Simon "Ghost" Riley

The hotel lobby carried the thick scent of industrial cleaner mixed with the residual grease of a kitchen that never fully shut down. Fluorescent panels hummed overhead, one of them flickering in a corner near the vending machines. Ghost crossed the tiled floor at a measured pace, the civilian coat hanging open enough to suggest a traveler who had just come in from the rain, yet closed enough to conceal the harness he wore beneath. The front desk clerk looked up from a half-finished crossword, pen still in hand.

“Evenin’. Need a single on the fifth if ye’ve got one free. Prefer quieter side of the buildin’.”

The clerk set the pen down and tapped at the terminal. “Fifth’s nearly full. I’ve got 507 or 514. Both face the service alley. That do you?”

“514’ll work.” Ghost slid a stack of notes across the counter, exact amount plus a quiet tip that bought no questions. The clerk counted without comment, programmed a keycard, and passed it over with a plastic smile that never reached the eyes.

“Elevators are to your left. Stairs at the end of the corridor if you prefer. Breakfast starts at six.”

Ghost gave a short nod and turned away. The elevator doors closed on the lobby noise, leaving only the soft mechanical whir of the ascent. He leaned a shoulder against the wall and let the numbers climb. Price’s briefing still sat clear in his head, the words delivered in that dry British cadence over the secureline twelve hours earlier.

The target was Dimitri Kozlov, former Spetsnaz major who had gone private after the last round of sanctions gutted his official pay. Kozlov now ran a mid-tier arms network that moved experimental munitions and encrypted comms gear through Eastern Europe and into the hands of residual Al-Qatala cells still operating under new flags. The network was careful, compartmentalised, and funded through a web of shell companies that had so far resisted full mapping. What the Task Force needed was the location of the next major shipment, the codes that unlocked Kozlov’s dead-drop system, and the identities of the three cut-outs who handled the final hand-offs. Direct action against Kozlov himself had failed twice; the man moved constantly and trusted almost no one. Almost.

Intel from a compromised logistics clerk in Prague had confirmed that Kozlov kept a single personal vulnerability: a partner he rotated through safe properties whenever the heat rose. That partner, known only by the callsign the analysts had assigned, currently occupied a mid-range hotel room on the fifth floor of this building under a false booking paid through a card that traced back to one of Kozlov’s secondary accounts. The partner had access to the encrypted laptop Kozlov used for schedule coordination, and more importantly, had been present at two of the recent dead-drop exchanges. Capture meant leverage. Leverage meant answers. Price had been explicit. Bring the package in breathing and preferably unbroken, but if the extraction turned messy the priority was information, not comfort.

Ghost’s own role was simple on paper. Enter as a guest, confirm the room, isolate the target, and hand off to the extraction team waiting on the service side. Gaz had already infiltrated through the loading bay dressed as a contract electrician, toolbox filled with the right gear to drop the building’s primary power board on command. Soap sat in the van two streets over, engine warm, ready to receive whatever came out the window. Radio silence held until the moment of entry. After that, short bursts only.

The elevator doors opened on the fifth floor with a soft chime. The corridor stretched ahead under the same tired fluorescent light, carpet patterned in faded geometric shapes that had once tried to look expensive. Ghost walked the length of it at the unhurried pace of a man checking room numbers against a booking confirmation. The decoy phone came out of his coat pocket. Its screen showed a simple overlay map and a single pulsing indicator that tracked the residual data signature still leaking from the laptop inside the target room. The signal had been steady for six hours. No movement off the floor. No secondary devices detected. He followed the strength of the ping past closed doors, past a housekeeping cart abandoned with half-folded towels, and past the red glow of the emergency exit sign at the far end.

He stopped in front of 514. The number plate sat slightly crooked. The ping on the screen brightened until the indicator sat almost directly under the door. Ghost gave a small nod, the motion barely visible under the hood of the mask.

“Gotcha...”

The lights died across the entire floor.

Emergency strips along the baseboards flickered to life in dull red, throwing long shadows down the corridor. Ghost did not react. The timing matched the window Gaz had confirmed over the last radio check. Somewhere two floors below, the primary board had taken a controlled surge that would keep cameras, elevators, and electronic locks offline for the next eighteen to twenty minutes. No systems meant no footage. No keycard readers meant the doors either stayed locked by mechanical deadbolt or failed open depending on the model. Ghost had prepared for both.

A sharp intake of breath sounded from the other side of the door, followed by the soft scrape of a chair leg and the rustle of fabric. Someone inside had been clearly caught off guard by the sudden dark. Ghost drew the blue-and-black card from an inner pocket. The card carried a short-range pulse generator and a cloned access chip lifted from the hotel’s own maintenance set. He forced it into the reader slot with a hard push. White smoke hissed out in a thin stream. A sharp metallic pop answered from the lock mechanism. The door shifted under the pressure of his shoulder.

He drew one controlled breath through the fabric of the mask, tasting the brief zest of fried circuitry, and drove his elbow into the wood just beside the handle. The door swung inward on its hinges and his suppressed sidearm was already up, red laser cutting a thin line through the gloom toward the figure silhouetted against the thin curtains.

“Don’t fuckin’ move. Hands where I can see ’em. On the floor. Now.”

The figure seemed to freeze in the middle of the room. Their hands rose slowly into the weak light that was filtered from the street outside. Ghost crossed the space in three long strides, boots heavy on the creaking floorboards, to which he caught the nearest wrist, twisted it high between their shoulder blades, and drove them body forward onto the bed. The mattress took the mass of weight with a muted thump. Ghost put his knee into the small of their back and leaned his full mass down, pressing their face into the covers so any attempt at a shout would die against the fabric.

“Easy now,” he said, voice low and close to their ear. “You’re comin’ with me whether you like it or not. Your man Kozlov’s a right pathetic piece of work, ain’t he? Left ye here alone like a bleedin’ present. No proper watch, no secondary exit plan, just a hotel room and a hope that no one would come knockin’. We’ve been watchin’ the network for months. Every shipment, every dead-drop, and every time he used that laptop of his to rearrange the schedule. You were there for two of the hand-offs. That makes you useful.”

He adjusted his grip, keeping their arm locked and his weight steady while his free hand checked the immediate space for weapons. None. A laptop sat open on the desk near the window, screen brighter now that the power in the building had failed. Takeaway containers and a half-empty bottle of water completed the picture of someone who was supposed to be settled in for the night.

“Price wants a proper chat,” Ghost continued, the words deliberate. “We’re gonna take you out that window and drop you into the arms of the lads waitin’ below. They’ll get you to base in one piece if you’re lucky. If not... well. A few broken limbs won’t stop you talkin’, will they? And you will talk. Everyone does eventually. Kozlov’s shipment is due in four days. We need the location, the codes for the dead-drops, and the names of the three cut-outs still runnin’ the final leg. You’ve got that information. And you’re goin’ to give it up.”

Ghost shifted his stance just enough to free the heavy-duty zip-ties from his belt. The plastic strips sat ready in his hand while he listened for any sign of movement in the corridor or on the radio. Gaz would already be moving to the secondary stairwell. Soap would have the van in position under the service-side window. All that remained was the hand-off itself.

“Be smart,” Ghost said, the accent grinding like gravel under boot. “Struggle and you'll make it worse for yourself. Cooperate and you might still have the use of both legs when this is over. Kozlov’s little network is about to learn what happens when you get careless with the people you claim to protect.”

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