The obituary had no name and no photo.
William found it in Jansen's daily intelligence summary—a single paragraph buried in the ICA internal communications digest, the kind of notice that appeared when an agent was removed from the roster without explanation.
PERSONNEL UPDATE: Agent T., Paris Division, has been removed from active duty as of [DATE REDACTED]. Personnel file closed per Protocol 7-Alpha. No further action required.
No mention of death. No acknowledgment of what had actually happened. Just a bureaucratic notation that a man had ceased to exist.
[CONFIRMATION: Target terminated]
[METHOD: Protocol 7-Alpha (suspected double agent elimination)]
[EXECUTOR: ICA Asset (identity classified)]
[LOCATION: Paris, 14th arrondissement]
[TIME: Yesterday, 14:47 local]
Torres was dead.
William read the notification three times, waiting for the emotional response. Guilt. Horror. Satisfaction. Something.
What he felt was closer to relief. The operation was over. The UNKNOWN-7 investigation was closed. The threat had been neutralized.
[OBSERVATION: User experiencing muted emotional response to target termination confirmation]
[ASSESSMENT: Consistent with Humanity 75 threshold. Empathy dampening is functioning as designed.]
[ADDITIONAL NOTIFICATION:]
[SIN REGISTERED: DELEGATED EVIL (RETROACTIVE)]
[CLASSIFICATION: User caused death through institutional manipulation but did not execute personally]
[BONUS: 50% of standard kill SP value]
[BASE VALUE: Torres termination would have yielded 95 SP direct]
[DELEGATED BONUS: 48 SP]
[CURRENT SP: 123]
Forty-eight SP. The system had found a way to reward him for a death he hadn't personally caused—a bonus for outsourcing murder to the ICA's own machinery.
"You didn't pull the trigger. But you built the gun, loaded it, and pointed it at him."
[CLARIFICATION: Mechanical accuracy of user metaphor is noted. However, moral distinction between direct and delegated killing is not system-relevant.]
[OUTCOME IS IDENTICAL: Target is dead. User benefited. Transaction complete.]
The notification continued:
[UNKNOWN-7 FILE STATUS: Resolved]
*[ICA ASSESSMENT: "Primary suspect Rafael Torres eliminated. Evidence pattern consistent with external cultivation. Case closed pending routine review."]
*[DIANA BURNWOOD NOTATION: "UNKNOWN-7 investigation concluded. No further resources authorized unless new evidence emerges."]
Concluded. The investigation that had haunted William since Copenhagen—the code name that represented everything he had to hide—was officially closed. Diana Burnwood had moved on to other priorities. The ICA had found its scapegoat.
"You got away with it. Torres took the blame, and you got away with it."
[ASSESSMENT: User achieved strategic objective. UNKNOWN-7 misdirection successful.]
[RECOMMENDATION: Maintain operational security. Do not generate new patterns that could reopen investigation.]
The email arrived twelve hours later.
William was reviewing Sapienza intelligence when his secure account flagged an incoming message from an unknown sender. The routing was sophisticated—multiple encryption layers, anonymous relays, the kind of tradecraft that suggested professional origin.
He opened it expecting a trap.
Instead, he found Torres's ghost.
William,
If you're reading this, I'm dead. The automated system I set up sends these messages if I don't check in for 48 hours. I hope I'm wrong. I hope this is a glitch. But I've been in this business too long to believe in hope.
I don't know who framed me. I spent my last days trying to figure it out, and I failed. The evidence was too clean, too professional. Someone who understood ICA systems from the inside built this trap, and I walked right into it.
But I know some things.
I know there's a "second contractor" operating near ICA missions—someone the agency calls UNKNOWN-7. I collected information about the anomalies, the patterns, the things that didn't fit the official explanations. I sent that information to someone who might be able to use it.
I also know that you were the only person outside the agency I trusted in my final months. You were kind to me when no one else was. You listened when I needed to talk. You held my insurance file when I had no one else to turn to.
I want to believe that wasn't part of whatever happened to me. I want to believe our friendship was real.
But if it wasn't—if you were part of this—then I hope the guilt follows you. I hope you remember my daughters' faces every time you close your eyes. I hope the person I thought you were haunts the person you actually are.
Tell my girls I didn't do what they said. Tell them their papa loved them. That's all I ask.
Whatever happens next, I'm already dead. This message can't hurt me anymore. But maybe it can help someone else find the truth.
Goodbye, William. I wish we'd met in different circumstances.
— Rafael
William read the message four times.
The words were exactly what he'd feared—a dead man's accusation, delivered from beyond the grave. But Torres hadn't known. Not for certain. The message proved it—he'd still hoped William was innocent, still wanted to believe their friendship had been real.
"He trusted you. Even at the end. Even suspecting you might have betrayed him, he still wanted to believe."
[OBSERVATION: User experiencing emotional response to posthumous communication]
[ASSESSMENT: Response intensity below baseline but present. Empathy dampening is not complete.]
[NOTE: This message does not affect operational status. Target is dead. User identity protected.]
But the message had mentioned something else. Something that made William's blood run cold.
I sent that information to someone who might be able to use it.
The second notification arrived thirty minutes later.
Not from Jansen. Not from the system. From a monitoring protocol William had established weeks ago, tracking any communications that mentioned his physical description or operational patterns.
The alert was simple:
KEYWORD MATCH DETECTED SOURCE: Encrypted channel (Shadow Client network suspected) RECIPIENT: Olivia Hall (confirmed identity) CONTENT SUMMARY: "Physical description of suspected UNKNOWN-7 collaborator. Male, European appearance, height approximately 180cm, frequents Paris cafés near Tuileries, uses 'William Green' cover identity."
Torres had sent his suspicions to Olivia. Before he died, the man William had destroyed had reached out to the one person actively hunting UNKNOWN-7—and given her William's description.
[THREAT ASSESSMENT: Critical]
[OLIVIA HALL: Previously paused investigation now reactivated with new intelligence]
[INFORMATION TRANSFERRED: Physical description, cover name, operational pattern]
[PROBABILITY OF IDENTIFICATION: 67% within 30 days if Hall pursues actively]
"Torres wasn't just defending himself. He was fighting back. From the beginning, he was building a contingency network—and you never knew."
[OBSERVATION: Target demonstrated sophisticated counterintelligence capability]
[ASSESSMENT: User underestimated target. This is a significant operational failure.]
[RECOMMENDATION: Prepare for Olivia Hall contact. Confrontation is now probable.]
The monitoring protocol had flagged a third recipient for Torres's dead-man's-switch—someone outside both the ICA and the Shadow Client network. The identity was unknown, the routing too sophisticated to trace.
Three messages. Three potential threats. And William had no way of knowing what the third recipient would do with the information.
"You thought killing him through the system was clean. You thought delegating the murder meant avoiding the consequences. But Torres was smarter than you gave him credit for."
[OBSERVATION: User engaging in post-hoc assessment of target capabilities]
[ASSESSMENT: Hindsight analysis is unproductive. Focus on current threat mitigation.]
William deleted Torres's email. The words disappeared from his screen, but they stayed in his memory—the farewell, the accusation, the request to tell his daughters he was innocent.
Tell my girls I didn't do what they said.
He sat in the dark for an hour, the laptop closed, the phone silent, the system offering no commentary. Just William and the ghost of a man he'd destroyed, occupying the same space without touching.
[OBSERVATION: User engaged in extended non-productive contemplation]
[DURATION: 1 hour, 3 minutes]
[SYSTEM NOTE: No SP activity during this period. Time logged as "personal."]
When he finally moved, it was to pull up Olivia Hall's dossier—everything he'd gathered during the counter-investigation, every detail he could remember from their café confrontation. She had his description now. She had his cover name. She had everything Torres had suspected.
She would be coming.
"The frame job is closed. Torres is dead. UNKNOWN-7 is resolved. And somehow, somehow, he's still fighting you from the grave."
[TACTICAL ASSESSMENT: Olivia Hall is the immediate threat]
[OPTIONS:]
[1. Preemptive contact — Control the narrative before she initiates]
[2. Avoidance — Change patterns, reduce exposure, hope she loses the trail]
[3. Elimination — Remove threat permanently]
[SYSTEM PREFERENCE: Option 3 offers highest certainty. Olivia Hall elimination would yield significant SP and remove unpredictable variable.]
[USER PREFERENCE: Unknown]
The notification pulsed once, then faded. The system had made its recommendation. The choice was William's.
He looked at the deleted folder where Torres's email had gone. The words were gone. The consequences weren't.
Olivia Hall was out there, somewhere, reading a dead man's description of the person who'd killed him. And William had to decide what to do about it before she decided for him.
[COUNTDOWN: Estimated 72 hours until Hall initiates contact or surveillance]
[RECOMMENDATION: Decide quickly. Hesitation is inefficient.]
The Amsterdam night pressed against the windows, dark and silent, full of threats that Cold Read could identify but couldn't resolve. Somewhere in the city, William's phone held Torres's insurance drive—the data that had helped destroy him, the birthday card from daughters who would grow up without a father.
"Tell my girls I didn't do what they said."
He wasn't going to do that. He was never going to do that. But the request would stay with him, lodged in whatever remained of his conscience, a splinter that couldn't be removed.
Torres was dead. The frame job was finished. And the ghost of a man William had destroyed was reaching out from the grave to pull him back into the fire.
[SYSTEM NOTE: Torres operation outcome assessment: Success with complications]
[RECOMMENDATION: Address Olivia Hall threat before Sapienza operation. Two concurrent threats exceed optimal management capacity.]
[REMINDER: The Professional doesn't hesitate. The Professional acts.]
William stood up, walked to the window, and watched the canal reflect the city lights. Somewhere out there, Olivia Hall was reading a dead agent's final message. Somewhere out there, an unknown third recipient was deciding what to do with information that could destroy William's carefully constructed existence.
And somewhere in Paris, two girls were waking up to their first morning without a father.
The Professional took a deep breath, cataloged the threats, and began to plan.
Reviews and Power Stones keep the heat on!
Want to see what happens before the "heroes" do?
Secure your spot in the inner circle on Patreon. Skip the weekly wait and read ahead:
💵 Hustler [$7]: 15 Chapters ahead.
⚖️ Enforcer [$11]: 20 Chapters ahead.
👑 Kingpin [$16]: 25 Chapters ahead.
Periodic drops. Check on Patreon for the full release list.
👉 Join the Syndicate: patreon.com/Anti_hero_fanfic