Page 6 of Code Name: Hunter
No footsteps overhead. No telltale shift of weight on the floorboards. No out-of-place scents in the recycled air. Everything is exactly as I left it. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? ‘Exactly’ is often the most convincing lie. I’ve learned that comfort is just the first step in a trap. That stillness can be weaponized. I don't relax—I watch. Even when I sleep, it's one eye open, one hand on the gun. Control isn’t just a habit. It’s the last thing they didn’t take from me.
I move through the space in silence, sweeping with the care of someone who’s learned the hard way what it means to be wrong. I check the tripwire stretched across the doorway into the bath. Still intact. The hair I left wedged in the armoire hinge? Undisturbed. But I find a listening device anyway—so small it’s practically dust; hidden in the screw cavity of a vintage lamp I bought three weeks ago for this exact reason. It's not mine. So, whose is it? Only a handful of crews could plant hardware this clean without tripping my sensors. One of them works for Cerberus. Another… used to share an MI-6 comms channel with me.
Someone’s been here. Someone skilled. Better than the usual low-level contractors who think disabling a tripwire makes them invisible. This one moved like a shadow—left no scent, no shift in airflow, not a single thing out of place but the one detail I wanted them to think they got away with. Impressive. But not good enough. Not like me.
Because while they were busy avoiding traps, they missed the real ones—buried in timing, in metadata, in echoes too faint for amateurs to hear. And now I know they were here. Which means I’m already two moves ahead of them.
I don’t touch the device. I don’t even breathe on it. I simply turn the lamp a quarter inch to the left—my message to whoever’s watching.
I see you.
Now see me watching back.
I finish my sweep, then toss my clutch on the table and pull the gun from my thigh holster. My hands are steady, but there's a tremor curled tight in my stomach—a tension I can't shake. This isn't just routine. It's armor. My ritual to hold fear at bay. A custom SIG Sauer, matte black. Not flashy, but precise and reliable. The opposite of the one I’ve spent most of my life working with. After what happened in Prague, I needed a change. I set it next to the encrypted laptop waiting in the false bottom of the bookshelf. No one would look for tech behind an old Robert Ludlum novel. Everything I do is a ritual now. Gun. Laptop. Walls. I don’t wear armor; I become it. The second I slip, I’m not Nocturne anymore—I’m a woman who trusted the wrong people and lost everything.
I pace once. Then, twice and only then do I let my mask slip.
Logan.
I didn’t expect to see him. Not yet. I thought Fitz would keep him tucked behind the curtain a little longer, like a final act waiting to drop. I expected a Cerberus agent—anonymous, efficient, forgettable. One of the nameless shadows they deploy like scalpels. Not Logan, storm-eyed and lethal, sitting beside me like judgment in an Armani suit.
He looked like every dangerous decision I ever almost made—tailored menace wrapped in a body that still moved like it remembered war. The suit hugged him in all the right places, sharp lines over sharper muscle, and his eyes—God, those eyes—were the same storm-colored steel that used to see through every lie but mine. Time had been cruel to most of us, but not to him. If anything, it made him more lethal, more composed, more devastatingly handsome. And for one reckless second, I forgot what I was, what I had to be—and just wanted to know what it might be like to let him ruin me. Not romantically. Not sweetly. But the way a storm ruins a cliff face—shattering what shouldn’tstand, exposing what lies beneath. What would it feel like to give in, just once, on my terms?
But it wasn’t the suit that undid me. It was the hesitation.
There was a shift in the air right before it—like the room paused to breathe with him. The way his eyes narrowed, just slightly, like he was weighing not just options but consequences. That single delay cut sharper than any blade. It wasn’t doubt. It was a memory.
Did he mean to kill me tonight? Did he want to? Was he ordered to?
He should have. I would've if the tables were turned.
That’s what protocol would’ve dictated. Cerberus doesn’t bargain with shadows. Especially not ones carrying intel that could destabilize governments, crack apart alliances, and rip the roof off every black budget file since the Cold War.
And yet… he hesitated. He let me talk. Let me breathe.
I tell myself to lock it down. Bury it. Cut the cord between the past and the present before it coils around my throat. But I don’t. I can’t. Not with him sitting across from me like the question I never stopped asking.
Why?
A professional would have slipped a blade between my ribs before I’d finished my drink. He had the angle. The proximity. The excuse. And he looked like he was weighing it—measuring the calculus of the moment with the same precision he once used to dismantle terrorist cells and extract compromised agents. But he paused. He didn’t blink. Just watched, the way a predator does when he’s already sure of the outcome. The danger wasn’t that he might kill me—it was how calm he’d be while doing it.
So, I have to ask myself: is Logan compromised, is he the man Fitz sent to meet with me… or is he conflicted? Did the man who once dragged me out of burning wreckage pause becauseprotocol told him to kill me... or because something deeper told him not to?
I sit slowly, letting the weight of memory settle beside me. The way he looked at me tonight—like he knew more than he should—pulled me back four years in an instant.
Four Years Ago—Prague
We crouch behind a stone parapet on a rooftop that smells like soot and old socks. The mission is ten hours from go. Too early for nerves. Too late for reason. Logan passes me a flask, and I take a sip, letting the whiskey burn through the cold.
He leans close, breath fogging in the night air. “What’s the plan after this one, Nocturne?”
I don’t look at him. “There is no plan for after. You know that.”
“Come on. Everyone has a ‘what if.’ What’s yours?”
I swallow hard. The truth hovers just behind my teeth.
What if I told you I’m tired of disappearing into lies? What if I said I think about you when it’s quiet? Even when I was with Wolfe. Especially when I was with Wolfe. That’s the betrayal I never say aloud. Even to myself. I never touched him. Never crossed that line. But I thought about it. In quiet moments. In lonely ones. That was enough to damn me—and to damn Wolfe if he’d ever known.
