Page 3 of Code Name: Hunter
London, England
Four Years Ago?—
After Operation Persephone
It’s raining. Of course it is. London rain isn’t a drizzle—it’s a slow, cold invasion that seeps through wool and skin until it settles in your bones. London always knows how to look like it’s mourning.
I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours, and I’ve spent the last eight staring down a review panel that doesn’t bother to ask how it really went down in Prague. They’ve already decided what they want to believe.
Every time I shut my eyes, I see Wolfe’s silhouette swallowed by fire, feel the heat, hear Vivian screaming over the sound of the blast. She dies in that moment, too—or so the file says. KIA. Presumed unrecoverable.
I know better. No body, no kill. But that doesn’t make me sleep any easier. And if she is alive, then either she’s running from the same ghosts… or she’s part of the reason they’re chasing me.
Vivian Black is dead. Adam Wolfe is dead—at least that’s what they say. But ghosts don’t always stay buried. And I’m what’s left—the scapegoat MI-6 needs, the ash that doesn’t burn clean. They pinned the failure of Operation Persephone on me before the bodies were cold. No medal, no mourning—just silence and suspicion. The type of wreckage that doesn’t make the reports but stains every breath afterwards.
I write their deaths a hundred different ways in my head. In none of them do I save them. In every version, I'm either too slow, too blind, or too damn arrogant. And that’s the part they don’t put in the file—that I lived. That I keep living. And every breath since has tasted like ash.
MI-6 sticks me behind a desk. Standard procedure, they call it. Psychological decompression. Debriefing. Decontamination. I call it what it is—containment. Keep the damaged asset on ice until someone decides if he’s still useful or just too expensive to bury. Like a broken weapon — too valuable to scrap, too dangerous to keep loaded. They want me contained because I don’t break the way they expect. I don’t shout. I don’t shake. I control. Tight. Focused. Deadly. They think they’re watching for a crack. They don’t realize I already rebuilt myself as a blade.
So, I wait. Play the good soldier. Nod at the right times, fill out the endless forms with hands that won’t stop shaking. I type out my sanitized version of hell in black ink on government letterhead. And when they ask for the truth, I give them the version that won’t get me killed—swallow it down like broken glass: sharp, bitter, and impossible to forget.
I’m not surprised when Fitzwallace shows up at the American Bar at the Savoy. I’ve been nursing a Scotch long enough to earn a second glance from the bartender and a quiet nod from the piano man. The place hums with soft jazz and sharper secrets—velvet walls and whisky-aged air.
I should have expected him sooner. Fitz, like any apex predator, never misses the scent of blood. And I'm covered in it. He doesn’t just collect survivors. He cultivates weapons. Broken ones. Sharp ones. The kind that obey orders with no need to be asked out loud.
The American Bar is a cathedral to men who make history in shadows—and expect the rest of us to clean up after them. It’s a monument to whispers, back-room deals, and the legacy that never stains a public record. I’ve met killers more honest than the men who drink here. This place is where the whiskey’s always older than your regrets. One of them once called me a monster with manners. Vivian used to say it differently...”You walk like you own the leash.” I never asked if she meant that as a warning or an invitation.
It strikes me as ironic that neither Fitz nor I is American.
Three-piece suit, coat draped over one arm, umbrella folded and still dripping onto the black-and-white tiles, leaving small puddles that reflect the low amber light. He looks like a man who’s just come from dinner with a prime minister, not going to a clandestine meeting with a disgraced intelligence officer.
“Mind if I join you?” he asks, his voice as smooth and practiced as the tailored lines of his suit—like the question was rehearsed, like the answer never really mattered.
“Only if you’re buying,” I mutter, not quite smiling. The words come out dry, laced with just enough venom to remind him I know exactly what kind of game he’s playing.
Fitzwallace chuckles and sits down. The server comes over; Fitz orders a Scotch and tells her to bring the bottle and leave it. He pours two fingers into a crystal tumbler like this is some kind of social call.
He’s not MI-6. But he knows where the bodies are buried—and probably helped put a few of them there. Fitzwallace shows up like a reminder of choices you didn’t know you’d made untilthey’re already shaping your path. The kind that circle back when you’re standing at a crossroads, bleeding and half-mad, wondering if you’ve got enough left in you to go darker. Except that you know you already have.
“Ye look like shite,” he says cheerfully.
I swirl the Scotch in my glass, watching the light bend through it instead of meeting his eyes. “You’re not here for the pleasantries,” I say, deadpan, like the punchline to a joke no one wants to tell out loud.
“No,” he agrees. “Though I find them refreshing now and again.”
We sit in silence for a moment. Rain taps against the windows like a metronome—steady, insistent, a sound that measures the time between hard truths and harder choices. It fills the space between us, not awkward, but weighted. A pause in a conversation built on blood and burned bridges. I watch the beads of water slide down the glass, each one tracing a path like the lives we’ve left behind. Fitz doesn’t rush. He never does. He lets the quiet spool out until it almost feels intentional, like he’s waiting to see if I’ll crack under it.
He finally leans in, swirling the Scotch before continuing. “I heard about Operation Persephone.”
I glance up sharply. “From whom?”
“The rule is, no body, no confirmation. Just a burned alley and a lot of smoke. You sure they're dead?”
I look at him. “You read the report. What do you think?”
He just smiles and sips his whiskey, gaze slipping past me like the question never landed. His dodge is what says more than a thousand words—deliberate, practiced, and infuriating. That smile answers nothing—which means it answers everything.
“You know it was a setup,” I say, the words flat and heavy. Not a question—just the thing no one else has had the balls to say aloud since it all went to hell.
