Page 2 of Code Name: Hunter
The heat hits us like a wall, searing the backs of our necks, and shards of metal and glass rain down, pinging off the cobblestones as we sprint. The blast lights up the Prague skyline—and every inch of me screams we aren’t getting out of this alive. The force knocks me sideways, and I slam into a parked car, ears ringing, vision tunneling.
I look over my shoulder and see Wolfe shouting something I can’t hear, waving us forward. The last image I have of him is Wolfe pivoting, ducking down a side alley.
Then suddenly... Boom. The explosion is deafening. The blast punches the air out of my lungs, a hot, concussive fist that slams into my chest and rattles my teeth.
A flash of light—white-hot and blinding—swallows the alley as a building crumbles to the ground. Then comes the sound, a brutal, concussive whomp that shatters the air and hits like a battering ram to the chest. My ears ring, equilibrium is gone, and the world tilts sideways as the blast wave hurls me to the ground. For a moment, I don’t know which way is up—only that everything hurts. The impact knocks me off my feet, a pressure wave that folds the world inside itself. Hunter is dragging me by the arm out of the debris field, smoke in our lungs, fire snapping at our heels.
I glance down at Wolfe's tracker on my wrist, but it flatlines. And just like that, he’s gone. Vaporized.
I stare at the smoking alleyway, heart pounding against my ribs, waiting for his voice to crackle back through the air. A call sign. A curse. Anything. But the silence presses in—thick, final. I climb to my feet; my body moves, driven by training, but my mind can’t catch up. Not to this.
I loved him. Against all protocol, against instinct, against everything I’ve been taught, I let him in. He was supposed to be my constant. My anchor. The only thing in my goddamn life that felt real, and he’s gone. Nothing left but smoke and an ache that tunnels through my chest and makes it hard to breathe.
I stare into the space where he was, numb. No call sign. No blinking marker. Just... gone. Erased.
Grief will come later, but for now, it will only slow me down. And fear, hesitation, or lack of speed will get Hunter and me killed.
But even as grief claws at the edges of my mind, something doesn’t sit right.
My last glimpse of him—eyes fixed not on me or Hunter, but on something deeper in the alley—burns behind my eyelids. Wolfe was always precise. He never deviated from protocol, never made a move without backup or an exit plan. So why did he break formation? Why did he run into the alley alone? I can’t reconcile the man I knew with the man who made that call. He wouldn’t break protocol. Not unless he had no other choice. Or unless… he wasn’t the man I thought he was.
I feel the betrayal before I believe it. It’s like a fissure forming in my chest, too deep to trace and too early to call truth. I want to scream his name, demand a reason—but dead men don’t answer questions.
Right now, I can’t face the questions. But later, in the stillness and isolation of exile, I’ll replay this moment again and again—feeling it circle me like a vulture.
A lie beneath the ash? No. I can’t believe that. Not about Wolfe. What we had was real. It had to be. Whatever doubts creep in, I silence them. Because if he wasn’t the man I believed in…then I’ve never been anything more than a mark, and I cannot believe that about him.
I want to scream. I want to run back and find him, but I can’t. Because dead is dead. And that blast was designed to erase. No witnesses. No body. Just absence of life.
I stare at Hunter through a veil of smoke, the flicker of firelight from the wreckage casting him in sharp relief—suit torn, jaw clenched, eyes sweeping the murk like he’s cataloging every angle a shooter could use.
But we’re alive. Barely. Breathing, but only just. Beneath the adrenaline, a hollow opens in my chest that I know will never fill.
I don’t have time to mourn Wolfe right now. I don’t have the luxury. Not when the air still stinks of gasoline and death, not when I can feel the pressure of eyes that might still be watching.
But I also can’t lie to myself. Hunter, Logan Radcliffe’s code name, is the only one left who can possibly understand what we’ve just lost. And even then—only halfway. His presence is the only familiar thing left in this mess—and I don’t know if that makes him safer… or more dangerous. He’s not just a man. He’s the last person who could break me and make it look like protection.
I listen to the voice that screams at me inside my head: Run.
Hunter’s voice slices through it. “We have to go. Now. If they know who you are...”
“They know.” I straighten. “My cover’s blown. Anyone they think is helping me is painting a target on their back as well.”
His gaze drops to the bulge beneath my coat. “What the hell’s in that dossier, Nocturne?”
I look away. “More than enough.”
And I can’t tell him more. Not yet. Because part of me—the part still raw from the blast and reeling from Wolfe’s disappearance—isn’t sure Hunter doesn’t already know. There’s something in his eyes, a flicker of recognition too sharp to be chance. Like he’s already weighed the cost of telling me the truthand decided not to. He acts like he already suspects what the dossier contains, and maybe... who it condemns.
Trust is a currency neither of us can afford, and right now, I’m not sure if Hunter is my safest option. He’s held my life in his hands before—literally, physically, with a blade at my throat and a calm I never understood. He didn’t flinch then. He doesn’t now, but something in his eyes tonight… it cuts deeper than protocol. Like he’s still holding something. And maybe it’s me. Is he the one who leaked our extraction? Or perhaps he’s the next person who’ll put a bullet in my back.
“Meet you at the backup extraction point. Two hours,” I say, spinning on my heel and sprinting away... straight to the Charles Bridge.
I trigger the explosives I planted two days before, because I'm always prepared, and dive into the Vltava’s freezing black water. When I surface half a mile downstream, gasping and clinging to a rusty ladder, I am no longer Vivian Black nor am I Nocturne... They are both dead.
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LOGAN
