Page 1 of Code Name: Hunter
1
VIVIAN
Operation Persephone
Prague, Czech Republic
Four Years Ago
I never trust the silence. Not in Moscow safehouses, not in sand-choked Aleppo alleys, and definitely not in the hushed pulse of a Prague backstreet where damp air slicks my skin and the dark smells faintly of river rot.
The fog rolls up from the Vltava, wraithlike, curling through the alleys, reaching for me. The glow from a distant streetlamp throws long, warped silhouettes across the cobblestones, shapes that shift even when I’m still, and every breath of wind sounds like a whisper just out of reach. The quiet here isn’t dead. It’s watching. I’ve spent too long mastering every silence, training my body to move when others freeze. Control is survival. Letting go? That gets you killed.
Silence isn’t peace—it’s a prelude. I flex my fingers inside damp leather gloves, eyes on every doorway, feeling the weight in the air just before it breaks. And when it breaks, it doesn’t whisper—it detonates.
The heel of my shoe slips on the rain-slick cobblestones, and for a breathless second, I almost go down. My palm slaps against the cold brick wall, rough and wet under my hand. My heart is hammering, and my eyes are darting in all directions.
The street is dark. Too still. Each footstep rings out like a gunshot, and the fog hangs heavy, swallowing the sound. I’m running blind—no comms, no backup, just the weight of the dossier pressed tight against my ribs under the silk of a dress that now clings, cold and damp, to my skin. The same dress I used to bait a predator—low-cut, black, forgettable. Pretty enough to distract, invisible enough to vanish. I choose what they see. Always. If I let someone else decide how I’m seen—how I’m touched, how I’m taken—I become a target. I’ve never given that power away. Not willingly. Not even to him.
The bastard is asleep now, sprawled across Egyptian cotton, mouth slack, drooling on a pillow that probably costs more than a month of my hazard pay. I drugged his champagne with steady hands and a smile that never touched my eyes.
Now I’m alone in the dark with nothing but phantoms, slick cobblestones, and the certainty that every shadow might hide an assassin.
I’ve spent nine months embedded in the belly of a beast, feeding Vallois’s network of lies wrapped in silk and slow smiles. I play the part until the mask becomes muscle memory—until I can’t tell where the performance ends and I begin. Day after day, I sell false comfort and let myself become what they expect: soft, compliant, and forgettable.
But I never lose track of who I am. And I never let go of the prize.
Now it’s mine—the dossier. Real, tangible, humming with danger against my ribs. A collection of shadows in ink. Names, dates, accounts, coded trails of blood and power. Enough dirt to salt the earth from Langley to Vauxhall Cross. Enough to topplegovernments—or enough to disappear me permanently... but only if I make it out alive.
My exfil point is supposed to be clean. They always are... on paper. In reality, they’re ticking time bombs held together by bad intel and worse luck. The rendezvous is tucked behind a shuttered café in Old Town, near a tram line that hasn’t run in years. It’s a haunted transit stop stranded between realities—no trams, no lights, just the trace of motion and the weight of memory.
Shadows creep through the broken windows of the café like they’re looking for someone to blame. It's too quiet, and I'm too exposed. And I know it—deep in my bones—the instant my heels strike the uneven ground, the slick surface whispering a warning beneath my soles.
I’m two steps into the clearing when the first shot splits the night—sharp, close, and meant to kill. The sound cracks the air, followed by the whip off the stone wall. I don’t see the shooter, but I feel the bullet slice through the space I just occupied, a hiss of displaced air grazing my awareness a split-second before instinct takes over. My breath catches. My body reacts—I drop and roll, looking for cover.
“Down!” Wolfe’s voice barks through the rain—urgent, sharp, and almost too late. There’s something off in his tone—a ragged edge I’ve never heard in the field. Wolfe doesn’t miss a beat, doesn’t sound surprised. Not unless the plan isn’t the one we agreed on.
A second bullet tears through the air beside me, so close I feel the heat graze my scalp before it shreds a lock of hair and slams into the brick wall with a sound like bones breaking. The crack echoes through the alley, sharp enough to cut. My breath seizes. Muscles jerk. Instinct overrides thought, and I launch into motion, shoes slipping on the wet stone as I pivot. The scent of gunfire hits next—sharp, bitter, and unmistakable.
Hunter emerges from the gloom like a revenant, low and fast. Glock up and sweeping. He keeps to the edge of the wall, boots silent on slick stone, muzzle tracking each rooftop before his gaze locks on me. He doesn’t speak at first—just scans, assesses, calculates. Ready to kill. His presence hits me like a locked command—my breath stalls, my body remembers how to move around him before I can think to resist. He’s always had that effect. It used to make me furious. Now, I don’t know what it makes me. Weak? A weapon? Both?
“Nocturne,” he snaps. “Cutting it close, aren’t you? Thought maybe you fancied making an entrance.”
“Miss me, Hunter?” I toss as he yanks me behind the rusted bulk of a broken-down delivery truck.
“We’ve got snipers,” Wolfe yells, crouched beside a nondescript van—probably NATO—twenty feet away, face pale and tight. “Extraction’s blown. Support team’s down.” I’ve always trusted Wolfe’s plans. But it is Logan’s voice I listen for when everything goes sideways. Even when I don’t want to.
I feel the words like a punch. “Both of them?”
Hunter nods. “Kill shots—clean, high, and precise. Whoever pulled the trigger isn’t just good—they’re professional. Military or better. Which means someone powerful wants us silenced, fast and without a trace.”
These aren’t amateurs. They're professionals—maybe hired guns. Someone knew our timing. Our route. Our mission.
“Who the hell knew about the extraction and leaked it?” I ask, scanning the rooftops. I’ve memorized the city’s patterns, but none of that matters now. The op is blown.
“This isn’t a leak. It’s a message,” Hunter growls. “Now, move!”
A chill coils in my gut. Not fear—recognition. Whoever sent this message knows exactly where to aim, and how hard to hit. And we’ve walked right into the crosshairs. Hunter grabs myarm and we bolt, splitting from the delivery truck just before it erupts behind us in a deafening fireball that roars like a jet engine.
