Ethan was waiting in the headquarters' makeshift gym as Cypher, Three, and Lucian were talking. He leaned his back on a wall, listening to Cypher's angry rant, unable to make out the words.

Two Gravekeepers were fighting on mats, training to disarm each other. Both were older men, in their late forties, who bore the ink of their old military units. One was American, the other Russian. Their techniques were different from each other but just as effective.

A third Gravekeeper was cleaning his dismantled M4, keeping an eye on the sparring. He was wearing a tank top revealing the sleeves of a full body-tattoo referencing Japanese folklore. Placing a patch on a cleaning rod, he glanced at Ethan. "How come the Reapers treat you like one of them?"

Ethan shifted his focus from Cypher's rant to the man. "They don't; otherwise I'd be in the other room."

The men's sparring stopped after a last exchange. While the American drank from a water bottle, the Russian turned his attention to Ethan. "I heard he wounded Two as a child."

"I was sixteen, and I scratched him with a knife," Ethan corrected. Internal rumors, especially about the Reapers and Specters, tended to blow out of proportion.

"And here I was, thinking you might be so good you scared him into thinking you deserved better than us." The Russian let out a disapproving grunt and came closer. He was slightly taller than Ethan and a lot more muscular. "I'd like to know for myself why he's so lenient with you. What do you say? A little fight between us; I don't scare you, right, kid?"

The other two stopped what they were doing to look at the interaction.

Ethan didn't move; he didn't even straighten from the wall. But a spark spread from his heart and into his blood.

The Russian stepped closer.

Ethan's vision tunneled as he waited for the man to do something stupid. Every detail sharpened – the Russian's balance, the scars on his knuckles showing how he punched, the slight weakness in his right knee.

"You were right; he's fucking scary." The Russian smirked and moved away. He grabbed a wad of cash from his pocket and tossed it at the American. He pointed at the raised hair on his forearm. "Look at that."

The storm that had rolled into Ethan's mind, the sharp thrill that made him forget the trouble he brought, evaporated. Ethan's breath caught, just enough that he felt the absence like a sudden vacuum in his chest. They didn't notice.

Cypher opened the door and walked towards Ethan. She held out a picture of a woman for him to look at. "Could that be her?"

The hair matched, but her skin color and some aspects of her facial structure were too different. He took the picture to look closer. "I don't think so; her jawline and cheekbones were different. And her eyes were very dark, not light brown."

"But she looks like her?" Cypher pushed.

"Could with some work and serious makeup," Ethan confirmed.

Cypher went back through the door. After a second, she popped her head back through it. "Come with me."

As he followed her, Ethan couldn't help but notice her stiffness and her restrained anger. He caught up to her to be able to lower his voice. "I'm sorry I messed up."

"There is a reason we don't test recruits on the field," Cypher said. She glanced at him, hiding some of what she was feeling. "But letting her escape; that's on you."

'I know,' Ethan thought. He had detailed everything that happened but left out the thrill. He was too ashamed of having let go to it so wholeheartedly that he forgot her presence. He wanted to believe he could control it, but deep down, he knew he wouldn't without a challenging fight. He believed that if they knew, he would be benched, left to its mercy, unable to quench it.

Lucian and Three were in the main room around open folders containing information about the local cartels' known women. There were no Gravekeepers with them; they had been instructed, like Ethan, to leave the room.

Tombstone was sitting on a crate, tapping on a laptop. She acknowledged Ethan's presence with a glance and returned to her work.

"So?" Lucian asked.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Same hunch as you," Cypher answered.

"Then we pack up and delay," Three advised. He closed the folder he was reading. "We need to know what they are after and plan around it."

They were speaking as if Ethan wasn't in the room, but he had enough context to guess. Her hiding an American accent hinted at another international operation. The 'they' Three had referred to had to be her employer. He realized that trapping and attacking him might have been to get cartel secrets from him.

"We can't," Cypher denied. "This operation already took too many resources. If we pull out now, it's months of work wasted."

"And we might not have another chance," Lucian interjected. "I don't need to remind you that this client doesn't react well to delays. If we fail, we might lose a lot more than this contract."

"They could at least tell their teams to stay the fuck out of our way," Cypher mumbled.

"They did," Tombstone said, attracting everyone's attention. The sudden shift stunned her for a second. "The CIA declared her rogue a week ago. She isn't on the job."

"Then why is she here?" Cypher asked.

Tombstone brought her laptop to the central table for everyone to see. She switched the terminal she was on for a journal article. "We didn't pick it up when we looked for collaterals, but I think her brother might be a captive."

'Journalist misses his fiancé's IRE award,' Ethan read. It was a paparazzi publication, something most people would ignore.

"Her brother goes to war-torn or violent countries to report on what the civilians go through. And I've found a flight log where he's listed as coming to Bolivia a month ago." Tombstone switched to the Excel manifest listing the flight's passengers. 'Keith Kingswell' was highlighted. "If they captured him and looked up who his parents are, the cartel definitely would have ransomed him."

"Rich?" Lucian asked.

"They were," Tombstone said. She switched to a hundred-plus-page document. "The IRS fell on them last year and, while they still look like it, they don't have much left."

"So," Cypher began. "Her bosses might know she's here, but she's acting alone. At worst we might be looking at someone with local contacts and maybe some money to finance her operation."

Three crossed his arms, leaning back on the wall as he thought.

Tombstone pulled out the golden cross Ethan retrieved. Its internals have been exposed and rewired to external components. "And she was onto something. It was password protected and contains a private key for a chat on the dark web."

Cypher's eyes widened. "Why didn't you say you found something? I saw you work on that thing an hour ago."

"You were arguing," Tombstone said sheepishly.

Lucian let out a short laugh. "You can interrupt her whenever you want, especially if she's screaming at me."

"They are writing in a coded language," Tombstone sidestepped. She turned the screen for Cypher to see. It was pages of chat, all encrypted into a letter chaos. "I was writing a script to crack it; it should be done in an hour."

"No need," Cypher said. She pushed Tombstone's hand away from the touchpad; Tombstone didn't react to it, at least not like she recoiled from Ethan. "Ten years ago, we hit another cartel in the region; they were using the same cypher. The guy you killed handled security for their loads towards the frontier, and their labs, and their bosses. This is a fucking goldmine!"

'You can read it after ten years?' Ethan pondered to himself. He knew Cypher, like Tombstone, had a mind that was working at a different level, but this was almost unbelievable.

"We've got the location of their new lab and of their main compound. I'll check the satellite images just to be sure." Cypher took a piece of paper from one of the folders and scribbled letter correspondences for Tombstone to use.

"If we act on it, it has to be soon," Three said. "Once they realize he's missing, they'll move or even hole up for a while."

"It looks like he checks in with someone every day at noon," Tombstone said. She scrolled through the chats. "They are using secret word pairs, but I don't see any repetition. I can try to find out if they are referencing anything, but I won't have long, and I don't know how they'll react if I guess wrong."

"Don't," Cypher said. "Don't even log in again. It's better if they think he vanished than if they know we got access."

"It gives us an eleven-hour window," Three stated. He geared up in moments. "Two, you take Alpha and wait on their compound's perimeter. I'll strike their new lab with Beta once you're ready to catch them fleeing."

Tombstone got closer to Ethan. "I guess that means you're out of trouble."

"Thank you," Ethan whispered back. "I owe you on this one."

"It was nothing, just another sleepless night," Tombstone said. She glanced at him, a slight worry in her gaze. "If you could avoid sleeping with another rogue CIA agent, that'd be great though. It would spare us a lot of work."

"Who is she?" Ethan asked.

"Her name is Kate," Tombstone said with a smirk. "She's a bit older than you and a disguise specialist."

Her tone confused Ethan. Somewhere deep inside, he wanted her to be annoyed or even jealous. He cast away his thoughts and refocused on the mission. He pointed at the rewired USB stick. "Could she do that?"

"I don't think so," Tombstone said. She spoke louder for the others to hear. "If you wonder if she gave it to you hoping we would crack it, I can tell you it's not the case. The password-encrypted contents were copied once last night. And the password was the guy's wife's name; she probably spent some time fishing for hints before stealing it."

"Doesn't that mean she might have access to the same info? Locations, routes, the whole thing," Ethan wondered aloud.

"If she figured out the password, finds out which chat it opens, and can read their cypher, then yes," Tombstone confirmed.

"We assume it's the case," Lucian ordered. He grabbed an M60 from a crate and several ammo boxes. He nodded at a crate behind Ethan. "If you see her again, do your best to capture her. She isn't a target, but we need to make it clear that keeping our involvement quiet is best for her."

Ethan opened the tan crate Lucian indicated. It contained a suppressed TAC-50 and five magazines of APEI cartridges. It bothered Ethan, as he wouldn't be able to fight if he was relegated to a marksman role. He wouldn't voice it but secretly hoped he wouldn't need to use the rifle.

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