Location: Safehouse Omega, Queens, NY
The only light in the room came from a single, erratic tungsten bulb swinging gently from the exposed ceiling beams.
It cast long, shifting shadows that danced across the concrete walls like restless spirits.
Agent 47 sat at a steel workbench, the surface organized with a pathological symmetry.
In front of him lay the tools of his trade, disassembled.
The Heckler & Koch USP45s.
He ran an oil-slicked cloth over the slide of the first pistol, his movements rhythmic, almost meditative.
He inspected the firing pin with a jeweler's loupe, searching for micro-fractures. Perfection was not a goal; it was a baseline requirement.
Next to the pistols lay the disassembled components of a Nemesis Arms Vanquish. It was a masterpiece of engineering—a multi-caliber, takedown sniper rifle designed for deep concealment.
The barrel, bolt, and chassis were laid out in order, ready to be integrated into a lethal long-range instrument in under sixty seconds.
To his left sat the fiber wire, coiled like a venomous snake. Beside it lay a Gerber Mark II combat knife.
The black oxide-coated, double-serrated blade absorbed the light rather than reflecting it.
It was a vicious, elegant tool, chosen for its piercing capability and silent deployment.
To his right, a lockpick set, a vial of sedative poison, and a dossier.
And sitting innocuously on top of the dossier was a yellow rubber duck.
It looked like a child's bath toy, bright and cheerful against the cold steel of the workbench.
But 47 checked the small, recessed button on the duck's underside. It was a proximity explosive with a remote trigger override, packed with enough Semtex to breach a reinforced door or clear a room.
A touch of absurdity to balance the grim equation of his existence.
The dossier was the prize.
Four months.
Four months of following digital breadcrumbs, intimidating low-level brokers, and sifting through the ashes of the Cold War.
The Red Room was a virus—burn out the infection in one location, and the pathogen simply retreated deeper into the host.
But 47 was a persistent hunter.
He had found a name. General Boris Lukin.
Lukin was a relic. A former KGB handler who had transitioned seamlessly into the modern era of oligarchs and private armies.
Through the noise of the dark web, 47 had tracked a series of anomalous transactions—shipments of specific chemical precursors and the transfer of "human assets" that matched a disturbing profile.
While the world saw a rogue arms dealer, 47 saw a pattern. He deduced a connection to the old guard.
To Dreykov.
The intelligence lying on his desk—an encrypted file left in a dead drop in Central Park by an anonymous benefactor—was comprehensive regarding Lukin's tactical situation.
It detailed the fortress, the patrol routes, and the General's schedule with frightening accuracy.
But it was silent on his true allegiance.
The dossier made no mention of the Red Room or Dreykov. Whoever had provided this intel saw Lukin as a warlord, a criminal.
They didn't see the ghost behind him.
47 picked up the photograph clipped to the file. Lukin was a bear of a man, scarred and arrogant, standing on the balcony of a mountain fortress.
Location: The Carpathian Mountains, Romania border.
Objective: Interrogate and then eliminate.
47 reassembled the USP45 in under eight seconds. The click of the slide locking into place was a sound of finality.
He stared at the dossier. A less experienced operative would call the clean intel a stroke of luck.
47 called it a variable.
Intel that good usually came with a hook inside.
He didn't care. If it were a trap, he would simply break the jaws that tried to close on him.
He packed the briefcase. Foam inserts swallowed the Vanquish components, the pistols, the knife, and the rubber duck. He closed the lid.
It was time to go hunting.
...
Location: The Carpathian Mountains
The wind at six thousand feet was a physical assault. It screamed through the jagged peaks, carrying ice crystals that stung like needles.
47 moved along the ridge line, a shadow against the snow. He wore a white tactical suit, blending perfectly with the frozen landscape.
He didn't shiver. His body temperature was regulated, his heart rate slow and heavy like a war drum.
Below him, nestled in a valley that natural geography had turned into a fortress, sat the Lukin Estate.
It was a sprawling brutalist chateau, fortified with high walls, watchtowers, and a private militia patrolling the perimeter. Floodlights swept the snow, cutting cones of yellow light through the blizzard.
47 didn't look for the gate. He looked for the flaw.
He found it on the eastern wall.
A drainage pipe, frozen over, but unguarded. The thermal output from the estate's heating system made it a blind spot for the infrared cameras.
He descended the cliff face. No ropes. Just finger-holds on ice-slicked rock. He moved with the terrifying grace of an arachnid, finding purchase where none existed.
He reached the pipe. He melted the ice grate with a localized thermal compound, slipped inside, and crawled into the belly of the beast.
He emerged on the basement levels. The air here was warm, humid, and smelled of damp concrete and something else. Something primal.
Fear.
47 moved through the corridors.
He bypassed a keypad lock with an electronic scrambler. He silently incapacitated a guard who was taking a smoke break, dragging the body into a utility closet.
He reached the central holding area.
He stopped.
47 had seen death in every form. He had seen torture chambers in Morocco and human experimentation labs in Italy.
He was not easily moved. But what he saw through the reinforced glass of the viewing gallery triggered a cold, hard shift in his calculus.
The "great hall" of the basement wasn't a storage facility. It was a showroom.
Dozens of young women, mostly Eastern European, were held in glass cells. They were dressed in white gowns, huddled together, terrified.
In the center of the room, General Lukin was walking with a group of buyers—men in expensive suits sipping vodka. They were inspecting the women like cattle at an auction.
"Lot 4," Lukin bellowed, his voice booming. "Fresh from the academy rejections. Prime genetics. Bidding starts at two million."
47 watched. He analyzed.
Target: General Lukin.
Secondary Targets: 12 armed guards, 4 buyers.
Non-Combatants: 22 hostages.
A silent elimination was the plan. A single bullet from the shadows, then an exit.
That was the contract.
But he had another agenda. He needed to confirm his theory. He needed to know if Lukin was truly the link to the Red Room.
But 47 looked at the women. He looked at the fear in their eyes. It reminded him of the asylum. The loss of self. The reduction of a human being to a product.
He tightened his grip on the briefcase.
Plan updated.
New Objective: Liquidation.
47 didn't open the briefcase to assemble his sniper rifle.
The range was too close, the engagement too chaotic for long-range ballistics. Instead, he opened it to retrieve his dual customized USP45s.
He screwed on the suppressors, not for silence, but for recoil control. He also clipped the Gerber Mark II to his belt and slipped the rubber duck into his pocket.
He stepped out of the shadows and walked to the main door of the hall.
He kicked it open.
The heavy steel door flew off its hinges with a deafening crash. The room froze. Lukin turned, vodka glass halfway to his mouth.
The guards reached for their rifles.
They were too slow.
47 raised both arms. Time seemed to dilate. He didn't spray bullets; he painted targets.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Four shots. Four guards dropped, holes in their foreheads, before they could lift their weapons.
"Kill him!" Lukin screamed, diving behind a marble pillar.
The remaining guards opened fire. Bullets chipped the concrete around 47, but he was already moving.
He wasn't taking cover; he was advancing. He moved in a zigzag pattern, closing the distance with terrifying speed.
He holstered the left pistol and grabbed a guard by the throat, using him as a meat shield against the incoming fire.
He fired over the guard's shoulder.
Headshot. Headshot.
He tossed the dead guard aside and retrieved the yellow rubber duck from his pocket. He held up a small remote trigger in his left hand.
The buyers cowering behind an overturned oak table saw the toy roll across the floor, stopping inches from their feet.
Click.
BOOM.
The explosion was concussive and absolute. Wood, expensive suits, and the buyers ceased to exist in a cloud of splinters and smoke.
47 vaulted over a railing, landing in the center of the room. He was a whirlwind of violence.
He utilized 'Point Shooting' efficiency—a state of hyper-focus where he simply designated the end of a life and his body executed the command.
A guard charged him with a combat knife, swinging wild.
47 didn't grapple.
He drew the Gerber Mark II.
In one fluid motion, he parried the guard's thrust and drove the double-edged blade up under the man's ribcage, piercing the heart.
He withdrew the blade instantly, spinning to slash the throat of a second attacker approaching from the flank.
He spun again, firing his USP45 behind him without looking. The guard on the balcony above fell, crashing through a glass table.
Silence fell.
The room was a ruin of shattered glass and blood. The only sound was the whimpering of the hostages and the heavy breathing of General Lukin.
47 walked toward the marble pillar.
Lukin scrambled out, firing a gold-plated Desert Eagle wildly. 47 didn't flinch. He tilted his head, letting a bullet whiz past his ear, and shot Lukin in the kneecap.
The General screamed and collapsed.
47 stood over him. The towering Russian looked up, eyes wide with a terror he had inflicted on so many others.
"Who... who sent you?" Lukin gasped. "I'll pay double! Triple!"
47 looked down. His face was a mask of granite.
"Your account is overdrawn," 47 said.
He aimed the pistol.
Bang.
47 turned away before the body hit the floor.
He walked to the heavy oak desk in the corner of the room, which Lukin had used as a podium during the auction.
A hardened military terminal sat atop it, still glowing.
47 holstered his weapon.
He grabbed the dead General's limp hand, dragging the heavy corpse slightly to press the thumb against the biometric scanner.
Access Granted.
47's fingers flew across the keyboard. He didn't have time to decrypt the entire database.
He needed the root directory.
He found it.
Project: Subjugation.
He plugged a decrypting drive into the port. The download bar raced across the screen.
He scanned the file headers as they copied. They were fragmented, heavily redacted, but they were there. Shipping manifests for chemical precursors sent to coordinates in the mid-Atlantic.
Lukin was also the one selling 'rejects widows' to the highest bidder.
Wire transfers to shell companies in Ohio and Budapest. And a recurring insignia—a spider web over a globe.
It wasn't the full picture. It was just breadcrumbs. But it was proof. His deduction was correct.
The Red Room wasn't just active; it was expanding.
Download Complete.
47 pocketed the drive. He then drew his pistol and fired three rounds into the terminal tower, destroying the hard drive.
He turned to the control console on the wall. He shot the locking mechanism.
The glass cells hissed open.
The women stared at him, paralyzed.
A bald angel of death in a blood-spattered white suit.
"Go," 47 said. His voice was low, cutting through their shock. "The heavy transport trucks in the garage are fueled. Drive West."
One of the women stepped forward. "Thank you," she whispered.
"Go," 47 repeated.
He waited until they fled, watching them disappear up the stairs. Then, he reloaded his weapons.
The mission was complete. But his instincts were screaming.
He walked out of the chateau, into the courtyard. The blizzard had worsened. The snow was coming down in sheets.
He moved toward the extraction point at the cliff edge.
He stopped.
The air felt different. Charged.
He wasn't alone.
He stood perfectly still in the center of the courtyard. The wind whipped his coat. He didn't turn around, but his mind visualized the space behind him.
Heartbeat detected. Rear left flank. 20 meters. Elevation.
Heartbeat detected. Directly behind. 5 meters. Ground level.
He had been herded.
The intel. The easy entry. The lack of perimeter reinforcement during the firefight.
A laser dot appeared on the back of 47's head.
"Don't move," a voice shouted in Russian.
A soldier.
"Hands where I can see them! Drop the weapons!"
47 didn't drop the weapons.
He tightened his grip. He calculated the turn.
He could spin, drop to a crouch, and fire backward. Probability of success: 88%. Probability of taking a hit: 12%.
He prepared to move.
Thwip.
A silenced shot rang out. Not from 47.
The soldier behind him grunted—the sound of air leaving lungs—and collapsed into the snow.
47 didn't flinch.
He didn't turn. He simply lowered his weapons slowly.
"You're late," 47 said.
A figure dropped from the watchtower above.
She landed in a crouch, the snow crunching softly under her boots. She stood up, holstering a silenced Glock.
Red hair. Black tactical suit. Green eyes that analyzed him.
Natasha Romanoff walked around to face him. She stopped ten feet away.
"Late?" Natasha said, her voice calm, carrying a hint of Russian inflection that she usually suppressed. "You say that like you expected me."
47 ignored what Natasha said.
"You gave me the intel," 47 stated. It wasn't a question. "Lukin. The map. It was a feed."
"We needed to see how you handled a moral dilemma," Natasha said, crossing her arms. "Fury wanted to know if you were a machine or a man. A machine would have sniped Lukin and left the girls. You didn't."
"Disorder offends me," 47 replied coldly. "Waste is inefficient."
"Is that what you call saving twenty lives? Efficiency?" Natasha smirked, though it didn't reach her eyes. "You can lie to yourself. But your actions say otherwise."
47 finally looked at her.
Really looked at her. He saw the similarities. The posture. The micro-expressions of someone who is constantly assessing threats.
"You are the Widow," 47 said.
"And you are the Wolf," Natasha replied. "Or so the stories went. The Ghost of Sector 4. I blew that facility up, you know. I thought I killed you."
"I am a hard man to kill."
"Clearly." Natasha gestured to the dead soldier behind 47—a mercenary, likely hired by a third party, not S.H.I.E.L.D. "That guy was a cleaner for Lukin's partners. He was going to put a bullet in your spine while you were reloading."
"He was off-balance," 47 said dismissively. "His breathing was erratic. I would have heard the trigger squeeze."
"You knew he was there?"
"I knew you were there," 47 countered.
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