Page 7 of Ashes to Ashes

Ask him what happened to your parents. Ask him why they hid you.

My phone buzzes before we reach base. Screen illuminating my face in corpse-blue light.

Report directly to my office. No stops. —G

No shower. No chance to examine whatever the hell is happening to my arm.

No time to process the woman in the forest with her impossible eyes and floating hair who called me by a name that wasn’t mine.

A name that’s haunted my dreams since childhood. Whispered in those liminal moments between sleep and waking. Tucked between fragmentary images I’ve spent decades convincing myself were just imagination.

Davis’s eyes drop to my hands. White knuckles. Shaking fingers. He’s memorizing my tells. “What’s got you rattled?”

I glance at him—six-foot-two of solid muscle with a boyish face that makes people underestimate him. His dark eyes, usually warm with poorly concealed attraction, now narrow with concern beneath cropped brown hair still perfectly regulation-neat despite our mission. The gear somehow looks natural on him, like he was born wearing Kevlar instead of a onesie.

Everything about Davis is steady. Dependable. Normal.

Everything I should want.

Everything that suddenly feels alien, wrong, other.

“Graves wants me. Immediately.” My voice emerges hollow. Like someone speaking from the bottom of a well.

His eyebrows lift. “Must be important if you can’t even shower first.” His gaze flicks to dirt smeared across my uniform. The tear in my sleeve where—God, is that glowing?

I yank the fabric down with fingers that feel both numb and hypersensitive, heart slamming against my sternum hard enough to bruise bone. “Sometimes timing is everything,” I manage. Voice fracturing on the last syllable. I clear my throat, try to reset the mask I’ve worn so long it should be easier than this.

“Timing.” He turns to study me fully. “Or something else entirely.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’ve seen what happens to assets who become too... unique.” His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “They tend to get fast-tracked into situations above their clearance level.”

The transport pulls into the underground facility we officially call Paranormal Operations Division—POD to those with clearance. To the outside world, we’re a specialized counter-terrorism unit.

Not entirely a lie, depending on how you define terrorism.

The compound’s iron infrastructure hums against my bones. Every fluorescent light feels like needles behind my eyes.

“Good hunting out there, Ghost,” Agent Kowalski calls as I cross the main operations floor. Her smile stops at her mouth—something wary in eyes that flick away too quickly.

The team watches me cross the operations floor. Conversations pause. Eyes slide away. They sense something different. Like animals catching a scent they can’t place but know means danger.

I nod in acknowledgment, maintaining the professional distance that’s earned my reputation. Respected but isolated. Competent but unknowable.

Safe.

The outer office to Graves’ sanctum stands empty—his assistant conspicuously absent despite the late hour. Not a good sign. I knock once and enter without waiting for permission.

Colonel Marcus Graves doesn’t look up from the folder on his desk—my folder.

Ashlyn Morgan: classified level eight.

Files stacked beside it, all marked with my name. Different years. Different ages.

He’s built like a man who still does his own dirty work despite the silver hair and desk job. The prosthetic right hand—metal fingers that can touch what would burn human flesh—taps arrhythmically against the desk surface.

A sharp knock interrupts before Graves can speak.

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