Snow slaps sideways across crumbling tenements as Simon "Ghost" Riley staggers through Praga Północ, Warsaw. The wind knifes through his stolen jacket—too thin, too wet, soaked with days of blood and ice. His cracked mask clings to half his face like a second skin. His breath fogs in bursts, shallow and uneven.
No sirens. No chatter. Just the crunch of his boots in slush and the distant clang of metal on brick somewhere deeper in the district.
He stops at the corner of Ząbkowska Street.
A butcher shop squats between two burned-out buildings. Windows boarded up. Neon flickering its last breath above the door. A red "X" is spray-painted low on the brickwork, half-buried in snow—an old dead-drop signal from his black ops days.
He stares at it.
Still here.
Ghost steps forward, shoulder slamming the door once. Twice. It groans open. The smell inside hits him like a hammer—blood, grease, and rot.
---
The freezer door groans as Ghost pushes through, breath misting into the cold haze. Fluorescent light flickers overhead, barely holding back the dark. Hanging sides of pork sway gently on hooks, red and glistening like fresh kills.
Ghost stops when the cigarette flares.
Arkady Markov leans against a stack of crates, half-shadowed behind a slatted curtain of meat. Tall. Thin. Coat lined with sable fur, boots clean—too clean for Warsaw. He doesn't flinch at the sight of Ghost, but his guards tense. Three of them, maybe four, holding Polish-made WZ rifles like they're itching for an excuse.
"You're supposed to be dead, Prizrak," Markov says. His Russian accent curls around the name like smoke. "Showing up here? That's not part of the deal."
Ghost doesn't move. Doesn't blink. Blood has dried into spiderwebs across his cracked mask.
"Then call it resurrection."
Markov takes a drag. "Resurrections come with consequences. Spectre's already circling like a vulture. My men are nervous. You showing up now? Screws everything."
Ghost steps forward. Slow. Deliberate. "Then start unscrewing it."
One of the guards twitches. Ghost's eyes flick—calculates distances, weapons, exits.
Markov exhales twin trails of smoke, unreadable. "You walk in here without a leash, smelling like burned steel and old blood. So tell me—what the hell are you looking for?"
Ghost pulls a scorched comms unit from under his coat, its cracked screen still blinking faintly.
"Same thing you're running from."
He sets it on the metal table between them. The signal pulses. One red light, steady and alive.
Markov's eyes flicker. He exhales again—this time without the cigarette.
"Fine," he says. "But we talk in the dark. Where walls don't have ears."
Ghost nods once.
---
The butcher's rear door shuts behind them with a mechanical clunk. Darkness swallows the corridor beyond—just cracked tile, dripping pipes, and the faint hum of refrigeration units.
Ghost doesn't bother with pleasantries. He kneels, unzips the inner lining of his coat, and pulls out the scorched comms unit he stole from the black site. The casing is melted along one edge; a bullet nick still scars the screen. He flips it open, thumbs the cracked power button.
A faint red blip pulses—steady. Local.
"Still pinging," Ghost mutters. "Signal originated here. Warsaw sector. Your sector."
Markov watches without blinking. A slow drag on his cigarette, the ember flaring like an eye. His men shift uneasily. One wipes his nose on a sleeve; another fingers the safety on his rifle.
"Spectre," Ghost says, voice low. "Name came up on this channel two weeks ago."
Markov exhales. Thin stream of smoke cuts through the cold.
"Spectre doesn't talk to me," he says. "Just paid for silence."
"That's the wrong currency."
Ghost stands. Closes the comms unit with a snap. No threat in his tone—just fact.
"You're going to tell me what channel he used, what frequency, and who else he talked to. Because you're still breathing, and I haven't asked why yet."
Markov lets the moment hang. Then, with a quiet nod, he turns toward a hatch recessed in the floor—old steel with rusted hinges and a faded Soviet insignia.
"This way," he says. "You want answers? We'll go where the ghosts talk."
He bangs the hatch open with his cane.
---
The hatch groans open, exhaling cold breath from the tunnels below. Markov's cane taps once on the metal rung before he climbs down—slow, deliberate. Ghost follows, one boot at a time, hand on the grip of his sidearm. The smell hits halfway: rust, oil, mold, and cordite ghosts.
They descend into silence.
The catacombs stretch out like veins—old Nazi-era bunkers carved in reinforced concrete, once meant to survive sieges, now gutted and rebuilt by criminals. Conduits run along the ceiling. Motion lights flicker as they pass, stuttering shadows across walls thick with rot and graffiti.
Markov leads without a word. His bodyguards fan out, automatic rifles loose in their grips.
Ghost slows beside a mural faded by time and grime: an SS officer shaking hands with a red-star general. Another shows a firing squad in silhouette. No names. Just betrayal layered in paint.
He lingers, studying the brush strokes, but his eyes don't soften.
"Warsaw remembers," Markov mutters behind him, not turning. "History lives longer underground."
"No one buries history," Ghost says. "They just teach it to lie better."
They move on.
Down a flight of crumbling stairs, past bolted iron doors and old Soviet surveillance posts, into a main corridor lit with bare bulbs and welding sparks. Generators hum in alcoves. Tunnels split left and right, twisting deeper than any map.
A hush settles over the group as they pass a checkpoint—two men with neck tattoos and Kalashnikovs nod them through.
Markov stops at a rusted archway, etched with Russian. Ghost doesn't need a translation: Those who walk in shadow leave no footprints.
---
Ghost steps through the arch and into chaos wrapped in concrete and low light.
The catacomb opens into a chamber the size of a train yard—low ceiling, sweat-laced air, and the hum of desperate commerce. Fluorescent bulbs swing from exposed pipes. Vendors bark in Polish, Russian, Arabic, Ukrainian. Scars and tattoos tell more than words.
Ghost's eyes sweep left to right, cataloging everything.
Warlords in Adidas tracksuits lean against crates of stolen NATO munitions. A child in a gas mask hands off a bundle of forged passports. A man with one eye sells SIM cards carved from old military satellites. Everything has a price. Nothing has a receipt.
A toothless Armenian laughs as he waves Ghost over. "Need a drone? Or something louder?"
Ghost brushes past.
He finds what he's looking for—an old gearhead soldering circuit boards beside a broken arcade cabinet. The man doesn't look up.
"You trade?" Ghost asks.
The man flicks his cigarette, eyes flicking to Ghost's wrist. "Depends."
Ghost pulls a scratched TAG Heuer watch from his pocket—stolen off a dead interrogator in the black site. Still ticking. Still stained.
"Swiss, sapphire face," Ghost mutters. "No questions."
The gearhead pops the back off the watch, checks the rotor, nods once. He slides a matte black laptop across the crate—clean ports, stripped OS, single-use uplink buried behind military-grade encryption.
"No questions," the man agrees.
Ghost tucks the laptop under one arm. Turns.
Then freezes.
Ghost's jaw tightens. He doesn't flinch, doesn't blink.
But he walks faster now.
The market fades behind him like smoke. He's got what he came for. The war's already following.
---
Ghost stands outside Nova Dym, the neon flickering in and out like a dying pulse. The bar squats at the end of a ruined block—plaster peeling, steel shutters bolted crooked. Music leaks through the cracks: synthwave over a busted sound system, warbled and off-key.
Inside, the bar smells like mold, old vodka, and defeat.
A dozen drunks slump over tables, lost in their own poison. A bartender with a dead stare wipes the same glass over and over. No one looks twice at the hooded man with a limp—Warsaw's too broken for questions.
Ghost spots him in the back booth. Milo Kowalczyk.
Ex-CIA. More dead than alive. Hunched over a chipped glass, fingers yellowed, eyes bloodshot and hollow. He used to run signals out of Belarus during the Baltic push. Now he's just a wreck in a trench coat.
Ghost slides into the booth.
Milo doesn't look up. "You're either here to kill me or ask me something worse."
Ghost sets the comms unit on the table. Activates the last trace—ping, Warsaw, two weeks ago.
Then: one word. "Spectre."
Milo stiffens. Hand trembles. The glass clinks.
He whispers, "I thought he was a myth. Like Cerberus or that mess in Donetsk."
Ghost leans forward. "He was here. I want to know what he wanted."
Milo drags a hand down his face. "Files. Old ones. The kind that don't officially exist anymore. Blackbag records, task force rotations. Ghost sites."
Ghost doesn't blink. "141?"
Milo nods, eyes darting to the bartender. "I told him I couldn't help. Too risky. Too hot."
Ghost's voice drops into gravel. "And?"
Milo exhales slow. "I lied. I had a copy. Hidden off-grid, triple firewalled. I gave him a lead to throw him off."
The bartender shifts behind the bar. Something's wrong.
Ghost's hand slips beneath the table, fingers closing on the pistol hidden in his waistband.
Milo whispers, "You shouldn't have come here. You don't understand. He's not just burning files…"
---
The bartender's hand drops below the bar—too smooth, too calm. Ghost sees it in the reflection of a broken vodka bottle behind the shelves. The glint of steel.
Ghost shouts, "Down!" and slams Milo to the sticky floor just as the bartender pulls a suppressed Glock and fires. The first round punches into the booth's wooden frame where Milo's skull was a heartbeat ago.
The rear alley door blasts inward—three Spectre operatives in matte-black rigs, masks sealed, suppressed SMGs braced tight. No warnings. No chatter. Just clean kill doctrine.
Ghost rolls left, yanks a kitchen cleaver off the wall behind the bar as rounds tear through liquor bottles. Vodka ignites on a stove burner. Flames race along the counter like napalm.
One Spectre pushes forward—fast, tactical, overconfident.
Ghost hurls the cleaver. It thunks into the man's collarbone. He staggers, drops his weapon. Ghost follows, grabs him by the plate carrier, yanks him into the stove's fireball. Screams burst in a flash of cooking oil and scorched flesh.
The bartender ducks behind the bar and reappears with an Uzi—spraying wildly. Ghost flips a table, draws the suppressed pistol from his thigh rig. Three shots—two miss, one leg. She drops.
The other two Spectre agents flank, using bar stools and overturned furniture for cover. Ghost flanks wider, crashes through the kitchen door.
Hot grease, broken tiles, flames licking the ceiling.
He grabs a cast iron skillet off the range, swings it into the first agent's wrist—bones crack. The SMG clatters. Ghost knees him in the throat, spins, and throws the skillet like a discus. It caves in the last attacker's temple mid-sprint.
Silence, broken only by the groan of fire and Milo's panicked coughing.
Ghost kicks an SMG into his grip, scans for movement.
But this wasn't a random sweep. It was a surgical hit—Spectre knew exactly where he'd be.
He looks down at one of the dead operators. Standard gear. No ID. No insignia.
Professional ghosts, just like him.
---
The bartender's blood smears down the door of the beer fridge as Ghost slams her into it—hard enough to knock loose a shelf inside. Bottles crash. She wheezes, stunned, trying to lift the pistol from her lap.
Ghost jams her wrist against the steel, disarming her with a twist that snaps something in her elbow. She screams and fights, but he's already in her face, voice low and flat.
"Talk. Who sent you?"
Her lip splits from the impact. "You're already dead, Riley." Her accent's Baltic, maybe Latvian. He narrows his eyes. Hired gun, not Spectre core—but close enough to bleed intel.
He presses the muzzle of her own sidearm into her temple. "Try again."
She coughs, blood on her teeth. "There's a list… from the black. Spectre's building it. Killing the names off. You're on it. So was Garrick."
Something tightens in Ghost's chest, but he doesn't blink. "What list?"
"Top-clearance. Off-books. Some MI6 archive Spectre cracked. He's hunting ghosts… your team."
Ghost pulls her to her feet, shoves her toward a smoldering wall as more gunfire rattles faintly outside—maybe a straggler from the hit team sweeping for survivors. No time.
"What about MacTavish? Is he next?"
She shakes her head slowly. "I don't know. But someone called him 'Soap.' It was on the map."
Ghost lifts her by the collar and smashes her back against the fridge one last time. Her eyes roll back. Unconscious. Maybe playing dead. Doesn't matter.
He steps back, breathing hard, sweat steaming off his neck despite the cold beer mist clinging to his jacket.
In the corner, Milo's hunched over, bleeding from a graze along his scalp. He locks eyes with Ghost.
"She wasn't lying," Milo rasps. "Spectre's targeting your entire unit."
Ghost turns, face unreadable beneath the mask. But something old and brutal flashes in his eyes—something primal.
---
The click is soft—barely audible over the crackling flames and the distant wail of sirens—but Ghost hears it.
He whirls toward the last standing Spectre agent, slumped near the rear stairwell. The man's thumb hovers over a small black trigger box, lips curled in a bloody grin.
"Too late," he hisses in Polish. "We all go."
Milo's face goes pale. "The gas main—he's wired it!"
Ghost doesn't hesitate. He lunges, grabbing Milo by the collar and dragging him toward the trapdoor behind the bar. His boots slide on blood-slick tile as the first pulse of heat flashes through the room.
Behind them, the Spectre agent presses the trigger.
Boom.
The explosion rips through the upper level in a concussive wave—fire swallowing liquor bottles, shattered mirrors, and the bar's rusted spine. A ceiling beam crashes down where they'd stood seconds ago.
Ghost slams the trapdoor shut above them just as the world ignites.
In the cellar, it's pitch-black. The blast sucks the oxygen from the air. Ghost lands on his side, shielding Milo from falling debris. His ears ring—nothing but high-pitched static.
Above, flames roar through what's left of Nova Dym.
Ghost coughs, hauls himself upright, shoulder protesting with every move. He checks Milo—alive, barely. Dust in his hair, blood on his shirt, shock setting in.
Ghost snaps a glowstick and waves it slowly. Green light washes over bricks, pipes, and decades-old crates. He kicks one open—vodka and surplus rations from the Cold War.
He tosses Milo a canteen. "Drink. Then move. We're not dead yet."
Milo gulps it down, hands shaking. "You don't get it, man. That wasn't just a hit. That was a message."
Ghost shoulders the satchel with the stolen gear, eyes cold behind the mask. "Yeah. I heard it loud and clear."
He pulls a crowbar from a cracked support beam and starts prying open the rusted bulkhead at the end of the cellar.
They disappear into the tunnels beneath Warsaw, fire licking at their heels.
---
The tunnel stinks of sulfur and scorched meat.
Ghost and Milo emerge from the emergency crawlspace behind what's left of Nova Dym. The building's a skeleton—brick cracked open, flames licking at the sky like a funeral pyre. Snow swirls into steam as it hits the rubble.
Milo coughs, voice hoarse. "They wanted it all gone. No trace. No trail."
Ghost doesn't answer. He's already searching the man—jacket, pockets, inner lining. His fingers stop on something stiff and warped by heat. He tears it out.
A charred strip of canvas—once part of a courier pouch. Inside, a folded map. Half-melted. Still legible.
He kneels by the flickering light of the flames and smooths it open on a flat stone. Ink runs in some places, but names punch through the ash like ghosts.
MAC TAVISH, JOHN – SOAP
GARRICK, KYLE – GAZ (crossed out)
RILEY, SIMON – GHOST (also crossed out)
A dozen coordinates. Eight names not yet marked.
Ghost exhales slowly through his teeth. His own name, struck through like a completed objective.
Milo edges closer, trying to see. "You were on it too?"
Ghost grunts. "Still am."
He scans the map again. On the edge, scribbled in a different hand: "From the black…"
"What does that mean?" Milo whispers.
Ghost's eyes stay locked on the list. "It means Spectre's not just cleaning house. He's running a play from somewhere deep—something buried. Someone gave him this."
His fingers clench around the map until the paper creaks.
A sudden gust sends ashes swirling. In the flicker of firelight, Ghost looks like a revenant—mask cracked, eyes hollow, jaw set.
"MacTavish is next," he mutters.
He folds the map with precision, tucks it into his coat beside the data chip.
Behind them, the last timber in Nova Dym groans and collapses.
The bridge is burned. The war just went personal.
---
The tunnel reeks of oil and mold. Pipes sweat. The air hums with silence.
Ghost moves like a shadow back through the catacombs, blood dried to rust across his collar. He finds Markov seated at a cracked table beneath a flickering utility light, thumbing through a deck of counterfeit IDs. Two of his men lounge nearby, eyes sharp, fingers twitching near their triggers.
Markov doesn't look up. "I heard Nova Dym lit up the skyline. Should've known you'd survive."
Ghost drops the scorched map onto the table. Charred edges. A kill list. His name struck clean through.
Markov sighs. "And you want to know where Spectre got it."
Ghost doesn't blink. "I want the source. I want the route. I want the hands that passed it down."
Markov taps ash from his cigarette. "You think I asked questions when Spectre wired triple my rate? He came through fast. Tight crew. Eastern Bloc accents. Romanian, maybe. Ex-FSB, ex-everything. He only asked for one thing—legacy data."
Ghost's tone drops to dead calm. "What kind?"
Markov shrugs. "Off-book blacklists. Shadows of shadows. Files buried so deep you'd need a shovel and a prayer."
Ghost leans in. "Where?"
Markov meets his gaze, smile brittle. "The list came from a ghost archive. One of the old ones. Black Vault protocols. Leased access—once. Then burned. But I tracked the node he used. Not here."
He slides a scrap of torn receipt paper across the table. An IP string. A server cluster off-grid. Cold and dark.
Markov lights another cigarette with the last match in his book. "He's not hunting you. He's erasing the project. All of it."
Ghost says nothing. He pulls a grenade from his coat—smooth, matte black. No pin pulled. He sets it on the table.
Markov freezes. His men shift.
Ghost locks eyes. "Next time you lie, it won't be symbolic."
He turns and vanishes into the dark, boots echoing like a drumbeat of judgment.
Behind him, no one breathes.
---
Ghost steps out into the Warsaw night, smoke and frost curling from the ruins behind him. Nova Dym is a silhouette now—just flame-licked rafters and sirens approaching too late. His boots crunch ice and broken glass, but his eyes stay forward.
He ducks into an alley, pulls a thermal blanket from his pack, and drops to one knee beneath a rusted fire escape. The cold bites deep, but he doesn't feel it. Not tonight.
From his coat, he pulls the unregistered laptop. Cracked casing. One-time uplink. Still alive. He powers it up.
A prompt appears. Ghost slots the data chip, fingers wrapped tight to hide the tremble from the adrenaline crash. The laptop whirs. Screen flickers. Lines of ciphered code race, then stabilize.
ACCESS GRANTED – BLACK LIST DIRECTORY
A loading bar. Then: a list. Stark, clean, no gloss. Ten names. All familiar. All ghosts in his own past.
TASK FORCE 141 – TERMINATION INDEX
1. KYLE "GAZ" GARRICK – STRUCK THROUGH.
2. JOHN "SOAP" MACTAVISH
3. SIMON "GHOST" RILEY – STRUCK THROUGH.
4. JOSEPH "FARO" VARGAS
5. ALEJANDRO VARGAS
6. PHILLIP GRAVES
7. ALEX KELLER
8. KATE LASWELL
9. CAPTAIN JOHN PRICE
10. UNKNOWN ENTRY – CODE: IRONHAND
Ghost exhales. Slow. The way a man does when a noose tightens and he's still figuring out which hand holds the blade.
He pulls the map from his coat. Traces a line with his finger. Soap's name. Warsaw to Prague. Another trail.
---
Wind howls down the Warsaw alley like a warning whispered in code. Ghost stands alone beneath a flickering streetlamp, his shadow long and distorted in the slush. The laptop screen dims to black in his hands, list burned into memory.
He pockets the drive. Pulls his mask tighter.
A tram rumbles in the distance, its light sweeping across brick and bone. Ghost doesn't flinch. He's already moving—one eye on the rooftops, the other on the street's curve west.
As he walks, his voice cracks the silence, low and broken.
"Gaz is gone. Spectre's ahead of me."
He pauses at a street corner, ducks behind a billboard. Pulls a burner phone. One call. No ring. Just a pulse of static and a coded click.
"Sending coordinates," he mutters. "MacTavish is next. I'm en route."
He drops the phone into a storm drain and keeps walking.
Snow begins to fall again. Quiet. Relentless.