Codename was Viper. In the old world, that name meant something. It meant problems vanished. It meant the Imperial Directorate of Internal Order (IDIO) had marked someone for deletion, and he was the instrument. He was Division Epsilon's finest, a ghost who cleaned up messes, a scalpel in the dark. He was a professional.
Professionals, however, are not supposed to have attachments. He retired, or rather, defected for a single, illogical reason.
Lyra Vale. She was an IDIO handler, a field medic with a dry wit and eyes that saw the man, not the weapon. She was the only one who ever had. They ran, vanishing from the IDIO's grid, and for two years, they built a life. A fragile, impossible thing. He'd learned to sleep without a hand on a weapon. He'd learned what "quiet" meant.
The IDIO's doctrine was simple: Order is mercy. Mercy is death. Loyalty was obedience. Names were liabilities. And desertion... desertion was a debt to be paid in blood. They came for him when he wasn't home. That was the mistake. They sent a standard "retrieval" team, not expecting Lyra calm, pragmatic Lyra to be just as trained in counter surveillance as they were.
She wasn't an operator, but she was smart. She bought herself time. She took two of them with her. It wasn't enough. Viper came home to a silent apartment, the scent of cordite, and the one thing he had ever valued bleeding out on their kitchen floor.
The man known as Viper, who had vanished for two years, reappeared on the grid. But he wasn't a scalpel anymore. He was a sledgehammer. The cold, detached professional was gone, replaced by a man with a singular, burning objective.
He dismantled his own network, cashed in every hidden favor, and began a systematic deletion of every person involved in the order. He moved up the chain of command, one body at a time. The IDIO, the massive state-run surveillance network, grew worried.
This wasn't just a rogue operative. This was a one-man insurgency. This was their monster, unleashed on them. He was hunting the top. Director-General Albrecht Korrin. The man who signed the order.
So the IDIO responded. They mobilized an entire division of state military, locking down the capital city. And they sent the only man Viper had ever considered a partner. Caine "Wolf" Marrek. The number two. The tracker. The one they sent to hunt deserters.
The finale was... loud.
Viper had wired four square blocks of the government district with enough plastic explosives to level a fortress. He didn't just set a trap he re-engineered the battlefield. He forced Korrin's hand, leaking intel that he had the Director-General's heir, forcing the man himself to come to a "secure" extraction point.
It was a lie, of course. A simple, effective lure. The military had the building surrounded. Snipers on every roof. Wolf was on overwatch, Viper emerged, using Korrin as a human shield.
"You're contained, Viper!" Wolf's voice crackled over the comms, amplified by city wide loudspeakers. "Release the Director. Your rampage ends here."
"It's already over, Caine," Viper coughed, blood leaking from a shrapnel wound in his side. He'd taken three hits just getting to Korrin. "I just came to deliver my final report." He shoved Korrin to his knees. The Director General, so immaculate and cold, was now just a terrified man.
"You... you can't..." Korrin stammered. "The IDIO... it's... order..."
"You forgot the doctrine, Director," Viper said, pressing the muzzle of his sidearm to the man's temple. "Mercy is death." He pulled the trigger.
For a single, silent second, the city held its breath. Then Wolf gave the order. "Fire." Then dozens of high velocity rounds tore through Viper's body, the force of the impact lifting him off his feet. He fell backward, his eyes open, staring at the gray, dull night sky. His last coherent thought was a splinter of memory Lyra, smiling at him over a cup of coffee, her voice a ghost. "You can't save everyone, love you're not supposed to." Then the world went black.
The first thing I registered was a soft silk fabric. It was soft, too sickly-sweet. It smelled of lavender. My eyes snapped open. The pain was immediate a dull, throbbing spike behind my right temple. A wave of nausea and vertigo nearly sent me back into unconsciousness. My body. It was... wrong. I tried to sit up, but my arms had no strength.
They were thin, delicate things. My hands were small, uncalloused, with nails that were clean and shaped. I was weak. I was... a child? and a girl! Panic, tried to inspect myself all the way to my throat.
"Analyze. Don't over react" I was in a bed. A ridiculously large, soft bed with four towering posts. The room was vast, opulent, lit by the weak afternoon sun filtering through heavy curtains.
"Where am I? This wasn't an IDIO medical bay" It wasn't a blank site. It was... a bedroom.
"She's awake! Oh, gods, she's awake!" A woman rushed into my field of vision. She was beautiful, dressed in fine silks, but her face was a mess of tears. She grabbed my hand. Her touch was soft.
Threat assessment: Low. Emotional. Unstable.
"Seraphina? My darling? Can you hear me?" Seraphina. The name hit me, and with it, a flood of other memories. Not mine. They were bright, loud, and shallow. A life of ponies, tutors, tantrums, and privilege.
A girl named Seraphina ezra D'Arden. A twelve years old that fell from a horse that contracted a fever shortly after. Oh. So that's it. I wasn't Viper anymore. I was... her.
The woman Duchess Isolde D'Arden, my new "Mother" was sobbing into my hair. "Oh, Corvin, she's awake! The fever's broken!"
A second figure entered the room, standing at the foot of the bed. Duke Corvin D'Arden. "Father."
A tall, imposing figure in formal attire, with dark brown hair. His face a mask of neutral facade. He looked at me, not with a father's relief, but with the cool, analytical gaze of a man checking on a valuable, damaged asset.
Threat assessment: High. This is the one to watch.
"She... she's so quiet," the Duchess whispered, pulling back. Her relief was already curdling into new anxiety. "Sera, darling? Say something. It's me. It's Mother."
I had to establish a cover. Fast. My throat was dry. I tried to speak, and only a rasp came out. Good. I could use this.
"Where..." I whispered. My voice was high, childlike masked in fragility.
"You're home, darling," the Duchess assured, her voice frantic. "You're safe. You had a terrible fall. Sister Halen said... she said the fever might have... affected you. But you're fine, aren't you? You're our perfect girl." Denial. She's pathological. She would be easy to manage.
I let my eyes look past her, unfocused. I let the confusion the real confusion I felt show on my face. I was a 30-something assassin in a 12-year-old's body. The "trauma" act wouldn't be difficult.
"head... hurts," I managed. "Of course you do, poor thing," she fussed. "Isolde," the Duke's voice rumbled.
"Let her rest. You're smothering her." He stepped forward, his eyes never leaving mine. He was looking for something. He was looking for his daughter. I looked back, letting my gaze remain dull, "sick," and empty. I gave him nothing. After a long moment, he nodded, though his expression was cold.
"She needs recovery. Send for Mira to draw a bath. And tell Sister Halen the fever has passed." He turned and left, his boots echoing on the hardwood.
He wasn't convinced. The Duchess cooed at me for another minute before rushing out, no doubt to tell the entire household. I was alone. I closed my eyes.
The door burst open again, not with the Duke's heavy boots, but with a frantic clatter. A young woman in a simple blue uniform Elodie, my personal handmaid, Seraphina's shallow memories supplied practically fell into the room, her face pale and blotchy with tears.
"Oh, my lady! My lady!" she wailed, rushing to the bedside and dropping to her knees. She was loud.
"You're awake! Oh, thank the gods, you're awake! It's all my fault! I... I shouldn't have let you ride Firefly! I told the stable master he was too spirited, I told him, but I didn't I didn't insist! And you fell, and... and..."
She was babbling. Hysterical. An untrained civilian. I ignored her. The noise was just... static. White noise against the turmoil in my own head. What is this? A hallucination? My brain's final, desperate firing as I bleed out on a city plaza? This... this felt too real. The silk sheets. The smell of lavender. The pounding pain behind my eyes. Is this reincarnation? Some kind of... cosmic reset? Or... Is this an IDIO experiment? Some twisted new psychological torture? Did Wolf capture me instead of killing me? Are they pumping me full of drugs in a black site, seeing if they can implant a new personality? This elaborate, pseudo-medieval farce... it was just the kind of high-budget, high-concept crap Director General Korrin would have approved to break an operative.
Elodie's sobbing had devolved into hiccuping pleas. "...and the Duke will have me flogged, I just know it, my lady, please, you have to tell him it wasn't my fault, I..."
I tuned her back in. A useful tool. She was afraid. Afraid of me, or at least, what my "father" would do on my behalf. The absurdity of it all hit me. Viper. The IDIO's top assassin. A man who had dismantled governments, a man who had just avenged his wife... now trapped. Trapped in the body of a 12-year-old aristocrat, being wept on by a terrified servant.
A sound bubbled up in my chest. It was dry, rusty. I started to laugh. It wasn't Seraphina's high, tinkling laugh. It was my laugh. A low, harsh, empty sound that held no humor. It was the sound of a man who had seen the punchline to the world's cruelest joke.
Elodie's wailing choked off instantly. Her head snapped up, her mouth open, her eyes wide with a new, different kind of terror. The "afflicted" girl was one thing. This was something else. The room was dead silent, save for my rasping chuckle. I looked at the canopy above my bed, a slow, cold smile spreading across this new, unfamiliar face. Reincarnation. Hallucination. Experiment. In the end, it didn't matter. The rules had just changed. My laugh quieted. I asked the new silence, a question directed at no one and everyone.
"What now?"