The city never truly slept, but tonight, Istanbul felt like it had stopped breathing.
From the cracked window of a low-rent apartment, Ethan Ward stared out at the skyline — a thousand lights flickering across the Bosphorus like dying stars. The silence pressed against him harder than any gun barrel ever had.
He hadn't slept in three days. His shoulder throbbed from a bullet wound he'd stitched shut with trembling fingers and disinfected with cheap vodka. The makeshift bandage had already soaked through.
In the dim reflection of the glass, he barely recognized himself — hollow eyes, blood-caked stubble, a scar tracing his jaw.
"Some ghost you've become," he muttered.
Then his phone buzzed.
He froze. That shouldn't be possible. Every transmitter, every network chip had been stripped. His burner was a blank shell — no SIM, no signal.
But there it was: a text message.
Plain. Simple. Chilling.
> "Dead agents don't dream."
Location: Kasımpaşa Docks. 0100 hours.
No sender. No encryption signature.
Just a phrase from another life.
"Dead agents don't dream…" Ethan repeated under his breath.
It was Division 7 code — the phrase they used before sending operatives into untraceable black missions. The kind you never came back from.
He stared at the message for a long moment, then slid the phone into his pocket.
"Guess I'm dreaming again," he said.
He holstered his pistol, checked the magazine — one short — and walked into the night.
---
The air by the docks was colder than it should've been.
Fog rolled in thick waves, swallowing the steel hulls of anchored ships. A lone floodlight flickered over the pier like a dying heartbeat.
Ethan moved low, quiet, counting every breath. The scent of diesel and salt clung to the air. He scanned for snipers — no reflections, no silhouettes. Still, something felt wrong. The silence wasn't empty. It was listening.
He crouched beside a cargo crate, pulled out a handheld detector, and ran a signal sweep.
Static.
Then — a faint pulse. Someone was running interference. A jammer nearby.
He'd barely processed it when metal clicked.
Instinct kicked in. He dove sideways.
A silenced round sliced past his ear. Another slammed into the crate. He fired back twice — muzzle flash ripping through the fog. The shots were answered instantly.
This wasn't random. Whoever was shooting knew his rhythm. His angles. His habits.
A voice drifted from the darkness, low and familiar.
"Still fast, I see."
Ethan's breath caught. He knew that voice. He'd heard it through comms a hundred times — back when he still believed in missions, in orders, in loyalty.
"Reed?" he whispered.
A figure stepped from the fog — tall, lean, moving with predatory calm. Black tactical suit, mask half-lowered.
Noah Reed.
The partner who'd died three years ago in Berlin.
"You're supposed to be dead," Ethan said, raising his gun again.
Reed gave a crooked grin. "So are you."
"Is this a setup?" Ethan asked. "Division 7 test run?"
Reed shook his head slowly. "Division 7 doesn't exist. They wiped it — the records, the handlers, the field teams. All burned. You're the only loose end left."
The fog around them seemed to tighten.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Ethan demanded.
Reed's tone went flat. "You think they'd just let you walk away after Berlin? The Syndicate ordered a full purge. You were the one they couldn't find."
Ethan's stomach turned. "Then why are you here?"
"To finish the job."
---
Gunfire tore through the night.
Ethan ducked behind cover as bullets shredded the crates around him. Splinters rained like shrapnel. He rolled, returned fire, and advanced in bursts.
Reed was good — too good. His shots were precise, surgical, each one herding Ethan into tighter space.
He's not killing me… he's cornering me.
Ethan reached the pier's edge, lungs burning. He ripped open a flare and tossed it behind him. Red smoke filled the fog — enough distraction to shift position.
Reed moved like a ghost through it, vision cutting clean. Ethan caught the faint shimmer of something unnatural in his eyes — a faint blue glow.
Ethan feinted left, slid behind a steel drum, and caught Reed's arm mid-swing as he came in. A knife flashed — Ethan twisted it free, slammed his elbow into Reed's ribs, and sent both of them crashing to the ground.
They fought in silence, years of training colliding — every move instinct, every strike lethal. Ethan's hand found Reed's throat, forcing him back.
That's when he saw it.
A thin surgical scar, barely visible, running from ear to collarbone. Too clean. Too perfect.
He tore off the mask.
The face was Reed's — but wrong. The skin was pale, the eyes faintly mechanical, pupils flickering like a screen trying to focus.
Ethan froze. "What are you?"
The impostor smiled, blood pooling between his teeth. "Division 7's ghosts never die. They get upgraded."
Then his voice distorted — half digital, half human.
"You were never supposed to wake up, Ethan."
Ethan pressed the gun to his forehead. "Who sent you?"
The man laughed, a static-laced sound. "Ask the one who built you."
Before Ethan could react, the impostor's chest lit up red.
Microcharge.
He dove for cover — the body exploded, throwing debris across the pier. The shockwave sent him sprawling.
He lay still for several seconds, the smell of burnt metal thick in the air. When he finally rose, the dock was littered with fragments — pieces of synthetic flesh, wires, and bone.
His heart hammered. They rebuilt him.
---
Ethan limped toward the water, each breath sharp. He pulled the encrypted drive from his coat pocket — the same one he'd stolen from the Berlin base before it went up in flames.
It pulsed faintly in his hand, its edges warm. He'd never been able to decrypt it — but now he was certain what it contained.
Not data. Not intel. Something worse.
A buzz from his pocket broke the silence again. His phone.
Another message, identical formatting.
> "You weren't supposed to survive Berlin. Time to come home, Agent STRAY."
His blood ran cold. That codename hadn't been used in years. Only his Division handler knew it — the same handler who'd died in the fire.
He looked toward the water, watching the fog swallow the city lights. "Home, huh…" he muttered.
The docks creaked. Far off, a ship horn blared like a warning.
He could walk away. Disappear again. Live small.
But ghosts don't stay buried — not when someone starts digging.
He slid the pistol into his holster and turned toward the city.
"If they want Stray back…" His voice hardened. "Then they'll get him."
---
Thousands of miles away, in a subterranean facility beneath the Carpathian Mountains, a dozen screens flickered to life. Surveillance feeds. Facial scans. Thermal maps. All focused on one target: Ethan Ward.
A woman in a white lab coat stood before the monitors. Her hair was silver, her expression unreadable. A small device glowed on her wrist — a biometric key.
"Subject STRAY has reactivated," she said into her comm.
A metallic voice replied, "Proceed to Phase II."
She turned toward a cryo-pod at the back of the chamber.
Inside, submerged in pale fluid, was another body — identical to Ethan's, eyes closed.
"Welcome back, Agent Ward," she murmured. "Let's see how long you last this time."