Unedited!!
Author's Pov:
The rain had stopped hours ago, but the streets still glistened when Reyaksh returned. He slipped through the half-collapsed gate, his boots leaving faint tracks in the mud. The city beyond was waking up — distant traffic, vendors setting up, the dull hum of normal life that never reached places like this.
He pushed open the metal door, stepped inside, and locked it behind him. The air was thick with the scent of damp concrete and antiseptic.
Sayeera was awake.
She sat where he’d left her, wrapped in the old blanket, eyes distant but awake. The flicker of the single bulb caught the bruise along her jawline, faint but real.
He drank in silence, then finally spoke voice clipped, businesslike.
“I need to know where to take you.”
Her hands tightened around the blanket. “I told you, I don’t...”
“You have to belong somewhere,” he cut in. “A home, a relative, someone who’d notice if you disappeared.”
“I don’t,” she whispered.
He sighed, the sound sharp in the quiet room. “Then I’ll drop you at the nearest police station before sunrise.”
That made her flinch. “No,” she said quickly.
Reyaksh looked at her, unblinking. “No isn’t an option. You can’t stay here.”
Her voice rose before she could stop it. “Please, not there.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“They won’t help me,” she said, trembling. “People like me… they don’t listen. They’ll ask questions I can’t answer. They’ll make it sound like my fault again.”
Her words cracked midway, breaking into silence. The rawness in her tone was something Reyaksh wasn’t built to handle. He’d seen pain, plenty of it , but not like this. This wasn’t a wound you could stitch or burn shut.
He turned away, jaw tight, pretending to check the lock on the door.
“This isn’t a shelter,” he muttered. “I have things to do. People to find.”
“You can’t stay here,” Reyaksh said again, his tone final. “You’ll be safer if I leave you at a police station. They’ll handle it from there.”
Sayeera’s head shot up, panic flashing across her face. “No.”
The sharpness of her voice made him pause, just for a second. Then his expression hardened. “You don’t get to decide that.”
Her hands trembled. “Please,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Not there. I can’t...”
“You can,” he snapped, the words sharp enough to cut the air. “You think you’re the first person I’ve pulled out of a mess like this? The system’s not perfect, but it’s better than staying here.”
He blinked, slowly. " You’d rather sit here in a safehouse that isn’t yours, with a stranger who won’t even tell you who he is?"
Her silence only stoked the irritation building under his calm surface. He had spent years perfecting control, living in the shadows where emotions were distractions and hesitation got people killed. But here she was... fragile, trembling, and completely uncooperative.
"I’m not asking," he said, his tone dropping lower. "You can’t just stay hidden forever. The police will find whoever did this to you. They’ll..."
He stopped when she shook her head violently, panic flashing in her eyes.
"They won’t help," she whispered. "They’ll ask questions I can’t answer. They’ll make me say things I can’t say. They’ll look at me like I did something wrong."
Reyaksh stared at her, his jaw tightening. The words hit something inside him he didn’t want to name. He ran a hand through his hair and let out a long, heavy breath.
"This is ridiculous," he muttered under his breath. "I don’t have time for this... I don’t have time for any of this."
But deep down he knows...what she had suffered , nobody deserved that.
He pushed away from the table, pacing once across the room. Every step echoed the irritation he couldn’t shake. He wanted to drop her off, clean up the mess, and disappear back into the world that made sense to him. Missions had rules. People didn’t.
But every time he looked at her... that broken stillness, that quiet fear... something in him hesitated.
Finally, he stopped pacing. His voice, though calm, carried the edge of surrender. "Fine," he said curtly. "You stay. Until you can walk on your own and your wounds close. After that, you leave. No arguments."
Sayeera lowered her head, whispering a shaky "thank you."
"Don’t," he snapped, sharper than he meant to. "I’m not doing this for you. I just don’t need complications right now."
He turned away quickly, grabbing the chair near the table and sitting down with a rough exhale. His hands were clasped together, knuckles white. He stayed like that for a long moment, silent except for the faint grinding of his teeth.
Everything about her presence itched at his discipline... her fragility, her silence, her eyes that looked like she’d already lived through too many storms.
Finally, he muttered under his breath, "This is exactly why I work alone."
The room settled into an uneasy quiet. Reyaksh leaned back in the chair, his elbows resting on his knees, eyes fixed on the floor. The faint hum of the bulb filled the silence, accompanied by the soft drip of water from the leak in the corner.
Sayeera hadn’t moved. She sat curled on the cot, blanket drawn tight around her, watching him like he was a storm she couldn’t predict. He seemed carved from stillness, but there was something dangerous in the way his fingers tapped lightly against his knee... like a rhythm meant to contain impatience.
After a while, he stood abruptly and went to the metal cabinet in the corner. He opened it, revealing files, wires, and a laptop surrounded by neatly stacked equipment. A faint blue glow filled the room as the screen flickered to life.
Sayeera flinched at the sudden light.
He didn’t notice. Or maybe he did but chose not to react. His focus was absolute, his movements precise... like every action had been rehearsed. She could see fragments of coded messages reflected on the screen, lines of coordinates, and a map pinned to the wall with marks she didn’t understand.
Sayeera shifted slightly on the cot, an uneasy look crossing her face. She tried to stand but her legs felt unsteady. The blanket slipped from her shoulders as she caught herself against the edge of the table.
Reyaksh’s voice cut through the small noise she made. “What is it?”
She froze, her face warming. “I just… need to use the washroom,” she said in a low voice, barely above a whisper.
For a moment he only looked at her, expression unreadable. Then he nodded once, curtly. “Down the hall. Second door on the left. Don’t touch anything else.”
She nodded quickly, keeping her eyes down as she made her way across the room, one hand against the wall for balance. He turned back to the glow of his screen, the sound of his typing resuming as if nothing had interrupted him.
When she came back, she moved more slowly, the color still high on her cheeks. She sat again on the cot, pulling the blanket over her lap.
They had been hours of thin sleep and strain, the kind that pooled behind Reyaksh’s eyes and made every sound feel larger than it was. He sat hunched over the laptop when the earpiece crackled, a single sharp note that made him sit up straight.
“Kian?” he said, voice low.
A voice answered, rough with the kind of worry Reyaksh only ever heard from him when something was wrong. “They traced a burner to your sector. Not the best news.”
Reyaksh’s fingers stopped moving. “Who?” he asked, blunt.
“A local crew... someone traded them a tip. Word is the name that came up was yours. They’re asking questions, Reyaksh. People with short patience.”
He pulled the jacket on without looking away from the screen. “How long?”
“Less than an hour, maybe thirty. They’re moving fast.” Kian’s voice was all tension now. “You need to vacate the area.”
Reyaksh closed the laptop with a practiced motion, the tiny snap loud in the small room. He already felt the map in his head, every route, every choke point. The safehouse was a temporary fix, not a fortress. “I can’t just leave her,” he said.
Silence on the line for a breath. Then: “Who?”
“A woman... injured. Left at a warehouse. I picked her up.” His jaw tightened at the admission. He heard Kian’s soft curse. “Rey, you know what that means. If they tie you to this place…”
“I know.” Reyaksh’s voice was flat. “Tell me who’s moving. Give me a fix.”
There was a pause, then rapid-fire coordinates. Kian’s voice shifted from worry to calculation. “They’ve got two vehicles, four men each. One’s a scout, the other has heavier firepower. ETA ten minutes. You can try to outrun them, or you can make noise and draw them away. If you run, she’s a liability. If you stay, you might die with her.”
Reyaksh listened. Every option was a calculus of loss. “Hold them at the gate,” he said finally. “Delay any sweep. Draw them into corridors. I’ll move her through the service exit behind the shelving. Keep comms open.
“Kian... you’ve got it. Be careful.” The line went dead with a soft, static pop.
He moved like someone who never wasted motion. First the locks... one, then two. He checked the windows, jammed the latch, then swept the room with his hands as if learning it all again. Her breath filled the little space between them, uneven, small.
“You,” he said quietly.
She looked up, pupils blown wide. Fear sharpened her face into something vulnerable and raw.
“Someone will be here soon,” he said plainly. “You have to be ready to move.”
Her lips trembled. “I can’t... I’m tired.”
“You will be quiet,” he said. “You will be behind me. You will not make a sound.”
She nodded, as if the rules were simple armor she could wear.
Outside, the city kept its usual noise, oblivious. Minutes later the quiet broke like a fist. An engine’s hiss, men’s voices speaking too loudly, the echo of boots. A torch beam swept the alley, throwing a hard white line through the shutter’s slats.
Reyaksh stretched a hand toward the small metal box under the table and flicked a tiny switch. A siren from a neighboring block blared brief...false alarms that masked the footsteps for a heartbeat. Then someone started hammering at the gate.
“Police!” a voice called in a rough imitation that meant nothing and everything.
He took a spare piece of cloth and wrapped it gently around her shoulders. Her clothes were torn, her hair tangled, and her whole appearance spoke of exhaustion and struggle. Sayeera’s steps were short and unsteady, each one slower than the last. She tried to move forward, but her legs refused to obey.
Reyaksh in his mind quietly assessing, calculating what to do next. Then came a soft, heavy thud.
He spun around.
Sayeera was on the ground, her body trembling, a sheen of sweat glistening on her forehead. Her voice was barely a whisper as she said, “I can’t… you can go.”
Reyaksh’s jaw tightened. He didn’t move at first, just stood there in the dim, the echo of her words hanging between them like smoke. You can go.
The muscles in his jaw worked once, twice. His hands flexed by his sides, the faintest tremor of tension running through them. She was on the ground, fragile and shaking, and all his instincts screamed at him to keep moving, to leave no trace. That was the rule. Clean exit. No witnesses. No attachments.
But she wasn’t just a complication anymore... she was human. And she was breaking right in front of him.
“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath, the word sharp and low. He turned away for a second, ran a hand over his face, and looked toward the exit again. The shouts outside were growing louder... boots hitting gravel, commands thrown into the dark. Time was running thin.
He crouched beside her, voice clipped and hard. “Get up.”
She didn’t move. Her breathing was shallow, eyes glassy with exhaustion.
“I said get up,” he repeated, but there was a strain in his voice now, not anger exactly ...something heavier, edged with impatience and worry he refused to name.
“I can’t,” she whispered, her hand clutching at the dirt. “Please… just go.”
Reyaksh exhaled sharply through his nose. The sound was half frustration, half disbelief. “You think I’d leave you here?”
Her eyes flickered up, wide and unfocused. “You don’t even know me.”
“Exactly,” he said coldly. “Which means you’re not worth dying over. But if they find you, they’ll find me. So move.”
Still nothing. Her body refused.
He clenched his fists, fighting the urge to shout. Every second she stayed down felt like a countdown, a target on his back. He looked at her — small, broken, trembling — and cursed under his breath again.
“Stupid choice,” he growled, and without another word, he bent down, slid an arm beneath her knees and another behind her shoulders, and lifted her effortlessly off the ground.
She gasped, startled, one hand instinctively gripping his shirt. He didn’t look at her. His face was unreadable — eyes narrowed, lips pressed into a hard line. His movements were sharp, efficient, every step deliberate despite the weight in his arms.
He moved through the narrow corridor toward the exit, his mind a flurry of calculation — three exits, one blocked, two possible escape routes, fifteen seconds before they breach.
Her head rested against his chest, too weak to hold itself up. He could feel her uneven breathing through the fabric of his shirt, the faint tremor of her pulse. It was a sound he hated — too fragile, too alive.
Outside, someone shouted again. Flashlights cut through the darkness, closer now. Reyaksh pressed his back to the wall, his breath shallow, his grip tightening on her.
He closed his eyes for half a second — not for calm, but for control. Every emotion, every useless thought, buried deep. Then his eyes opened, cold and sharp again.
“Hold on,” he said quietly.
And with that, he moved ...a blur of motion through smoke and noise, the kind that came from years of training, from a life where survival was more reflex than thought. The frustration still burned in him like a blade, but it was buried under precision.
He didn’t look back. He never did.
A black van waited under the bridge, engine idling. A man leaned against the hood, cigarette glowing faintly between his fingers. His face was mostly hidden by the hood, but the way he straightened when he saw Reyaksh said enough.
“Change of plans,” Reyaksh replied, his tone flat. “We’re burned.”
The man’s gaze flicked to the girl in his arms, then back to him.
Reyaksh said curtly. “We’re heading to Delta-13.”
At the sound of that, the man’s brows lifted slightly but he didn’t argue.
Delta-13 wasn’t a location most people knew ... it was one of the fallback points used only when everything else failed. A network of hidden safehouses scattered through the outskirts, built long before Reyaksh ever joined the unit. No records, no trackers, no questions. Each marked by a single code and a single purpose .. to vanish.
The man opened the back door, and Reyaksh laid Sayeera gently inside on the makeshift bedroll. The interior smelled faintly of diesel and gun oil.
“Sir...Signal’s already cold,” the driver said. “We’ll be ghosts in five minutes.”
Reyaksh nodded, checking the edges of the tarp, making sure she was covered. Her face was pale under the dim light, lips slightly parted, lashes trembling as if caught in a bad dream.
When the van pulled away, he took the passenger seat, his hand resting absently on the pistol at his thigh...
The rain had slowed by the time Reyaksh carried her into the secluded stone shelter at Delta-13. The air inside was cool, thick with the scent of damp wood and old dust. It wasn’t much ...a single cot, a table, and a shuttered window that barely let the light in ... but it was safe. Safe enough for now.
He laid her down gently, covered her with a spare blanket,Sayeera stirred once, half-conscious,"What's... your name?" she whispered.
For the first time Reyaksh looked at her face and stilled for a moment and then answered "Ghost" and moved away.
Then she drifted back into a deep, uneasy sleep. For the first time in days, her body stopped fighting itself. The silence around her was heavy, the kind that hummed in her ears and made her believe, for a brief moment, that the nightmare was finally over.
He made sure the door locks held before stepping out to make contact with Kian and secure the perimeter.
But peace never stayed long with Reyaksh.
It must have been hours later when the sound of boots scraped against the floorboards. The door creaked open, letting in a sliver of grey light and the faint scent of rain-soaked mud. Three men stepped inside .. all in dark clothes, faces shadowed, their movements sharp and deliberate.
The first one stopped short when he saw her lying there. His hand went instantly to the weapon at his waist. “Who the hell is that?”
The other two reacted just as fast, pulling their guns, forming a rough half-circle around the cot.
Sayeera’s eyes flew open. She blinked against the dim light, confusion spilling into terror as she saw the men — strangers, weapons raised, eyes narrowed. Her pulse spiked. Her breath came in quick, uneven gasps.
“Who are you?” one of them barked, stepping closer.
“I... I don’t know...” she stammered, her body trembling. “Please, I didn’t mean to... I just...”
“Answer the question,” another voice cut in, deeper, harder. “How did you get here?”
Her throat went dry. “He... he brought me here...”
“Who?”
She hesitated, her lips trembling. The ghost of Reyaksh’s cold eyes flickered in her mind. He had disappeared, left her sleeping in a place she didn’t recognize. For a heartbeat, she thought he really was gone ... the silent stranger who had saved her only to vanish like smoke.
“I don’t know his name,” she whispered, panic thick in her voice. “Please don’t hurt me. I’ll go. I swear I’ll go.”
The first man exchanged a quick look with the others. “No one’s supposed to be here. Move her out.”
Before she could react, one of them grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly to her feet. She cried out softly, clutching the blanket around her shoulders.
“Please... please, don’t... I didn’t do anything,” she pleaded, tears blurring her vision. The cold edge of fear cut deep; every muscle in her body tensed with the memory of what had happened before, what men could do when they had power.
“Quiet,” one of them snapped, dragging her toward the door.
Then the air shifted.
A sharp voice cut through the room, commanding and dark.
“Leave her.”
The sound was low, but it carried like a shot. The men froze. Every one of them turned toward the doorway.
Reyaksh stood there, soaked to the bone from the rain, eyes blazing with cold fury. His presence filled the small room like something heavy and dangerous — not loud, but absolute.
The man holding Sayeera’s arm loosened his grip instantly. Nobody moved.
“Sir” one of them started, his tone uncertain. “We didn’t know—”
“I said leave her,” Reyaksh repeated, stepping forward. There was no shout this time, just steel in his voice. The kind that made even trained men obey.
Sayeera stumbled back, breathing hard, clutching the blanket tight around her. Her eyes darted between them, confusion and fear twisting together.
Reyaksh’s gaze swept across the men, sharp and unreadable. “Out. Now.”
The three exchanged quick glances, then lowered their weapons and backed out, silent.
When the door shut behind them, the room fell still again, save for the sound of Sayeera’s trembling breath.
Reyaksh turned to her. His jaw was tight, his voice even colder than before. “I told you not to move.”
Her lips parted, but no words came out.
He sighed quietly, the tension in his shoulders barely contained. “They won’t touch you again. Just stay where I tell you to.”
He turned away before she could answer, rainwater dripping from his coat onto the worn wooden floor.
And though she didn’t understand why, the room felt heavier now... as if something far greater than fear had just walked in with him.
Outside, the rain had settled into a thin mist. The air smelled of wet earth and rusting metal. The three men stood in a loose line near the old jeep parked by the fence, weapons lowered but eyes sharp.
Reyaksh stepped out, his boots heavy on the mud. He stopped in front of them, silent. The light from the single hanging bulb flickered over his face, cutting across his sharp jaw and unreadable eyes.
“Report,” he said finally.
The tallest man straightened immediately. “Sir, we picked up movement on the east perimeter. The place was supposed to be clear. Found her inside your quarters. We thought...”
“You thought wrong,” Reyaksh interrupted, voice calm but carrying the weight of command. “You don’t act without confirmation.”
“Apologies, sir,” another said quickly. “We didn’t know she was... with you.”
Reyaksh’s gaze hardened. “She is not with me. She is under my protection until further notice. That is all you need to know.”
They exchanged uncertain glances. The silence stretched too long, thick with the kind of tension that made even trained men shift uncomfortably.
Finally, the older one, perhaps the most seasoned, stepped forward. His tone was careful. “Permission to ask, sir... is she a liability?”
Reyaksh’s expression didn’t change. His eyes flicked once toward the cabin door behind him, where the faint silhouette of Sayeera’s shadow trembled against the light.
“She’s hurt. She stays until she can move,” he said. “If anyone touches her, you’ll answer directly to me.”
“Yes, Sir,” all three responded in unison, their voices firm but wary.
He took a slow breath, scanning the dark forest edge where the fog curled low against the ground. “Secure the west line. No one gets close without my eyes on them.”
The men nodded and scattered soundlessly into the night.
Reyaksh stood there for a long while after they left, his face tilted slightly upward as if listening to something the others couldn’t hear. The forest whispered, the rain fell again, and somewhere in the distance, a faint signal light blinked twice and went dark.
He exhaled through his nose, a quiet sigh of exhaustion that no one ever saw.
Inside, Sayeera sat on the cot, still shaking. The brief confrontation had left her heart hammering in her chest. She didn’t understand who those men were, why they listened to him like that, or why his name — Ghost — sent a chill down her spine.
When he came back in, she straightened instinctively.
He didn’t look at her. He went straight to the corner table, taking off his soaked jacket and rolling up his sleeves. The quiet hum of his equipment filled the space again.
Sayeera’s voice was a whisper. “They... they pointed guns at me.”
He didn’t turn around. “They didn’t know you were here.”
“You could have told them,” she said softly, a hint of fear and anger bleeding into her tone.
Reyaksh paused for half a second before replying. “I don’t explain myself to anyone.”
That silence after his words was colder than his voice.
Sayeera looked down, her hands twisting in the blanket. “Who are you?” she asked, barely audible.
Reyaksh didn’t answer. He only clicked a switch on the console, the faint green light flickering to life.
“Sleep,” he said finally. “Tomorrow we move.”
And that was the end of it. No explanation. No softness. Just orders and shadows.
Outside, the fog deepened, swallowing Delta-13 whole... and somewhere beyond the hills, another signal pulsed once in red — as if the past he was running from had just found his trail again.
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