Silk & Sabotage

The radio clicked three times.

That was the signal.

Phase Two had begun.

Clean-up. Redirection.

Sever every tie.

Bury every trace.

Mino stood beneath the city, deep in the belly of Sonhane's underground — a place not even maps dared mark. The walls here dripped with condensation and quiet rot. Above, the city still hummed with celebration. Below, where he stood, nothing was alive but regret.

His breath fogged against the inside of his thermal mask. He exhaled slowly, staring down at the tablet glowing blue in his gloved hand.

Her name was still there.

MIA VEYRA. Red. Bold. Unclosed.

Target. Variable. Tier-1.

He'd typed it in three times. His thumb hovered over the confirmation key — then moved away. Again. And again. He couldn't do it.

She wasn't supposed to matter.

He was never meant to stay.

The job was simple: infiltrate, extract intel, compromise if necessary. And then disappear.

But something had gone wrong.

He had gone wrong.

He should've vanished after the first extraction.

Instead, he stayed. A week. Then two. Then months. Until it stopped feeling like a mission and started feeling like madness. Until she gave him three stolen hours on night when he was about to dissappear — whispered her fire into his skin, slurred, "You're not coming back, are you?" — and he still didn't answer.

Because if he had, he might've begged her to run.

The comms buzzed in his ear, sharp and surgical:

"Ghost-92, redirect. Dahlia moved to Tier-1. Report to Station Black.

Do not engage civilian ties. Repeat — no civilian ties."

Too fucking late.

He'd already broken protocol the moment he let her touch his face like he wasn't a weapon. The moment he kissed her back.

He slept with her. Lied to Lucas. Burned his exit trail.

And worst of all —

He cared.

He powered down the tablet.

The files he had pulled during the final hack weren't troop placements or tactical blueprints. They were her — surveillance logs, blood reports, psychological scans labeled under Project Dahlia.

And then it hit him.

Dahlia wasn't a strategy.

Dahlia was Mia.

She wasn't just the daughter of a general. She wasn't some political chess piece married for peace.

She was the storm Rica feared.

The chaos Lina Loas couldn't contain.

And someone — somewhere — wanted her neutralized.

Not killed. Not yet.

But caged.

He had played right into it.

A sharp noise echoed from the end of the tunnel.

A creaking pipe. Maybe a footstep. Maybe a warning.

He didn't move.

Just melted into the shadows, one with the damp, with the dark. That's what ghosts did — they disappeared before anyone could decide to miss them.

And Mino was a ghost now.

A man who didn't exist.

Trained to kill. Taught to forget.

Built to vanish.

Ghosts didn't get to love.

They only got to remember.

He remembered the sound she made when he kissed her neck.

The way she bit his lip, half-drunk, half-daring.

The way she didn't ask him to stay — but still looked at him like she hoped he would.

He shouldn't have touched her.

But he did.

And now she'd never get to hate him properly.

Because in ten seconds — he would be dead.

He felt it first — a pressure shift.

Then the tremor.

The timer hit zero behind him. A controlled detonation, rigged beneath the steel walkway. Enough fire to melt the memory of him from every tunnel wall.

The blast hit like a scream.

Flames tore through concrete. Sirens rang out above. A wave of heat surged up behind his back — and then everything went dark.

Somewhere far above, Mia turned in her bed, unaware.

Lucas sat awake, already haunted.

And beneath their feet, in a tunnel no one would return to —

Mino bled out into smoke.

A shadow swallowed by silence.

No body.

No trail.

No goodbye.

Just a name that would burn in both their chests long after they stopped saying it out loud.

Mino Kael was gone.