CHAPTER ONE: I SEE NO ONE
Elijah Crane had 15 minutes to live.
2:08 AM – Southwood Towers, Los Angeles
They sky was overcast, but still bright from the reflection of millions of city lights below. The street outside Southwood Towers was unusually still for a Tuesday night. There was no music bleeding through apartment windows or distant police sirens. It was eerily quiet, like the calm before a storm. Inside Apartment 1307, Elijah Crane sat at his desk. He kept his place clean, which blended well with the moderately expensive furniture he decorated with. A gray couch sat against the wall in front of a black steel legged table. Off to one side in the living room, he had a dual-monitor rig set up next to a large living room window that overlooked the city. He was disciplined and orderly. This was his workspace. His profession? A black hat. He was a phantom across encrypted networks; a contract manipulator who sold access, crashed systems, and erased identities. Another day at the office.
You there? a message blinked on his screen.
It's 2AM. What do you need?
UNTRACE.UNMAKE.HIGH PAY.
How much noise?
Gov link. Thermal tag wipe.
Crane grinned slightly. Easy flex.
14k. Half now. Burn protocol, no relooping.
Sent.
Crypto ping. Funds transferred.
He flipped a switch that disconnected his router from the outside world and pulled out a secondary air-gapped laptop. Then he launched his local sandbox with a familiar rhythm. He never could get used to the daily grind of a 9-5. Seemed like there was always some idiot arbitrarily appointed over him that made his life miserable. No, here in the solitude of his own home he was in control. At least, he had been. The screen flickered and the lights in his living room quickly dimmed and then went out, casting him in moving shadows.
"What?" he said quietly.
This didn't have the signature of a typical power outage. He sat in the dark, trying to make sense of it. Then a knock at the door came. Three soft taps. He jolted alert. No one knocked here at 2AM without being buzzed in. The door clicked, unlocked, and just barely pushed open. He froze in horror and disbelief. He didn't know what this was, but he wasn't going to waste time trying to figure it out. He pressed a button on the side of his desk, and a slim drawer slid out from under it, concealing a loaded Sig Saur 9mm. With his heart thumping in his chest, he picked it up and quietly inched towards the door. Then in one sharp move, he threw the door open and leveled his gun down the hallway, looking straight down the glowing tritium sights. Nothing. No one was there, but when he looked down, a different kind of terror began rising in his chest. There, on the freshly swept floormat, sat a perfectly clear block of ice, with a black pawn frozen inside of it. He backed away, shaking his head in confusion and unbelief. His skin prickled-----Then suddenly he was back at his desk in a fully lit room, finger hovering over the ENTER key. The cursor on the screen blinked on the right side of the word, "Sent."
"What?" He said again, this time feeling the dread and fear of what had just happened.
He began trembling when his screen flickered, and the lights dimmed again. He didn't wait for the rest, he slammed the button on the side of the desk, grabbed the gun and----A sharp pulse hit him at the base of his skull, followed by a flash of wrongness. He staggered, dropped the gun, and fell back into his chair, unable to move. His body refused to respond. He was paralyzed, but his eyes were open and his brain was awake. His heart still beat like he was running a marathon, but nothing moved. Then, a figure stepped around him into view. He wore a coat like liquid shadow. Crane couldn't make out his features. It was as if the city lights far below outside his window didn't want him to be seen. Dread and horror filled Crane's mind. He tried to move or scream. Nothing. A gloved hand reached out, pressing something sharp to crane's neck. There was a twinge of pain, then something began to drain. He could feel the pressure drop as a cold flush came over him, followed by a terrifying sense of lightness. His vision blurred around the edges. His chest stopped rising. His body began to fail quietly. His blood was gone, removed without the slightest mess. Without trace. His last thought was fear and disbelief. This wasn't a ghost. It was a man, and he knew exactly what he was doing.
PATTERNS IN ABSENCE
2:53 AM – Downtown Los Angeles
Special Agent Mara Cale drove in silence. She gripped the steering wheel with hands that bore the trademark callouses of a person trained to kill. The Bureau-issued tablet in her lap pulsed red with another alert: Southwood towers. Apartment 1307
Another one.
Victim: Elijah Crane. Thirty-one. Freelance Cybertech contractor. No priors. No known enemies. Flagged for surveillance. Lived alone.
Mara's reflection caught briefly in the window as she turned- sharp jawline, piercing focused gray eyes, and deep-chestnut hair pulled back into a tight bun with unconscious precision. Her presence was composed and deliberate, and her expression seldom changed. Not because she was cold, but because she couldn't afford to be anything else. She wore a fitted tactical jacket, dark jeans, and sturdy boots for ease of movement and situational readiness. She handed the tablet off to her partner in the passenger seat. Malik Kwan-stocky, built like a retired boxer but with a calm presence that never broke stride. He wore a slate-gray field jacket, sleeves pushed back, revealing dark skin and the ink of an old marine unit he rarely talked about. His eyes were wide and steady, searching case files and the shadows outside.
"That's twenty now, right? He asked, thumbing through the digital case log.
"Twenty-one if it's him," Mara corrected without looking.
He took a long swig from his thermos. The scent of peppermint gum and coffee followed.
"You think it's the same?"
"Let's see what the body says," she replied as the Southwood Towers glided into view. She pulled in, turned the Cruiser lights off, and slowed to a stop in front of the building entrance, ignoring the no parking signs. Kwan got out and leaned against the SUV, scrolling through digital security logs.
"No activity from midnight to two. Elevator's dead clean. Stairwell's untouched. Front door electronically sealed."
"Until 2:06," Mara murmured.
He nodded. "Then static."
"Paralytic again?"
"Most likely. The ME called it compound Zeta-A4. Not military—not public, either."
"They always make the cut at the clavicle?"
"Always," Kwan said. "Clavicle, brachial artery, femoral. Microscopic. Same tool. Same shape. Same depth."
Mara exhaled softly. "He's not adapting."
"Which means he's confident."
3:06 AM – Apartment 1307
The door gave without resistance.
Inside it was still. Other than Crane's fully loaded 9mm Sig on the floor, there was no sign of a struggle. There was also no signs of life. He sat at his desk, head tilted back, mouth slightly open, eyes wide and glassy. He looked like he had seen something his brain refused to process. Like a ghost had shown itself—slowly. Kwan kept his distance as Mara approached the body.
"Cut at the neck," she noted. "Same spot as the others."
She shined a penlight along the collarbone. There it was—almost invisible. A line as thin as a thread, impossibly precise.
"No bruising. No forced trauma. No resistance."
Kwan nodded. "Paralytic was active. The muscles froze."
Mara looked around.
"No blood spatter. No pooling. Every drop extracted. Whatever he's using leaves no residue. No suction trace. No cooling burn."
Kwan blinked. "How do you bleed someone out through incisions that size?"
"You don't," she said. "Not cleanly. Not without trauma. This isn't a knife. It's… surgical.
Custom. Possibly non-invasive tech. Maybe something we haven't classified yet."
She checked the desk. Two high-grade monitors sat dark, lifeless. Then she opened the freezer. Inside, resting perfectly centered in the back tray was a black pawn frozen in a cube of clear ice.
"He's mocking us," Kwan muttered.
"No," Mara said. "He's tracking time. These are timestamps and Ritual markers. Psychological imprints."
Kwan exhaled.
"We're twenty-one in and still no pattern in selection. No clear profile, But same method. Same message."
Mara stood. Looked down at Elijah Crane's lifeless eyes.
"He doesn't want to be unpredictable. He wants to be inevitable. Let's go."
She had just stepped out of Southwood Towers when her phone buzzed.
ELENA VOSS – SECURE LINE
She answered without breaking stride.
"Cale."
"It's me. You just left the scene?"
Elena's voice was soft but sharp. She never called without a reason. She was Mid-thirties and Hispanic with Olive-toned skin, short dark curls, and wire-rimmed glasses that gave her a softness her tone never matched.
"Crane's dead," Mara said. "Same conditions. Same message."
"I Heard. I ran a comparison on all twenty-one victims' final stress markers. There's something new. The pre-death cortisol spikes—they're not just panic. They're patterned."
Mara slowed. "What do you mean patterned?"
"I mean they're not random. Every victim shows the same physiological arc—like they weren't just terrified, they were experiencing the same fear, at the same level, in the same sequence. As if whatever he's doing to them… it's controlled. Almost designed."
Mara exhaled. "Text it to Kwan. We'll loop in Miles when we get back."
"Already done."
There was a pause.
"You okay?" Elena asked.
"No," Mara said. "But that's not the point."
"I'll keep digging," Elena said. "If he's designing fear, there's a reason."
"He doesn't leave fingerprints," Mara muttered. "But maybe he leaves resonance."
"Let's hope."
The line clicked off.
Mara stood on the curb beneath the thrum of streetlamps and silence.
Crane's eyes still lingered in her mind. Wide. Fixed. Open.
Designed fear.
The words didn't leave her.
10:02 AM – FBI Field Office, Los Angeles
The screen showed everything, and nothing. Victim, Body maps, and Bloodwork. Patterns too clean to dismiss, yet too alien to understand. Twenty-one confirmed dead, and no one in the room could explain a single one of them. Mara Cale stood at the head of the table. Her team was quiet: Malik Kwan, tactical lead; Elena Voss, behavioral psychology; Miles Arden, cyber intelligence. There was nothing ordinary about these FBI operatives. They were of the best in their fields. Together they had crushed cases that other task force teams simply couldn't break. The synergy between them often led them in directions they hadn't intended, but resulted in resolved outcomes to cases that otherwise would go unsolved. They had a track record like Usain Bolt in the field. But this killer didn't care about track stars.
Director Harker stood by the glass with his arms crossed
"The method is precise," Mara said. "We've confirmed microscopic incisions at high-pressure vascular points. The paralytic found in the toxicology report wasn't just fast—it was near total. There was no follow-up movement. They had no opportunity for self-defense, and they died fully conscious."
Elena's voice cut in, low. "We've had similar cases before. We just didn't realize it."
Miles spoke without looking up from the bank of monitors, his fingers a blur across the keyboard. He was in his early thirties, smooth dark skin, tall and narrow-shouldered, with a permanent squint that suggested too many sleepless nights staring into encrypted logs. He wore simple clothes—buttoned sleeves, clean lines, always gray or black—but his mind was loud. He didn't talk unless he had something, and when he did, people listened.
He wasn't Bureau-born. Mara had pulled him in from a private cybersecurity outfit after a string of anomalous surveillance glitches in a counter intel op. Since then, he'd proven himself to the team.
"Thirty years back. At least. We found them in a basement records room. Hard copy only. No digitization. No scan logs. They were never uploaded to the national database."
He dropped a file on the table.
Yellowed. Dusty. Real.
"Local police reports from the greater Los Angeles County. All buried under 'unexplained trauma' or cause of death undetermined.' The patterns were there. We just didn't have the context until now."
Kwan frowned. "So why weren't these flagged sooner?"
"Because someone didn't want them flagged," Mara said. "The killings stopped. The trail went cold. And then... they got buried."
Elena flipped through one of the folders. "It wasn't incompetence. These teams tried. You can feel it in the margins—handwritten notes, evidence requests. They were chasing something. But they didn't have the tools, the tech… or the clearance."
Miles hesitated, then reached under his desk and slid out a flat, sealed envelope.
"I found this tucked in with the 1992 case cluster. It wasn't labeled with any Bureau division or office. Just this."
He placed the document on the table. It had a black seal with no markings or ID code.
Mara opened it carefully.
Inside was a single page. At the top were redacted lines. At the bottom was a phrase:
GHOST PROTOCOL – EYES ONLY – LEVEL OMEGA
Harker stared at it. "That's classified above my clearance."
"Then elevate us," Mara said. "We need access. This wasn't coincidentally forgotten. It was intentionally locked down."
Elena spoke softly, "Someone knew. They didn't solve it, but they knew enough to seal it away."
"So now what?" Kwan asked. "We file for permission to peek behind the curtain while more people die?"
Mara shook her head.
"No. We open every file. Every office. We pull on every thread. I don't care who redacted what. I want access to everything related to Ghost Protocol."
She looked to Harker.
"Give us clearance, or get out of the way."
Harker stared at the page for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
"You'll have it."