Chapter 4 : Beneath The Iron Sea

The world above trembles in confusion.

The echoes of Madrid still burn across every headline, every whispered conversation in the corridors of power. Politicians call it an “incident.” Analysts call it “an anomaly.” But the truth—whatever it is—has no name. It moves like a shadow, unseen and unstoppable, threading through oceans and borders alike.

Far beneath the Indian Ocean, where sunlight has never touched, the USS Frostfield glides through the cold dark like a silent beast. The steel hull hums with the low rhythm of the engines, a mechanical heartbeat echoing through endless pressure. Inside, red lights blink in steady rhythm—measured, disciplined, alive.

Captain Aaron Geezman stands at the center of the command deck, hands folded behind his back, eyes fixed on the sonar display. Around him, the hum of machinery and the murmurs of trained men fill the cramped steel corridor. For seventy-two souls aboard, this is routine. For Geezman, it is victory.

“Status report,” he says, his voice calm, grounded by decades beneath the sea.

“XO Renburg reporting, sir. We’ve passed the Laccadive Ridge undetected. No sonar trace, no visual contact. Forty-eight hours submerged without detection.”

Geezman nods slowly, the ghost of a smile forming on his lips. “Then it’s official. The cloak holds. Frostfield is invisible.”

A few restrained cheers ripple through the deck. Pride swells in every chest. Years of research, billions of dollars, and months of silence—all culminating in this moment. The submarine that cannot be seen now moves like a ghost beneath the waves.

Outside, the ocean presses close—a world of silence and crushing weight. No light, no horizon, no sound but the hum of the deep.

Inside, Renburg checks his instruments again, eyes narrowing. “Sonar still clean. No contact within thirty nautical miles.”

Geezman rests his hand on the console. “We’ve done it, gentlemen. The first true ghost beneath the sea.”

But the sea listens.

The sea always listens.

Fifty meters aft, near the rear stabilizers, something stirs. A faint shimmer glides across the metal hull—so small, so quiet it could be mistaken for nothing more than the pulse of the current. But then another shimmer joins it. And another. Tiny, unmarked drones, sleek and silent, drifting like plankton against the tide.

They attach themselves to the Frostfield’s fins—one by one, like insects claiming prey. A faint, mechanical click echoes through the outer hull.

Inside, an ensign glances at a small vibration on the pressure gauge. “Captain, minor turbulence on stern sensors. Probably cross current.”

Geezman doesn’t even look up. “Noted. Maintain course.”

The sea holds its breath.

Then—light.

A pulse of white flares against the black.

The explosion rips through the silence like the fist of God.

The deck lurches sideways. Metal screams as pressure plates buckle inward. Red lights flash, alarms blare, men shout as smoke fills the control room.

“Impact on the aft stabilizers!” someone yells.

“Breaches on decks three and four!”

“Pressure rising—!”

“Emergency ballast! Blow tanks!” Geezman roars, gripping the railing as sparks rain from above.

Renburg stumbles across the floor, blood trickling down his temple. “We’re losing control! Hull integrity dropping—twenty percent—thirty!”

Geezman’s voice booms over the chaos. “Get us to the surface! Now!”

The Frostfield groans as if alive, its steel body twisting beneath the pressure. The crew fights to stabilize the ship, water flooding the lower decks, sparks bursting from panels.

“Sir!” an ensign screams. “We’re being tracked—external signals incoming!”

Tracked.

Impossible.

They were invisible. Undetectable.

Forty-eight hours in the shadows—and now the shadows bite back.

“Who’s firing?” Renburg shouts, his voice cracking.

“No radar—no sonar lock—nothing!”

“Then what the hell hit us?”

No one answers.

Another explosion rocks the hull. The power flickers, emergency lights dying one by one until only the blood-red glow remains. The Frostfield begins to rise, forced upward by instinct and desperation.

As the submarine ascends toward the lightless surface, Geezman grips the command rail and mutters under his breath—more to himself than anyone else.

“This wasn’t an accident…”

Renburg looks at him, eyes wide. “Then what was it, sir?”

Geezman stares into the black.

The truth is too large to name.

Outside, the ocean tears itself apart.

From the depths below, something moves—something vast, unseen, and watching.

The Frostfield breaks the surface not with triumph, but with smoke and fire bleeding into the night. The mission that was meant to prove their invisibility now proves something far worse—

that somewhere out there, beneath the same sea, someone is listening.

Chaos does not come with warning. It comes in silence — the kind that swallows a man before he even realizes he’s gone.

Captain Geezman steadies himself on the bridge, his boots sliding slightly over the trembling deck as the Frostfield groans under the strain. The metallic wail of pressure plates folds through the corridors like the cry of some wounded leviathan. He grips the console, eyes scanning the collapsing systems, smoke curling around his shoulders.

“Damage control, now!” he shouts.

But the command is never finished.

A single crack of gunfire slices through the chaos — sharp, deafening, final.

The captain’s head jerks sideways, blood splattering across the instrument panels. His body falls like a cut wire.

Renburg freezes, the sound echoing in his skull long after the body hits the floor. For half a heartbeat he cannot move — then instinct takes over. “Security breach! Close the main hatch! Move!”

He slams his hand on the emergency lever, locking the steel doors shut just as the first explosion echoes from the upper deck. The sound is unmistakable: breaching charges. Whoever is out there knows exactly where to strike.

The corridor shakes as the external hatch detonates. Shrapnel rains through the narrow hallways. The Frostfield’s lights flicker again — this time not from system failure, but from invasion.

Renburg draws his pistol, pressing his back against the bulkhead. Boots clang against the ladder. Shadows move in pairs. The red light flickers — once, twice — and then the first attacker drops in through the breach.

Black combat suits. Rebreathers. Faces hidden behind matte visors.

Not pirates. Not scavengers. Professionals.

Renburg fires. One shot. Two.

The intruder falls, but another takes his place before the body hits the floor. Bullets carve through the haze, ricocheting off pipes and steel. The XO rolls behind a console, empty magazine clattering to the ground.

He barely raises his pistol again when the third intruder fires.

The round finds his chest — dead center. The impact sends him crashing backward into the captain’s fallen chair. His vision fades to static. For an instant, the last thing he sees is the flickering monitor showing the ship’s name — USS Frostfield — before it blinks to black.

All across the submarine, the screams fade one by one. The intruders move like ghosts through the corridors — no wasted motion, no hesitation. Every crewman who fights dies where he stands. The sound of boots, gunfire, and breathing masks blend into a cold rhythm: advance, clear, eliminate.

In the engineering bay, one young technician manages to trigger the distress channel. “This is Frostfield— we are under—”

A shot cuts him off mid-sentence. His blood sprays across the glowing console, killing the signal.

The radio operator back at command will never know who tried to speak.

Within seven minutes, silence returns.

The Frostfield is dead.

The lead intruder, taller than the rest, moves toward the sealed chamber at the aft section. He raises his wrist terminal and types in a code that no outsider should know — yet it opens the door instantly.

Inside, under sterile white light, rests a small metallic case — no larger than a human chest, secured with layers of encryption and alloy plating. On its surface, the symbol of a serpent coiled around a burning sun.

The man’s reflection glints faintly against it as he steps closer.

He mutters through his mask, voice deep and rasped, the accent unplaceable.

“There it is… the curse that started it all.”

He kneels, running a gloved hand along the surface. The label reads only one word: HADES.

Behind him, another operative checks the timer on a small device attached to the central column. “Charges set. Five minutes to detonation.”

“Then we’re done here,” the leader replies coldly. “Sink it. Let the ocean bury their ghosts.”

They move with ruthless precision, retreating through the smoke-filled corridors toward the breach. As they emerge, the helicopter is already waiting above the waves — rotors cutting through mist and chaos.

The last operative climbs aboard, water dripping from his gear. “All clear.”

The leader looks down one final time. The submarine lies broken on the surface, a wounded beast gasping its final breath. Flames flicker beneath the waves, reflecting off his visor.

“Because of this device,” he mutters, lifting the metal case onto his lap, “we bleed. But soon… they will bleed more.”

He taps the side twice — a signal.

Far below, the charges ignite.

A single column of fire erupts through the ocean surface, turning night into brief, blinding daylight. The USS Frostfieldfractures in half, swallowed by its own grave. The sea closes above it with a quiet hiss, leaving nothing but bubbles and silence.

From above, the helicopter tilts away, swallowed by storm clouds.

No signal escapes.

No survivors remain.

Only a ghost story drifting through the deep — and the first whisper of a new war.

Morning drapes itself over Hamburg like a thin layer of ash, cold and heavy with the scent of rain. The Elbe River flows in silence, its surface trembling with faint ripples beneath the gray sky. To the public, it is just another winter day. But below the city — deep beneath layers of steel, concrete, and secrets — the pulse of the world quickens.

Inside the underground complex of A.G.I.S. Division Aegis, every corridor hums with tension. The air feels metallic, sharp, like static before a storm. Rows of monitors flicker with encrypted feeds, their cold blue light casting ghostly reflections on anxious faces. At the center of this storm stands Dr. Elara Voss.

Her dark hair is tied hastily, a few strands falling over her cheek as she leans close to the screen. Her eyes, sharp and unblinking, track every shifting line of data. Behind her, a dozen technicians scramble across the cyber-operations bay, their voices overlapping in a tangle of panic and denial.

“Run the filter again,” she orders. Her voice cuts clean through the noise — sharp, confident, slightly impatient.

“We’ve tried, Doctor,” one technician replies, sweat tracing down his temple. “The Frostfield’s signal disappeared mid-transmission. No warning. No trace. It’s just… gone.”

Elara exhales through her nose, cold and deliberate. “That’s not possible. Nothing vanishes at 3,000 feet without leaving a scream.”

Her fingers fly across the keyboard, the sound like rapid gunfire against the hum of the servers. “Patch me through to sonar logs, satellite pings, anything within 200 nautical miles.”

“Already compiling, Doctor.”

Before the data can load, the steel doors hiss open behind her. Heavy boots echo against the metallic floor. Felix Grüberstorms in, face set like carved granite. The grizzled weapons specialist looks more like a soldier than an analyst, his coat half-buttoned, his patience already gone.

“Don’t tell me the same fairytale again, Elara,” he growls. “Command wants answers, not poetry. How does a billion-dollar submarine vanish in peacetime waters?”

Elara doesn’t even turn to face him. “Maybe your department sent it to the wrong ocean,” she says dryly.

“Not the time for sarcasm.”

“It’s always the time for sarcasm when the dead are outnumbering the living.”

Felix clenches his fists, but she keeps going. “The last thing we received was a sonar burst — five unknown objects attached to the hull. They detonated in perfect sequence. The ship’s pressure sensors went critical in under six seconds. That’s precision, Felix. That’s intelligence.”

He leans over her shoulder, frowning at the red dots dancing across the sonar map. “Drones?”

“Yes. And not Navy drones. Adaptive ones — intelligent, self-correcting, and untraceable. They didn’t jam the Frostfield; they became part of it.”

Felix exhales slowly. “That’s… military tech.”

Elara finally turns to him, her eyes burning with unease. “Worse. It’s ghost tech. These designs were wiped from existence years ago. Which means someone brought them back.”

The thought hangs in the air like smoke. Around them, the room grows quieter. Everyone pretends not to listen, but every ear strains toward the conversation.

Felix mutters, almost to himself, “Madrid… the drones, the encryption, the timing…”

Elara finishes for him. “It’s the same hand pulling the strings.”

She taps a command into the console, and two images appear side by side on the main monitor — the Madrid Drone Incident and the Frostfield implosion. Both share a singular encryption marker buried within the detonation code. A symbol flickers faintly between them: a serpent coiled around a burning sun.

The room falls into silence.

Felix’s jaw tightens. “Hades.”

Elara nods grimly. “And now it’s missing.”

Before the shock can settle, the intercom above crackles to life.

“Attention, all units. Major Baumann to Central Briefing. Immediate priority.”

Elara straightens. “There it is,” she mutters. “The storm upstairs.”

Felix sighs, rubbing his temples. “And guess who’s in the middle of it again.”

Together, they step into the corridor — long, metallic, dimly lit, lined with mission insignias of the world’s most powerful agencies: MI6, DGSE, CIA, BND. Each emblem represents a nation, but down here, all borders dissolve into the same gray cause: control through knowledge, peace through manipulation.

They enter the briefing chamber.

Inside stands Major Erik Baumann, towering and composed despite the weight behind his eyes. His uniform is slightly unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled up, revealing veins tense beneath pale skin. The holographic table before him glows with a rotating map of the Indian Ocean, a single red marker blinking ominously over one coordinate.

He looks up as Elara and Felix enter. “Doctor. Grüber. Sit.”

Around the table, agents and tacticians from different branches exchange worried glances. Sofia Moreau, the DGSE liaison, leans against the wall, her arms folded; Matteo Ricci, recon and sniper, spins a pen between his fingers, masking boredom with forced calm.

Baumann’s voice is steady but sharp. “At 0300 hours, contact with the USS Frostfield was lost. Two minutes later, seismic readings confirmed a massive underwater explosion. No survivors. Cause: external sabotage.”

No one interrupts.

“The Americans are calling it an internal malfunction. We know better. Dr. Voss’s data confirms adaptive drone detonations — identical to Madrid.”

Sofia’s eyes narrow. “Then whoever’s behind this isn’t just testing their reach. They’re declaring it.”

Matteo smirks faintly. “Or cleaning up after themselves. Maybe the Frostfield saw something it shouldn’t have.”

Baumann looks toward Elara. “Doctor, show them.”

Elara steps forward, tapping the holographic console. The blueprints of the submarine bloom into view — compartment after compartment, until she stops at a single sealed section.

“Section Nine,” she explains. “Off-record cargo. No registry. Access locked under six-layer encryption. But the last intercepted comms before detonation mentioned retrieving the device. No other context.”

Matteo stops spinning his pen. “The device?”

Elara nods slowly. “The same term used in the Madrid chatter before the attack.”

Sofia’s voice lowers. “You think… it’s Hades?”

Elara glances toward Baumann. “I don’t think. I know. The encryption signature matches. Whatever Frostfield carried — they came for it.”

Baumann exhales, his face hardening. “So Hades wasn’t destroyed. It was moved. And now, it’s gone again.”

The silence that follows is suffocating.

Felix mutters a curse under his breath. Sofia’s eyes shift toward the floor. Matteo’s grin fades into something almost human.

Finally, Baumann speaks. “Welles won’t like this.”

Elara scoffs softly. “Welles doesn’t like anything that reminds him he’s not God.”

Baumann almost smiles, just barely. “He’ll turn this into politics, and I don’t have time for that.”

He turns to an assistant by the door. “Get me Specter.”

The assistant hesitates. “Sir, Agent Albrecht is still recovering—”

“Then wake him up,” Baumann says firmly. “We need him operational. Now.”

The command lands like a hammer. Everyone in the room feels it — the cold weight of inevitability.

Elara lingers at the edge of the table, eyes locked on the glowing serpent spinning in the hologram. “Every time we chase this thing,” she says quietly, “it leaves a trail of bodies. And now it’s under the sea.”

Matteo glances at her. “You sound scared.”

She doesn’t look away. “I’m a scientist, Matteo. Fear keeps me alive.”

Outside, the rain begins to fall over Hamburg — gentle at first, then heavier, drumming against the steel walls of the facility. The sound seeps through the silence like a heartbeat.

In that rhythm, between thunder and breath, one truth becomes clear:

The game has changed.

And Specter will soon be called back into the storm.

The corridors of A.G.I.S. Hamburg thrum with chaos. Screens flicker in every direction, filled with encrypted maps, intercepted frequencies, and endless strings of data running like veins through the walls. Agents rush between terminals, voices overlapping in urgent tones, the air thick with stress and caffeine. Above all that noise, a single truth hangs unspoken — the Frostfield is gone, and no one knows who killed her.

Leon Albrecht, known to everyone here as Specter, strides through the main corridor beside Benjamin Roshfurd. His footsteps are steady, almost too calm for a man walking through the storm. Benjamin, meanwhile, keeps glancing around, overwhelmed by the flood of activity — dozens of analysts shouting over one another, screens flashing red, the smell of burnt circuits and bitter coffee in the air.

“Bloody hell,” Benjamin mutters under his breath. “It’s like the apocalypse in here.”

A passing operative — Matteo Ricci — catches sight of them, flashing his usual half-grin despite the tension. “Ah, Specter! You picked a fine day to come home. The world’s falling apart, and guess what? They want you in the middle of it.”

Leon gives no smile, just a brief nod. “Then let’s not keep them waiting.”

Benjamin sighs. “You know, I’ve never been in a situation where everyone looks like they haven’t slept in days.”

Leon’s voice is calm, low. “Get used to it. This is the part before everything truly goes to hell.”

Benjamin groans. “Oh, fantastic. That’s very reassuring.”

They walk faster, cutting through the main operations bay until they reach the secured briefing room — a thick steel door with two guards and a biometric scanner. The moment it recognizes Leon’s iris, the locks disengage with a deep, mechanical hiss.

Inside, Major Erik Baumann waits at the head of the table, his eyes dark from sleeplessness, but his presence steady and commanding. Around him sit the familiar faces of Division Aegis — Dr. Elara Voss, arms crossed and sharp as glass; Felix Grüber, leaning back with a sneer that never quite leaves his face; Sofia Moreau, silent and calculating; and Matteo, already lounging in his chair with one boot over the other.

“Sit,” Baumann says simply.

Leon and Benjamin take their seats. The air is heavy — not with fear, but with exhaustion and barely restrained frustration.

Baumann folds his hands on the table. “All right. Here’s what we know so far. The name Samuel Landberk appeared in Frostman’s transmission and again in the Madrid encryption logs. Elara ran a full trace through Interpol, Swiss banking networks, and French intelligence.”

Elara’s fingers tap the tablet in front of her, pulling up a holographic file. “And you’re not going to like it,” she says. The screen projects the image of a middle-aged man — glasses, suit, ordinary face. “Samuel Landberk. Fifty-one years old. Accountant. Based in Paris. No criminal record. Works for a financial firm that handles off-shore accounts for private clients — most of whom have direct ties to weapons smuggling and black-market funding networks.”

Benjamin frowns. “So he’s not a field player. Just a handler.”

Felix snorts. “Handler or not, he’s sitting on piles of dirty money. Men like him always know where the bodies are buried. We grab him, we get what we need.”

Leon’s voice cuts through the air, calm but cold. “If his clients are connected to HADES, he’s not just a number man. He’s a vault. You don’t guard a vault that carefully unless something inside is worth dying for.”

Baumann’s eyes flick toward him, thoughtful. “You think he knows more than Frostman did?”

Leon nods once. “Frostman was a broker. Landberk is the accountant. The man who makes sure the pieces move — quietly, cleanly. He doesn’t need to pull a trigger to start a war.”

Elara adjusts her glasses, leaning forward slightly. “Still, he’s just an accountant. No military background. No record of field contact. It doesn’t fit.”

Felix smirks, his gravelly voice dripping with sarcasm. “Maybe you’re jealous, Voss. Kid genius here probably knows more than your lab rats.”

Benjamin stiffens, eyes widening. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Elara shoots Felix a glare. “Ignore him, Benjamin. He gets territorial when someone with a functioning brain enters the room.”

“Ha,” Felix chuckles, “says the woman who almost fried our mainframe last week.”

“Because someone connected an illegal prototype launcher to my servers,” Elara fires back.

Baumann slams a hand on the table, the sound sharp enough to end the argument. “Enough. We don’t have time for children’s theater.”

The room falls silent again. He turns his attention to Benjamin. “Roshfurd, based on your analysis of Frostfield’s telemetry, what do you have?”

Benjamin adjusts his glasses nervously but answers with growing confidence. “From what I found, the Frostfield wasn’t attacked randomly. The submarine’s stealth module was compromised through a backdoor in the new adaptive software. The attackers used it to inject a cloaked malware system — probably piggybacked through a drone communication relay. That’s why their drones weren’t detected by Frostfield’s sonar — they were technically part of the ship’s system.”

A few heads turn his way — even Elara raises an eyebrow.

Felix whistles low. “Well, damn. Looks like the kid’s sharper than our cyber queen.”

Elara shoots him a deadly look but says nothing. Baumann, however, leans forward slightly. “You’re saying they predicted the system vulnerability before the test even began?”

“Yes, sir,” Benjamin replies. “Which means whoever planned this had access to the Frostfield’s schematics — maybe even during its development phase. Someone on the inside.”

Baumann’s jaw tightens. The implications hang like smoke in the air.

Finally, he stands, the light from the hologram cutting across his face. “Enough speculation. We move now.”

He looks directly at Leon. “Specter, you’ll lead the field team. Matteo will provide recon and overwatch. Sofia handles coordination with DGSE once you’re in Paris. Benjamin, you’re with them — you’re the only one who understands the encryption pattern tied to Landberk’s data.”

Benjamin blinks. “Wait, me?”

Leon doesn’t even glance at him. “You heard the man. Pack light.”

Baumann continues, his tone absolute. “I want Landberk alive. No matter who gets in your way. If he dies, so does our only lead to whoever’s pulling these strings. Find him before anyone else does — or worse, before someone silences him permanently.”

Felix leans back in his chair, muttering, “Paris, huh? You lucky bastards. I hope the croissants are worth it.”

Leon stands, buttoning his coat. “If we’re lucky, Felix, maybe we’ll bring one back for you. Or a corpse.”

The room grows still. Baumann meets Leon’s eyes — the unspoken trust between commander and agent forged through years of blood and silence. “You know the rules, Specter.”

Leon nods once. “I always do.”

As he and Benjamin turn to leave, the tension lingers like static behind them — a mix of fear, duty, and the heavy knowledge that another storm is coming.

Outside the briefing room, the corridors buzz again with noise and motion, but neither of them speaks. Only when they reach the lift does Benjamin finally break the silence.

“You ever get used to this?” he asks quietly.

Leon presses the elevator button, his reflection staring back in the mirrored door. “You don’t get used to it, Benjamin,” he says, voice low and certain. “You just stop pretending it bothers you.”

The doors slide shut with a metallic hiss.

And somewhere deep beneath Hamburg, the next mission begins.

The night outside Hamburg hums with quiet rain, each drop breaking softly against the glass walls of the compound. Inside, fluorescent lights paint the corridors in pale silver, stretching long shadows across the floor. The air feels heavy, saturated with exhaustion and secrets too large to contain.

Leon Albrecht, known to the world of shadows as Specter, stands alone in his quarters — a small, immaculate room buried deep beneath the earth. The silence here is almost alive. His coat hangs over the chair, his weapons dismantled across the steel table in pieces of quiet precision. Each bullet gleams faintly in the dim light.

He works methodically, reassembling the sidearm that will likely kill someone before the next sunrise. Every click echoes like a heartbeat. He is not thinking of orders, or of Baumann’s voice, or of the map of the Indian Ocean still glowing in the war room.

He is thinking of her.

The phone on his desk vibrates once — the name Hana Sato lighting up the screen. For a long moment, Leon only stares at it, as if it were something fragile, unreal. Then, slowly, he answers.

“Leon?” Her voice is gentle, almost musical. The warmth of it cuts through the sterile quiet like sunlight through fog.

“I’m here,” he says. His tone is calm, softer than usual.

“I thought you might still be asleep,” she teases lightly. “You sound… different.”

He looks at his reflection in the black screen of his laptop. His eyes are cold, shadowed by sleepless nights. “Just tired,” he lies. “It’s been a long day.”

“Another IT emergency?” she asks, smiling through her voice. “You’re always saving the world, even when you don’t have to.”

Leon allows himself a small, almost invisible smile. “Something like that.”

Hana laughs quietly. The sound is soft, real — untouched by the darkness that swallows everything else in his life. For a moment, he lets himself breathe it in.

“I heard about what happened in Madrid,” she says after a pause. “It’s… frightening. My students were talking about it all day. They’re scared. Everyone is. You’re not anywhere near there, are you?”

Leon’s hand tightens slightly around the phone. His gaze drifts to the window, where rain streaks down the glass like tears. “No,” he answers gently. “Nowhere near.”

“Good,” she exhales in relief. “I don’t know why, but when I saw the news, I thought of you. I just—”

She hesitates, her voice softening. “I don’t even know why I worry so much. You always sound like you’re somewhere far away, Leon. Like you’re… walking through another world.”

He closes his eyes. “Maybe I am.”

“Then promise me,” she says quietly. “Promise me you’ll come back from it.”

He swallows the words that want to come — the truth that cannot exist in her world. The truth that he lives in that other world every single day, that he bleeds for it, kills for it, hides behind it.

“I’ll come back,” he says finally. “When the sun rises.”

Hana laughs again, softly this time. “Then I’ll wait for the sunrise.”

The line goes quiet for a moment — only her breathing, steady and real, grounding him in a way nothing else can. Then, as if she senses something in his silence, she adds, “You sound like you’re about to leave.”

Leon exhales slowly. “I am.”

“Where to?”

“Paris,” he answers before catching himself — too quickly, too naturally.

“Paris?” she repeats, surprised but amused. “I see. A romantic getaway without me?”

He lets the corner of his mouth twitch. “You’d hate it. Too much rain.”

“Then bring me the rain,” she replies with a soft smile he can almost hear. “Good night, Leon.”

“Good night, Hana.”

When the call ends, the silence that follows feels colder than before. Leon lowers the phone, staring at it for a long moment, as if trying to memorize the warmth that just left the line. Then he sets it down beside his holstered pistol.

The reflection of the fluorescent light glints faintly on the gun’s barrel, the same way it glinted on the surface of the sea when the Frostfield sank. He slides the weapon into its holster with slow precision, the motion almost ritualistic.

In the reflection on the window, he sees a man who no longer belongs to the light. A man divided — half human, half ghost. The codename Specter has never felt more fitting.

He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out something small — a folded paper crane, delicate and worn at the edges. A memory from a calmer time, perhaps from a night when the world was less cruel. He holds it for a second, then places it beside his phone.

The intercom on the wall crackles to life.

“Specter,” a voice says — Baumann’s, deep and unyielding. “It’s time.”

Leon doesn’t answer. He straightens his collar, collects his coat, and looks once more at the phone.

His hand hovers over it, but he doesn’t call back.

He can’t.

He steps out into the corridor. The door closes behind him with a hiss, sealing the light of his room away.

Down the hall, Benjamin Roshfurd waits for him, adjusting his tie nervously as usual. “You good?” Benjamin asks, trying to sound casual.

Leon nods once. “Let’s move.”

As they walk through the long corridor toward the hangar, the sound of rain grows louder above them — a distant drumbeat echoing through concrete and steel. The world outside may be calm, but here in the underground, another kind of storm is brewing.

Above the city, Hana Sato closes her curtains, unaware that somewhere beyond the clouds, her words still echo in a man’s mind:

Then bring me the rain.

And as Leon boards the waiting aircraft, the rain begins to fall harder — a curtain between two worlds that were never meant to meet.

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