Page 2 of Wraith: Lethal Impact

Ten years of cold discipline fracture in the space of a single breath. I stare through the optic, entranced.

I'm a creature forged in violence, coated in Kevlar, holding a weapon capable of punching through engine blocks, hiding in the rusted, filthy bones of the city.

She's an angel, bathed in white light, moving with a fragility that demands protection.

The scope is a lens designed to view the ugliest parts of humanity right before I erase them from the earth. It was never meant to capture something this beautiful.

The brutal mechanics of her dance unfold through the glass. The strain on her calves. The hyperextension of her spine. She makes the impossible look effortless. But I recognize the discipline—the agonizing hours of training required to execute a movement that precise. She possesses a different kind of lethality, a weaponized grace that commands the attention of every predator in the room.

Including me.

"Visual confirmed." The gravel in my throat is thicker than usual.

"Hold your fire, Wraith." Hutch's voice is a jarring intrusion into the silent communion between the crosshairs and the stage. He repeats the parameters of the sting operation, hammering the federal mandate into my skull. "The trafficking squad will breach the solarium in ninety seconds. They'll isolate the target and extract her to the secondary location. Do not engage the primary assault team."

A muscle jumps beneath the dark stubble on my cheek.

"Observe." Hutch doesn't waver. "Track the transport vehicle from the Solarium to the central hub. We need the network. We need the infrastructure. Let them take her."

"Copy."

The word tastes like ash.

Let them take her.

It's a standard federal sting. A cornerstone of counter-trafficking operations. You sacrifice a pawn to find the king. You endure the micro-tragedy to prevent the macro-disaster. I've watched it happen a dozen times. You let the bad men do horrific things, you plant a tracker, and you follow the blood trail back to the architect.

It's cold.

It's necessary.

The only way to dismantle the Southeast Asian arm of the Consortium's human trafficking ring.

But as the ballerina spins, her dark hair catching the white glare of the stage lights, revulsion twists deep in my gut.

A memory claws its way to the surface, jagged and uninvited.

The humidity of Bangkok evaporates, replaced by the blistering heat of the Afghan desert. The roar of the ambush tears through the valley. RPG fire shatters armored glass. Frantic chaos bleeds over the radio as fighters close the net around my unit.

I'm on a ridge, eight hundred yards away.

Target acquired. Fire. Cycle the bolt. Acquire. Fire.

But there are too many of them. My unit is pinned behind a burning Humvee.

I reach for my rig to reload. Nothing but empty nylon pouches.

The realization detonates in my chest. I cycle the bolt one final time.

The hollow click of the firing pin striking an empty chamber echoes louder in my skull than the detonations in the valley below. The sound of failure. A death sentence.

Through the high-powered optic, the fighters flank the burning wreckage. My spotter, my best friend, raises his rifle to return fire.

Arterial spray paints the desert sand crimson. His eyes lock onto the ridge where I'm hiding, searching for the covering fire that never comes.

Failure. Too far away. Relying on distance.

I drag the memory back into its vault.