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They say the only thing that ever escapes **The Verge** is smoke.
The kind that leaks out of cracked pipes in winter. The kind that curls off a lit blunt while you're trying not to think about your next meal. The kind that rises after a bullet finds a body.
But people?
Nah. People don't escape.
They just vanish.
---
I was born on a Thursday in Building C of the Ashfall Complex—four floors, half condemned, always wet with some kind of leak. My mom told me I came out crying, not because I was hungry or cold, but because even babies know when they're born into hell.
My name's **Noah Vale**. Yeah, like "no avail." Fitting, right?
The day everything started, I was 17 and dead broke. Again.
---
"Vale!"
The shout came before the slap.
My back slammed against the alley wall, a cold metal bin rattling behind me. Benny "Fists" Cray had me by the collar, his breath all hot garbage and dried tobacco.
"You think I'm running a charity, punk?" he growled, pulling me forward like a ragdoll. "You think I fronted you that bag 'cause I *like* your pretty face?"
I blinked. The split on my lip from last week reopened. "Gimme two more days. I almost got it."
Benny laughed. It wasn't a happy sound. "You said that last time."
He dropped me. My knees hit concrete.
"And the time before that."
He lit a cigarette, one-handed. A show of power, of boredom.
"Verge rules, Vale. No pay, no play."
Then he turned to leave.
And paused.
"...You hear about that Elaris lady got jumped on Midtown Drive last night?"
I stayed silent.
Benny tossed his cigarette. "Word is, she's hiring protection. Off the books. Real hush hush. Rich bitch, bleeding money. Thought you liked long shots."
---
That night, I skipped dinner—again—and waited in a stairwell until it was quiet. My hoodie was soaked from the rain, but I didn't care. The only heat I needed was the one burning in my chest.
I wasn't gonna die here.
Not like Mom.
Not like Drex's runners.
Not like every other name carved into the Verge's memory wall.
So I went to **Midtown**.
Didn't belong there. Everything was too clean, too bright. Even the homeless had better shoes.
But I found her.
She was limping out of a silver car. Alone.
And even from across the street, I could tell: she wasn't just rich. She was **important**.
The kind of woman who didn't cry when they stabbed her.
The kind of woman who'd look at a gutter rat like me and see a tool—not a threat.
I walked up and said the dumbest thing of my life.
---
"You look like someone who could use a guy who knows how to disappear."
She turned.
Eyes sharp. Makeup smeared. Blood still crusting her blazer.
"I don't hire punks," she said.
I showed her my hand.
Wrapped in tape.
One side was red.
"I'm not a punk. I'm desperate."
---
Her name was **Celeste Ruan**.
She ran numbers for the city's private elite. But that was the surface story. The real business was beneath it—contracts, leverage, favors, debts. Things bought and sold behind boardroom glass and pool hall back doors.
She didn't take me seriously at first.
But I stuck around.
Did a few runs. Kept quiet. Never asked names.
By the end of the second week, she stopped locking her office when I was inside.
By the third week, I was making more in an envelope than I'd ever made in a month running product for Cray.
But that's when the blood started.
---
"You trust her?" Malik asked me one night, as we crouched behind the Verge gym, sipping stolen coffee.
"She's not like the others."
Malik scoffed. "They never are. Right up until they feed you to the dogs."
He wasn't wrong.
But trust didn't matter when you had **nothing**.
All that mattered was the climb.
---
The deal went sideways in Week Four.
Celeste sent me to deliver a package to a guy named Terrin.
What I didn't know?
Terrin was already dead.
And someone wanted me seen holding the box.
By the time I realized it was a setup, the cops had photos, and every gang in South Elaris thought I'd stolen something sacred.
I didn't sleep for two days.
Malik skipped town.
And Celeste? She was gone.
No contact. No calls.
And I was back where I started—except now, I had a price on my head.
---
They came for me at dawn.
Three of them. Masked. Armed.
They didn't talk.
But I did.
I begged. Lied. Swore I'd return whatever I'd taken.
Didn't matter.
One raised his gun.
And then—
BANG.
But it wasn't me who got hit.
One of the masked men dropped.
Then the second.
The third turned to run and got tackled.
Celeste stood there, hand still shaking, gun smoking.
"You're more valuable alive," she said.
---
That night, we sat in a garage beneath the old highway. The hum of neon signs above made everything feel unreal.
"Why me?" I asked.
She didn't answer right away.
Then she tossed something onto the table.
A photo.
Me, as a kid. With a woman I barely remembered.
"My name's not really Celeste," she said.
"And your mom wasn't just some nurse in the Verge."
---
I didn't know it yet,
but that moment—
that photo—
that choice to walk across the street into Midtown?
That was the first step.
Not toward freedom.
Not toward justice.
Not even toward revenge.
That was the moment I stopped being Noah Vale...
...and started becoming the **Ghost**.
---
Part 2: Her name wasn't Celeste
The photo sat between us like a loaded gun.
Worn edges. Faded ink. A younger version of me, maybe five years old, sitting on a cracked step beside a woman with storm-gray eyes.
Not my mother.
Not Aline Vale.
Someone else.
"Who is she?" I asked, voice dry as ash.
Celeste—or whatever her real name was—lit a cigarette. The smoke curled around her like armor. "Your birth mother."
---
My heartbeat stuttered. My brain tried to make sense of it. Aline raised me. She was there through every eviction, every hospital bill, every long night I cried into thin blankets and hollow rooms.
"You're lying," I said. "That's not—"
"She's not the woman who died in Building C," the woman across from me said flatly. "Aline Vale was hired to protect you. Hide you. Keep you away from them."
"From who?"
She stared. Her eyes, cold and wet and furious, never blinked.
"The people who ran this city long before Elaris had skyscrapers. The ones buried in legacy contracts, shadow money, and streets named after their victims."
She leaned forward.
"They're the ones who put a bounty on your head, Noah."
---
The garage buzzed with static from an old radio. I could hear tires echoing overhead. My whole body felt like it was sinking through the concrete floor.
"But I'm nobody."
"That's what they wanted you to believe."
She tossed a file toward me. I opened it with trembling fingers.
Bank statements. Photos. Surveillance notes. Death certificates.
One page caught my eye.
**Project: Specter.**
**Subject 7-A: Null.**
**Status: Unknown. Presumed Destroyed.**
There, attached by a paperclip, was my photo.
Only… older.
Rougher.
And stamped with the words: **Potential Re-Activation Candidate.**
---
"What the hell is this?" I whispered.
"A nightmare. One you were born into." She blew out smoke. "Your mother—your *real* mother—was one of seven engineers who built Specter."
"What is Specter?"
She looked up. "A weapon."
---
I stood. Couldn't sit anymore. My legs shook, but I stayed upright.
"You think I believe any of this?"
She smirked. "You already do. You just wish you didn't."
She stood, too.
"You've survived things no kid from the Verge should survive. You run faster, hit harder, heal quicker. You don't ask why. You just call it luck. But luck doesn't stop you from bleeding out after a knife to the gut."
I froze.
She was right.
A few weeks ago, one of Cray's goons stuck me good. Should've died in that alley.
But I didn't.
I walked home.
Stitched myself up.
Slept like nothing happened.
---
"You're telling me I'm some… what, experiment?"
She didn't answer. Just walked to the far wall and pulled off a tarp.
Beneath it: a box. Matte black. Keypad-locked. High-grade military issue.
She keyed in a code.
The lid hissed open.
Inside: a bracelet. Sleek, metallic. Embedded with faint blue lines pulsing like veins.
"I saved this for you."
I backed away.
"No way. I'm not putting that on."
"Then they'll find you. And next time, I won't be around to pull the trigger."
---
I didn't sleep that night.
I stared at the bracelet.
Stared at the photo.
Stared at my hands, like they didn't belong to me.
---
By morning, I made my choice.
---
I put the bracelet on.
It clicked shut.
Pain flared through my arm like a branding iron. My knees buckled. I screamed. I saw things—images, fragments, codes—flashing through my mind.
The bracelet burned red.
Then—
Silence.
And when I opened my eyes…
…I wasn't alone inside my head anymore.
---
**VOICE DETECTED.**
**Welcome back, Subject 7-A.**
**Protocol: Specter Prime initializing.**
---