The first sign was not a sound, but a silence.
Karl had just taken the first, perfect sip of his coffee. The world was still holding its breath at dawn, the only sound the faint, satisfying crunch of his toast. Then, the hum of the refrigerator stopped.
It was a subtle thing, a cessation of a background noise he hadn't consciously registered until it was gone. The kitchen, a moment ago a haven of predictable order, was now preternaturally still. The clock on the microwave was dark. A power cut. Annoying, but not catastrophic.
He set his mug down, his movements still calm but now tinged with a new purpose. He would need to reset the clocks later. He reached for the battery-powered radio on the counter, a vintage model he kept for weather reports. Perhaps there was news on the outage.
His hand froze an inch from the dial.
Tucked between the radio and the fruit bowl was a device he hadn't placed there. A cheap, disposable phone, the kind sold in blister packs at gas stations. It was black, innocuous, and utterly foreign in his curated space.
A coldness, entirely separate from the morning chill, seeped into his bones. His heart, which had been beating a slow, steady rhythm, gave a single, hard thump against his ribs.
He did not snatch it up. He did not panic. His training, buried deep under years of quiet mornings and perfectly cooked eggs, surfaced like a shark from dark water. He remained perfectly still, his senses stretching out, listening. The house was silent. The street outside was silent.
Slowly, deliberately, he picked up the phone. It was cool and light in his hand. He pressed the power button. The screen glowed to life. There was no home screen, no apps. There was only a single text message, sent from an unknown number an hour ago.
The message was not a threat. It was not a taunt. It was a simple, stark statement of fact, as cold and impersonal as a bank statement.
Contract: KARL "THE GHOST" VORLENDER. Status: ACTIVE. Value: 500,000. Authorization: NIGHTINGALE.
The world did not tilt. The floor did not open up. The sun continued its slow climb outside the window, the light now catching the dust motes dancing in the air. But for Karl, everything had changed.
Five hundred thousand dollars. A king's ransom. Enough to make every friend a potential enemy, every stranger a potential threat. NIGHTINGALE. A name from the old days. A name he hadn't heard in a decade. A name he'd hoped was dead.
He read the message once more, committing the digits to memory. Then, his movements were swift, efficient, devoid of all previous leisure. He walked to the sink, placed the phone in the stainless steel basin, and poured the remains of his still-hot French press over it. The electronics fizzed and died with a pathetic sizzle.
He didn't look at his half-eaten breakfast. The coffee in his mug was already cooling, gone bitter and unacceptable. The perfect morning was a corpse.
He moved through the kitchen, not as a man preparing for his day, but as a soldier prepping a battlefield. He opened a drawer not containing cutlery, but a passport, a stack of bills, and a compact 9mm pistol, all nestled in a custom-cut foam insert. From the freezer, behind the bag of peas, he retrieved a second, smaller bundle of currency.
His eyes, once calm, now continuously scanned the windows, calculating sightlines, assessing vulnerabilities. The quiet street outside was no longer peaceful; it was a field of unknown threats. Every parked car was a potential surveillance post. Every flicker of a curtain was a possible trigger.
Karl Vorlender was gone. The Ghost was awake. And he had just learned the hunt had begun.