There are moments for silence and moments for steel, times to play the hero and times to slip into the villain's shadow. Right now, I'm not sure which role is mine.
Then there's a time to stay quiet and a time to strike. I chose the latter.
"I see you've gone deaf—" the voice behind me started, but I was already moving. One twist, one hit, and he hit the ground before he finished the sentence.
He groaned, rolling onto his side, but I stepped over him before he could recover.
The other two froze, their confidence draining as fast as his breath.
"Your turn?" I asked.
They rushed me anyway—bad choice.
The first swung wild; I caught his wrist, drove my knee into his ribs, and sent him stumbling into a parked car.
The second barely had time to blink before I swept his legs and let him meet the pavement face-first.
In seconds, all three were down, wheezing, cursing, or wondering what just happened.
I adjusted my jacket, steadying my breath.
"Next time," I said, "pick an easier target." as
I started forward, stepping past one of them, when he muttered,
"He'll find you… kill you. You're just a pawn in his game."
A shaky laugh followed, sharp enough to spike my anger.
I turned back, charging toward him with more rage than I'd felt all night.
"Who do you work for?" I demanded, my hand tightening around his neck.
"You don't want to know," he rasped. "But he knows your every move… cop."
The way he said it pulled me right back into the case, deeper than I meant to go.
"Waller? They're baiting you. Don't fall for it." Serena's calm voice whispered through my earbuds.
His words clawed at the back of my mind, but Serena's warning cut sharper.
I exhaled, forcing the anger down. If I let him drag me in blind, I'd already lost.
I released his neck, letting him drop back against the wall. "Tell your boss I'm not playing."
He coughed, smirking through split lips. "You already are."
I ignored him and moved toward the street. The sun felt colder now, heavier, as if someone else was watching—someone smarter than the three idiots on the ground.
"Waller, breathe," Serena said again, steady but firm. "You're too close to the edge."
"I'm fine," I muttered, but even I didn't believe it.
She sighed. "Then start acting like it. Headquarters just flagged another hit linked to Ben's disappearance. You need to get out of there before backup arrives and complicates things."
I paused at the corner, adjusting the earbud. "Where?"
"Pier 17. Abandoned storage. Surveillance caught movement an hour ago."
My pulse tightened. That was Ben's old drop—his safe zone before everything went sideways.
"Serena," I said, staring into the crowded stretch of street ahead, "if this is a trap…"
"It is a trap," she replied. "The question is whether you're smart enough to walk into it and walk back out."
A small, grim smile touched my lips.
"Then let's find out."
---
I headed toward Pier 17, by now the time was almost 6pm, the city thinning out as the streets grew darker. Every step echoed too loudly, as if the night itself was warning me to turn back. But Ben's name kept pushing me forward.
"Serena, patch me into the live feed," I whispered.
Silence.
"Serena?"
Nothing but static poured through the earbuds.
I slowed. Serena never went silent—ever. Even during full blackout ops she kept a whisper alive on the line. Something was wrong.
An uneasy chill crawled up my spine as I stepped onto the wooden planks of the pier. The storage warehouse loomed ahead—lights off, doors slightly ajar like someone left in a hurry… or waited for someone to enter.
Then my earbud crackled.
But the voice that came through wasn't Serena.
"Waller," it said softly. A voice I hadn't heard in months.
A voice that shouldn't have been alive.
"Stop walking."
My breath hitched. "Ben?"
A low chuckle drifted into my ear. "You're late. They wanted you here an hour ago."
I froze in the middle of the pier. "Ben, where are you? What's going on?"
"Wrong questions," he murmured. "The right question is—who told you to come here?"
My pulse hammered. "Serena. She gave me the location after the hit flagged your name."
Another beat of silence. Then Ben spoke again, quieter, urgent:
"Serena's been off the grid for six hours."
The planks beneath me creaked.
Someone was behind me.
"Waller," Ben whispered, "you need to—"
The earbud went dead.
A shadow stretched across the pier as the person behind me stepped closer, slow and deliberate. My hand moved toward my holster, but a faint click told me they'd beaten me by seconds.
A voice I recognized from earlier—the man I'd choked.
"Told you, cop," he said, breath leveled and cold now, none of the earlier weakness in it. "You were already in the game."
I didn't turn yet. My body tensed.
"What did you do to Serena?" I asked.
He chuckled. "Serena? She walked into this trap long before you did."
My heart slammed against my ribs. "What are you talking about?"
He stepped closer, lowering his gun to my back.
_____My stomach dropped, but I forced my breathing steady. Panic was what they wanted—clarity was what I needed.
I finally turned.
The man's face was different now. No trembling hands, no pain, no weakness. His eyes were sharp, calculating. The earlier beating hadn't even slowed him down. He'd faked it—every groan, every stumble.
A decoy.
A lure.
"So that voice…" I said slowly. "The one in my ear…"
He smiled. "A perfect replica. You cops trust your tech too damn much."
My jaw tightened. "What do you want?"
"Not me," he said, stepping aside and gesturing toward the open warehouse doors. "He does."
A figure stood in the doorway—tall, coat fluttering slightly in the sea wind. I couldn't see his face, but I could feel the weight of his stare.
"The one pulling the strings," the man beside me said. "The one you keep trying to find."
My pulse quickened. "Ben?"
The laugh that answered was too cold to belong to Ben.
"No," the man at the door said. "But close."
He stepped into the light.
My breath caught.
It was Serena's partner, Agent Malik—the one who supposedly died two weeks before Ben vanished. The one whose body had never been recovered. The one Serena never talked about.
"You…" I whispered.
"Alive and well," Malik said. "Though I imagine Serena prefers the version of me she remembers."
My hand drifted toward my holster again.
"Don't," he warned. "You won't like how quickly I shoot."
I stilled.
"What do you want from me?" I asked.
Malik walked closer, calm, confident—like a man who'd rehearsed this moment for months.
"You're the only loose thread," he said. "Ben tried to expose us. Serena followed him. And you… you're too curious for your own good."
My heart hammered. "Us?"
Malik nodded. "A network bigger than any of you realized. A game your department stumbled into. Ben uncovered the first layer—then Serena uncovered the second."
"And me?" I asked.
Malik tilted his head, smiling darkly.
"You're the one who was never supposed to get this far."
Before I could react, the man behind me grabbed my arms and locked them behind my back. Malik lifted a device—small, metallic, and blinking faint blue.
A signal jammer.
He turned it off.
And suddenly Serena's voice exploded in my ear:
"WALLER—RUN!"
Malik's smile widened.
Too late.
The warehouse lights snapped on all at once—
revealing a ring of armed men waiting in the shadows.
And in the center of them, tied to a chair, bloodied but alive—
Ben.
"She's not the one talking to you anymore."
And that's when I realized the voice guiding me all day….
The one that sounded like Serena—
had never been her at all.
The lights were blinding at first—harsh, cold, unfeeling. When my eyes adjusted, the sight hit me harder than any punch I'd taken tonight.
Ben.
Tied to a chair.
Head slumped forward.
Blood crusted along his brow and jaw.
Barely breathing.
For a moment, the world narrowed to a single point—his name hanging in my throat, my pulse roaring in my ears.
"Ben…"
It wasn't even a whisper. More like a prayer I didn't know I'd kept alive.
He stirred at the sound. His chin lifted an inch, his eyes struggling to find me.
"Waller?" His voice was broken—frayed threads of the man I remembered. "You shouldn't be here…"
My chest tightened painfully. I tried to move toward him, but the man behind me yanked my arms higher, forcing a groan out of me.
Malik stepped forward, savoring every second.
"Touching reunion, isn't it? He held out longer than I expected. Your name kept him going."
Ben's eyes flickered with something—regret, pain, warning.
"Don't… listen to him," he rasped.
Malik tilted his head, amused. "Still fighting the wrong battles, Ben. Always did."
I clenched my jaw. "Let him go."
"Waller," Malik said, stepping closer until he was inches from my face, "this isn't about him. It's about you finally seeing the truth."
"The truth?" I spat.
"That you were never chasing us." He smiled—slow, calm, cruel. "We were steering you."
My pulse spiked. Every case file. Every clue. Every dead end. Every ambush.
"Why?" I demanded.
Malik's gaze softened in a way that was almost… pitying.
"Because Ben wasn't the leak," he said quietly. "You were."
The words hit me like a blow.
My breath stuttered. "What?"
Ben's voice strained through the pain: "Don't let him—Waller, he's lying—"
Malik snapped his fingers, and one of the armed men pressed a gun to Ben's head.
Ben went still.
I felt something inside me tear.
Malik lowered his voice.
"Waller, every move you made led us exactly where we needed to be. You weren't the leak by intention…"
He touched his temple lightly.
"Just by manipulation."
The realization settled like ice in my gut.
Ben looked at me, eyes glassy with apology. "I tried to warn you… before they took me."
My throat tightened. "Ben, I—I didn't know."
"I know," he whispered. A small, broken smile. "Still… I'm glad you came."
My vision blurred for a fraction of a second—but I blinked it away. The room around me sharpened. Every weapon. Every shadow. Every breath.
Serena's voice returned in my ear, soft but firm:
"Waller… whatever happens… don't let them break you."
Malik noticed the shift in my expression and raised a brow.
"Oh? Looks like she's finally back online."
Then he leaned in close, his whisper brushing my ear like a blade:
"Good.
I want her to hear you scream."
His voice was cutting deep into my head but I tried keeping it calm.
" what happened to you?" With a strained voice I asked.
He looked at me like he's regretting his actions and then replied with a cold stare.
" Nothing happened Waller, I just evolved."
---
I held Malik's gaze without blinking, and that's when it hit me—the truth slipping through the cracks in his performance. Malik wasn't the mastermind. He was just another pawn, another agent being played against his own.
They weren't destroying evidence or trails…
They were canceling agents with agents.
"Bring him forward," Malik commanded.
Rough hands seized my arms, dragging me to a chair. They tied me down right beside Ben, the ropes cutting into my skin, but none of it compared to what came next.
At first the room blurred—fear, anger, confusion mixing into a dull haze. But then the crowd parted.
And they brought him out.
David Moore.
Tortured. Shaking. Unrecognizable.
His face was a map of agony, his body barely holding together.
My breath caught in my chest.
Is this a nightmare?
I could only ask it in my mind—my voice had abandoned me.
The horror was real.
Too real.