.
"Ghost.. Ghost! Wake up!"
The voice jolted him from the depths of the nightmare. A second later, the blast of a grenade rocked the bunker—sandbags ripped apart, shrapnel bouncing off rusted metal and stone.
Miles jolted up with a gasp, instinctively rolling over as debris rained around him. His ears rang, but his hands moved quickly—checking his sidearm, knife sheath, communicator. His body knew the drill even if his mind was still echoing with a single word.
Mama.
He pushed it away, like he always did. For sixteen years, he’d done nothing else.
"Target’s moving through the north tunnel!" came the voice of Kade, his comrade. "Victor’s trying to escape!"
"Not today," Miles growled, pushing up from the ground and slipping his mask back on. In seconds, he was gone—just like a ghost.