Chapter 12: The Kill Shot

It took Cipher less than a second to process everything—Requiem's speed, his own reaction time, the dimensions of the room, the power conduits running along the ceiling with exposed wires buzzing with lethal energy.

It would take a human a few minutes to devise a plan.

All Cipher needed was a breath.

Requiem was here to eliminate him.

He narrowly avoided impact, a blurring figure. Whirling, he shot one knife upward to the pipes. It severed the coolant line and instantly, the explosion of frigid fog coated the room, obscuring everything.

"A distraction?" Requiem didn't even bat an eye.

Cipher couldn't respond. He didn't have time.

He emptied his weapon—not aimed at Requiem—but at the sputtering power conduit behind him.

Clean shot.

The metal flooring shocked.

In tandem with the coolant fog.

Requiem's body jerked; the overload that was supposed to happen a millisecond from now overloaded his augmented systems. He twitched. He lurched—his first lurch in a life never to be lived.

And Cipher capitalized on it.

One step. Two steps. Blade raised. Target locked.

A clean, accurate thrust—

Directly through Requiem's heart.

For the first time in his life—Cipher was sure this was his first time—Requiem's face changed; the silvery grey of his eyes dimmed and flickered with something that Cipher could not determine.

Awareness.

Hopelessness.

Then void.

Cipher released the knife from Requiem's chest and let his body turn to sway before crashing to the ground.

Luna crawled out from her crate refuge, panting. "You... you really did it."

Cipher said nothing.

He just had to go through one more door—the door to Echelon's Echelon.

It wasn't complete.

Not yet.

It was silent on the penthouse level. No alarms. No security. Only an extended hallway with an industrial metal door at the end.

He pushed it open.

A man sat behind a black metal desk, not even standing up but taking Cipher in from head to toe with a calm yet assured penetration.

Dr. Voss.

The man who created him.

The man who destroyed him.

"Cipher. How far you've come," Voss said, his lips curling at the corner. "What can I do for you?"

Cipher adjusted his sights of the gun at Voss' target.

Voss did not move. "You won't get what you want by killing me."

His finger was curled around the trigger like a metal loop. "I know."

BANG!

The sound echoed throughout the silence of the room.

Voss pushed back into his chair, then forward onto his desk, gasping for breath and becoming still.

It was over.

Cipher turned and walked off into the neon glow of the city.

Because for someone like him, there was no such thing as a happily ever after.

There was only the next assignment.

The next kill.

End of Arc One

Arc Two: Shadows of the Past

Chapter 13: A Ghost Without a War

The city breathed with life beneath Cipher’s feet. From the rooftop, he watched as neon lights pulsed in rhythm with the chaos below—gangsters dealing in back alleys, corporate drones shuffling through their routines, the hidden underbelly of crime and power thriving in the shadows.

None of it mattered.

Echelon was dead. Dr. Voss was dead. Requiem was dead.

So why was Cipher still alive?

He had spent years with a singular purpose: survival. Eliminate threats. Complete the mission. But now, for the first time since his creation, there was no mission.

No orders.

Just… silence.

Luna sat on the edge of the rooftop, kicking her feet idly. "You’re brooding again."

Cipher didn’t respond.

She sighed. "You took down the most powerful black-ops organization in the world. You should be celebrating."

Cipher looked at her. "Celebration is meaningless."

She rolled her eyes. "Of course it is. You’re literally incapable of being happy."

Cipher didn’t argue.

Because she was right.

Power vacuums don’t last.

The moment Echelon fell, something else took its place.

Luna’s tablet beeped with an encrypted transmission. She scanned the message, her expression shifting from curiosity to alarm. "Uh, Cipher? You’re gonna want to see this."

Cipher took the device, eyes narrowing as he read the text.

[We know what you did. We know what you are. And we are coming.]

The sender’s name was simple.

"Umbra."

Cipher’s grip tightened. "New players."

Luna swallowed. "Yeah, and they already know about you."

Cipher processed the situation. If they knew his identity, it meant they had resources. Intelligence. Maybe even technology that rivaled Echelon’s.

Which meant one thing.

They were a threat.

And threats had to be eliminated.

Cipher stood, checking his weapons. "We move now."

Luna hesitated. "Maybe we should gather intel first—"