Page 29 of Code Name: Hunter
"You’re grinding your teeth again," she says, voice flat.
Still not looking at me. Her gaze stays locked on the windshield, as if she focuses hard enough, the road ahead might offer answers the rest of us can’t... or won't. The set of her shoulders is too rigid to be calm—more like armor braced for impact. And beneath that quiet? I feel a pull toward something darker. A decision forming. Or a defense.
I almost reply. Almost explain. But I don’t. Because if I open my mouth right now, I’m not sure what’s going to come out—strategy, frustration, or the truth that doesn’t belong between operatives mid-op.
So I keep my mouth shut.
And in the silence, I wonder if this is how the unraveling begins—quiet, subtle, a thread pulled loose by silence and suspicion. Trust doesn’t implode. It erodes. One unspoken doubt at a time.
The safehouse fades in the rearview mirror. We drive toward something darker. I don’t speak on the drive back. Neither does she. The silence isn’t comfort—it’s tension, honed to a razor’s edge.
At Cerberus HQ, Fitz is already waiting.
The air in here is colder, recycled, carrying the faint tang of electronics and coffee gone stale. The war room hums with pressure. Stark lighting, gleaming monitors, digital maps crawling with overlays. A stark contrast to the glittering nightlife of the club below. Three analysts cluster around the table. Fitz leans against the wall, arms crossed, jaw tight.
I step forward and pass over the containment box with the kind of deliberate calm that comes from years of training, even though every nerve under my skin is vibrating like a live wire. My fingers brush Fitz’s for half a second during the transfer—steady, clinical—and then it’s out of my hands. The weight of it isn’t physical. It never is. The real weight comes after, when you wait to see what fresh hell it unleashes.
"Found it embedded under her scapula," I say. "She didn’t know it was there."
"Says who? Vivian? Not the most reliable source of truth these days."
Before I can react, Vivian's hand cracks across the Scotsman's cheek. Fitz doesn't flinch, and I hold my breath until a slow grin tugs at the corners of his mouth. "Good lass." He takes the box, pops it open, and passes it to the tech, then looks at me. "You two get jumped again?"
"Four-man team. Ghost-trained. Not ours."
Vivian mutters, "I could’ve handled it."
I shoot her a look. "Right. Because taking on a four-man kill team with nothing but sarcasm and a bruise counts as handling it. What was the plan—disarm them with sass and hope for the best? You nearly got a baton to the temple."
"And yet—here I stand."
"Children," Fitz snaps, not looking up. "Save the foreplay for somewhere else."
The tech, a wiry young woman with a Cerberus patch on her sleeve, slides the tracker under the scan reader. The room stills.
"Well?" I prompt.
She exhales. "Not new. Old-gen Russian base, but it’s been gutted and reprogrammed. I’ve seen this signature before. It’s not a brand—it’s a method. Someone custom-builds these. Limited runs. Deep pockets."
Vivian’s brows furrow. "Limited runs—like state-funded black market labs?"
"Worse," Fitz says. "Like boutique merc groups with their own R&D departments."
The display blinks. A symbol flashes.
Wolfe.
I go still. My grip on the table tightens until my knuckles blanch. The room feels narrower, like the walls just leaned in.
"Pull that again," I say.
The tech nods, enlarges the image. It’s buried in the metadata—a half-scrubbed cipher, fragmented and faint. But I know that signature.
Fitz frowns. "Wolfe’s supposed to be dead."
"If he is, then someone’s using his old code," I say.
“You think he’s alive?”
