Inside the heart of Sunderland's underworld—a sleek, obsidian-colored office towering above the docks—Rex Malhotra sat behind his massive desk carved of black oak, the room dimly lit, the glass windows fogged from the cold rain outside. A Cuban cigar smoldered between his fingers, the smoke curling like serpents in the air. He leaned back in his chair, muscles relaxed but his eyes cold with calculation—a predator in waiting. The door creaked open as one of his trusted lieutenants stepped in, cautious but urgent.
> "Boss… we've confirmed it," the man said, his voice measured. "The agents who raided Red Vortex Enterprises... their data is ghost-coded. Deep black ops. They're invisible in the system. Even the central agency doesn't have access to their full records."
"And?" Rex's voice was low, steel wrapped in velvet.
"The one who led the raid—the boy. He got shot during the chase… passed out after the operation. He's in a hospital now. But his name, identity, background—we got nothing. Ghost protocol. Wiped clean."
Rex didn't blink. His jaw twitched as he slowly set the cigar down in the tray. The silence in the room was deafening. A storm roared outside, as if nature itself bowed to his growing fury.
> "I don't like playing with shadows," he muttered, his voice like thunder under breath. "Ghosts are tricky. Unpredictable. But even ghosts… leave footprints when they bleed."
He stood up slowly, the leather of his chair creaking behind him as his massive form loomed forward. He picked up a sleek black phone and pressed just one button.
> "Get me Aarav Mehra," he ordered.
"The tech kid?" the man asked carefully.
"The unstable genius, the one who hacked MI6 just to prove a point at seventeen," Rex said with a twisted smirk. "He's chaos wrapped in talent. And right now, I need chaos."
"You're planning a cyber strike?"
"No," Rex said, walking to the floor-to-ceiling window and staring out into the dark horizon.
"I'm planning to rip the masks off every one of those ghost agents. And if the system can't reveal them…" —his voice dropped to a whisper—
"Then I'll burn the system down."
He turned slightly, eyes glowing with cold fire.
> "Tell Aarav… we're hunting shadows. And I want to see them bleed in daylight."
Somewhere, deep in the tech underground, Aarav Mehra's phone lit up. And the game had just changed.