Page 39 of Code Name: Hunter
LOGAN
Later that evening, I feel better—still sore and running on adrenaline fumes, but functional. The ops van sits parked in the shadows, engine idling just enough to keep the electronics humming. The space smells of stale, over-brewed coffee and the hot, dry bite of overworked circuitry from racks of hard drives along the wall. The vinyl seat under me is cracked and sticky from years of use, and I can feel the subtle vibration of the engine through my boots.
Outside, Rome murmurs like a restless animal—layers of distant traffic, bursts of scooter engines, and the wail of a siren fading down some unseen street. Inside, every sound is amplified: the soft whir of cooling fans, the rhythmic click of Vivian’s keys as she leans into her monitor’s glow, the faint rasp of her sleeve against the built-in desk when she shifts her weight.
The van is parked in a blind spot near the edge of the district, engine idling low. I’ve shifted into the passenger seat, my body angled toward the bank of monitors, eyes locked on the main feed. With no need to drive, every ounce of my attention is on what’s unfolding on screen. Our drone tracks a known fixer named Mancini slipping along a narrow alley behind the fish market, hands buried in the pockets of his camel overcoat. He’snot here for dinner. The overhead cam catches him pausing beneath a dead streetlamp, scanning the shadows like he’s expecting company.
“Zoom in,” I murmur into my mic.
The drone responds instantly, bringing the grainy black-and-white image closer until we can see the set of his shoulders, the slight lift of his chin like he’s giving a signal. A shape peels out of the dark—hood up, face obscured, movements too controlled to be random street traffic.
Mancini’s hand slips from his pocket. Something small passes between them, quick and practiced. The hooded figure doesn’t linger, just turns and disappears into a break between buildings.
Vivian leans back just far enough to glance at my screen. “You think that was Wolfe.”
“I think it walked like him, carried itself like him. But thinking isn’t proof.”
A metallic tang creeps up the back of my throat, a taste that matches the tight knot in my gut. Wolfe’s good—better than good—one of those rare predators who can melt into a crowd or vanish down a blind turn like smoke in a high wind. And here he is, maybe, a phantom brushing the edges of our net, just close enough to taunt but not close enough to catch.
I tap the video feed back a few seconds, frame-by-frame, to the exchange. Mancini’s face is lit for half a breath by the dim glow from a high window. Calm. Almost smug. The object—too small to make out, but the angle of his fingers says flash drive or keycard. Either way, the thing that can kill a lot of people without ever firing a shot.
Beside me, Vivian’s already sliding her chair back to her terminal. “Give me ten minutes. I can find where they went.”
“You’re good, Vivian, but even you can’t pull a ghost off a camera that never saw his face.”
She tilts her head just enough for her hair to spill over one shoulder. “Maybe not. But people leave trails in places they don’t mean to. You just have to know where to look.”
There’s that razor edge in her tone—part challenge, part something she isn’t willing to put into words, an inflection that makes the air in the van feel a shade tighter. I let her work, but my senses stay tuned to every subtle shift in her breathing, every faint hitch of the keys as her focus sharpens, while my gaze keeps sweeping the other monitors, scanning the grid for movement, for any flicker that might turn this tense moment into something explosive.
Nine minutes in, she freezes, then types faster. “Found something.”
I glance over. The drone feed on her monitor has vanished, replaced by dense columns of Cerberus log entries—rows of timestamps, file tags, and coded identifiers scrolling in a relentless stream. The screen’s cold light flickers across her focused expression, each line of data reflecting off her eyes like she’s reading a language few people alive could understand.
“Tell me you didn’t just...”
“Hack into MI-6? No,” she says, though the little smile tugging at her mouth tells me she’s enjoying this way too much. “I found a way in. Someone left a door unlocked.”
I move in close behind her, my palm settling on the worn leather at the back of her chair, feeling the faint tremor of her movements through it as my eyes lock on the code cascading down the screen. Lines of symbols and numbers stream by in hypnotic rhythm, and even without touching the keys I can sense the intent woven into them.
This isn’t just a vulnerability—it’s a hidden artery running deep in the system’s bones, camouflaged so artfully that at a glance it could pass as native code, the sort of hidden door only the best ever think to build.
“That’s not amateur work,” I say quietly.
She shakes her head. “It’s surgical. Whoever did this had to have top-tier clearance and didn’t want anyone knowing they were in there. Could’ve been Wolfe.”
Wolfe—MI-6’s ghost in the machine. Brilliant, ruthless, and so far above most of the team’s pay grade that his moves become whispered rumors rather than official reports. Everyone in the inner circle knows the name, and everyone else assumes he’s long dead. Even those of us who’ve seen the ripples he leaves behind aren’t always sure if they’ve seen the man himself or just the echo of what he’s set in motion.
The alignment of the nested calls makes something in the back of my brain itch. Not new code—old scaffolding. A flaw baked in when the system was patched years ago. If you knew it existed, you could sidestep layers of clearance in seconds. But you’d only know if you’d been inside back then.
But the style… my gut shifts, a cold ripple threading down my spine. There’s a cadence in the code's rhythm, an almost musical timing to the way each patch nests itself into dormant functions, weaving through the unused architecture like it knows exactly where it can sleep unseen. It’s more than competent—it’s intimate familiarity you only get from building something with your own hands or studying it until it becomes part of your pulse. Too familiar.
It’s hers... Vivian's. My pulse ticks faster, the same way it did the first time I watched her ghost into a network everyone swore was sealed. Back then, it had been a rush. Now it’s a cold weight settling in my gut, because this isn’t just skill—it’s authorship. Her authorship.
The realization hits like a splash of ice water in my veins. She’s always kept some of her cards close to the vest—hell, maybe the entire deck—but this? If she really built this, it means she had an escape hatch from MI-6 quietly waiting inthe shadows long before Operation Persephone ever came into being. A contingency plan threaded through the code like a lifeline only she could pull.
“You’re quiet,” she says without looking up.
“Thinking.”
