[Ethan’s POV]

The silence in the back of the van was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic thud of the tires hitting potholes and the steady hum of the diesel engine.

Cold condensation crawled down the inside of the metal walls in thin streams, gathering near the floor beneath our boots. The weak overhead bulb hanging near the rear doors flickered every few seconds, casting the cramped cargo space in uneven shadows. Outside, endless forests rolled past beneath a gray Romanian dawn, the skeletal branches of the trees scraping against the fog like grasping fingers.

I watched Claire pack the dead tablet away. She leaned her head against the vibrating metal wall of the van, her eyes closed, exhaustion finally catching up to her. But my mind was racing. Darius’s training had rewired my brain to look for anomalies—to find the gaps in the enemy’s armor, and the holes in our own intel.

I replayed the brief, frantic conversation with Nia and Darius in my head.

The panic in Nia’s voice hadn’t been performative. She had been terrified. That alone bothered me more than the trace itself. Nia was the kind of person who stayed calm during cyberattacks that could cripple governments. If she sounded afraid, it meant something truly dangerous had touched the network.

"Something Nia said is bothering me," I said quietly, breaking the silence.

Claire opened one eye, looking at me through the gloom. "Only one thing? Isabella Vane’s cyber-division nearly triangulating our position didn’t make the top of the list?"

"We handled the trace," I said, waving it off. "It’s what Darius said about the situation back in DC. He said Richard and Victoria are holding the board of directors together against Isabella’s corporate raids."

"They are," Claire nodded, sitting up slightly. "They both have the Sterling family capital backing them, and Victoria is ruthless enough to keep the panicked investors in line. They’re the only reason Vanguard hasn’t completely fractured."

The van swerved violently to avoid a crater in the road, throwing us sideways for a moment. Somewhere in the front cabin, the smuggler cursed loudly in Romanian before lighting another cigarette. The sharp smell of tobacco drifted into the cargo compartment.

"But they shouldn’t be doing it alone," I pressed, leaning forward. "Where is Sofia Aldridge?"

Claire’s expression shifted, a flicker of unease crossing her features.

"Aldridge Global is our biggest ally," I continued, my voice tightening. "Since the DC triumph, Sofia’s empire is the only entity with enough capital to shield Vanguard from a hostile takeover. If Isabella is attacking Victoria and Richard, Sofia should be deploying Aldridge Global’s assets to tear Isabella’s shell companies apart. Why wasn’t she mentioned?"

Claire looked away, staring out the mud-splattered window at the passing trees.

For a few seconds, neither of us spoke. The only sounds were the engine, the rain tapping against the roof, and the distant howl of wind slipping through the old van’s cracked seals.

"Because she’s not in Washington," Claire said softly.

I frowned. "What do you mean she’s not in Washington? Did she go to New York? London?"

"I don’t know, Ethan," Claire said, turning back to me. "She left a day before we caught Jake’s ghost protocol ping from Bucharest. She didn’t file a flight plan with Vanguard aviation. She didn’t take her usual Aegis security detail. She just... vanished."

"Sofia Aldridge doesn’t just vanish," I said, a cold knot forming in my stomach. Sofia was brilliant, calculating, and fiercely loyal to Jake. She had helped him build his empire from the ground up. "She’s a shark. If she left the company exposed during a siege, she must have a damn good reason."

"Or a target," Claire suggested quietly. "You know how she feels about Jake. If she figured out a way to hurt Isabella Vane directly, she wouldn’t wait for the board’s approval. She’d just go."

I rubbed my jaw, processing the information. The board was missing its queen. Jake was a feral ghost hunting PMCs in the dark. And Claire and I were completely cut off from our support network, heading into hostile territory.

The board was set, but the pieces were scattered all over the world.

Outside the van, the forests slowly began to thin, giving way to stretches of empty farmland and abandoned roadside villages. Rusted tractors sat half-buried in mud beside collapsing wooden homes. Smoke drifted lazily from chimneys as villagers started their mornings, completely unaware of the invisible war unfolding around them.

"We can’t worry about Sofia right now," I finally said, forcing my focus back to the immediate mission. "If she’s off the grid, she knows how to take care of herself. We need to focus on Odesa."

Claire nodded, pulling her jacket tighter around herself. "How do we find him, Ethan? Odesa is a massive port city. Millions of people. Thousands of shipping containers moving every day. If we can’t use digital surveillance, how do we track a ghost?"

"We don’t look for the ghost," I said, remembering the carnage at the rail yard. "We look for the blood he leaves behind."

We crossed the Ukrainian border just after sunrise. The smuggler had the guards on his payroll, slipping them a thick envelope of euros hidden inside a manifest clipboard. They didn’t even look in the back of the van.

The checkpoint itself looked worn down and exhausted. Floodlights buzzed weakly above cracked concrete barriers while tired border guards smoked cigarettes beneath faded Ukrainian flags fluttering in the cold wind. Military trucks rumbled somewhere deeper within the compound, their engines growling like distant thunder.

By late afternoon, the air grew heavy with the smell of salt, diesel fuel, and rotting seaweed.

Odesa.

The city emerged slowly from the horizon, sprawling along the coastline beneath layers of gray clouds. Massive cargo cranes towered over the harbor like steel giants, their silhouettes cutting into the sky. Rusted freighters drifted across the dark waters while flocks of seagulls circled overhead, their cries echoing through the industrial haze.

The smuggler dropped us off in a bustling, working-class district a few miles from the main commercial port. We paid him the rest of his fee, and he drove off without a word, leaving us standing on a crowded sidewalk.

People pushed past us from every direction. Dockworkers covered in grease and sweat. Sailors smoking cheap cigarettes. Elderly women dragging shopping carts over cracked pavement. The streets were alive with noise—shouting merchants, rumbling trucks, distant ship horns, and music spilling out from nearby taverns. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

The city was a jarring mix of beautiful, 19th-century European architecture and gritty, industrial Soviet-era sprawl. The streets were packed with dockworkers, sailors, and merchants.

Elegant old buildings with faded pastel facades stood beside brutal concrete apartment blocks stained black by decades of pollution. Ancient cathedrals overlooked alleyways filled with graffiti, broken pipes, and flickering neon signs written in Cyrillic. Odesa felt like two different worlds stitched together with rust and seawater.

"First things first," I told Claire, guiding her into the flow of foot traffic. "We need to ditch the tactical gear. We look like mercenaries. We need to look like locals."

We found a second-hand clothing market in a narrow alleyway. I bought a heavy, worn canvas jacket, a thick wool sweater, and a faded flat cap. Claire bought an oversized parka and a thick scarf that she wrapped around her head and neck, hiding her blonde hair. We stuffed our tactical vests into a duffel bag I bought from a street vendor, though I kept the Glock holstered at the small of my back.

The market itself smelled of wet fabric, fried meat, and old smoke. Vendors shouted over one another beneath hanging tarps while customers dug through piles of military surplus clothing and counterfeit electronics. Nobody paid attention to us. In a city like Odesa, strangers came and went every day.

"Better," I said, looking her over. "Now we need a base of operations. Somewhere analog. No electronic keycards, no Wi-Fi, no cameras."

We spent the next two hours walking the perimeter of the port district, finally settling on a rundown boarding house above a noisy tavern. The landlord was an old man who only spoke Russian and Ukrainian. He didn’t ask for passports. He just took the cash Claire offered him and handed us a heavy brass key.

The stairwell smelled strongly of mildew, cigarette smoke, and boiled cabbage. Somewhere downstairs, drunken laughter erupted from the tavern as old Soviet music played through distorted speakers. The entire building creaked constantly, as though one strong storm might bring it collapsing into the street.

The room was small, smelling of stale beer and sea salt, with peeling wallpaper and a single window that looked out over the sprawling, mechanical forest of the port’s loading cranes.

Claire immediately walked to the small wooden table in the corner, opened her briefcase, and took out Jake’s notebooks and the map we had stolen from the rail yard. She spread them out, weighing the corners down with a coffee mug and an ashtray.

"Isabella Vane uses Odesa to funnel untraceable goods—weapons, cash, black-market tech—into Eastern Europe," Claire said, her eyes scanning Jake’s frantic handwriting. "Jake’s notes indicate he was tracking three specific cargo ships registered to Panamanian shell companies."

I walked over to the window, looking out at the massive cargo ships docked in the distance. The sheer scale of the port was staggering.

Towering cranes moved endlessly across the docks, lifting containers with mechanical precision while floodlights illuminated the harbor in harsh white beams. Ships larger than skyscrapers sat silently in the black water, their horns echoing across the city like warning calls.

"If Jake is here to hurt Isabella, he’s going to hit her logistics," I said, my eyes narrowing as I watched the cranes moving shipping containers like giant metal building blocks. "He’s going to burn her cargo, sink her ships, or kill her local distributors."

"So where do we start?" Claire asked, looking up from the map.

"We hit the taverns near the docks," I said, turning away from the window. "We listen to the dockworkers. We listen to the smugglers. A man like Jake doesn’t operate quietly anymore. If he’s in Odesa, and he’s going to war with Isabella Vane’s syndicate..."

I thought about the PMC squad leader with his shattered ribs, and the man pinned to the brick wall with a piece of rebar.

"...someone is going to turn up dead," I finished grimly. "And when they do, we follow the bodies."