The Shadow in the Rearview Mirror

The rain grew heavier and heavier, lashing violently against the car body like thousands of iron needles.

The Charger roared, tearing through the night as it plunged into an abandoned underground garage beneath the pillars of Pier 4. Vega stepped out of the car, her leather-booted feet stepping into the murky puddle with a loud, splashing sound. Her left hand tightly clutched the titanium suitcase which was emitting a cold, Beep... Beep... rhythm, while her right hand held ready a Sig Sauer P320 pistol with its safety unlocked inside her jacket pocket.

Lurking behind a moss-covered concrete pillar was the Broker—his face disfigured by a diagonal scar running from his temple down to his chin. Seeing Vega, he hurriedly poked his head out, his eyes darting around like a terrified sewer rat.

"Where's the goods?" His voice whispered, muffled and visibly trembling.

Without a word, Vega violently flung the titanium suitcase onto a pile of old tires between them. The suitcase impact created a resounding metal clank in the gloomy space.

"The rest of the money," Vega coldly extended her gloved hand.

The Broker swallowed hard, his trembling hand punching a string of passwords into a military tablet. "Ting." Vega's phone immediately signaled that the ghost account in Switzerland had received the remaining three hundred thousand.

The middleman hurriedly grabbed the suitcase, but upon seeing the flashing deep red LED strip, the color instantly drained completely from his face. He raised his head to look at Vega, his eyes rolling back in terror.

"You... you touched its biometric security system?!"

"It started counting down the numbers the moment I lifted it off the rack," Vega narrowed her eyes, her gaze sharp as a razor locking tightly onto him. "Make it clear. Whose shipment is this anyway that the buyer is willing to pay this absurd price?"

The Broker shuddered violently, frantically shoving the suitcase into a specialized insulated bag to block tracking signals. He stepped closer, leaning his face right up to Vega's, his foul breath exhaling alongside sheer terror:

"Ghost Wheel... you're crazy. Do you know why South Port this morning became a wasteland? An Italian mafia gang tried to hijack a container belonging to The Foundry. Just fifteen minutes later, sixty of their gunmen were wiped out cleanly, not a single body left intact. The head of The Foundry is not human... he's a demon. The underworld calls him 'The Harvester'. Whoever has tried to steal from him, not a single one has survived past forty-eight hours to see the sun!"

The Broker clutched the bag tightly, turned around, and bolted for his life out of the underground garage as if the darkness behind him could open its jaws to swallow him at any moment.

Vega stood motionless in place. Her index finger instinctively stroked the cold gun barrel in her pocket. The Broker's words didn't frighten her, but they created a ruthless, chilling ripple gliding down her spine.

The Foundry. The Harvester.

One hour later. A secret apartment on the fifth floor of an old suburban apartment building.

The atmosphere inside was so quiet that the dripping sound of a broken faucet in the bathroom could be clearly heard. Juno sat in front of five glowing computer screens, her ten fingers flying across the keyboard so fast they formed blurs. Sweat beaded on her forehead even though the air conditioner was running at its coldest setting.

Vega leaned against the edge of the desk, holding a glass of Bourbon sloshing with ice in one hand, while the other gently twirled her Zippo lighter.

"Juno, trace it for me," Vega took a sip of hard liquor, the fiery liquid burning straight down her throat. "Who is the shadow standing behind The Foundry?"

"Vega, we've received the full payment. The plane tickets to Buenos Aires depart at eight a.m. today," Juno didn't raise her head, her voice trembling with tension. "I've wiped all traces of the Charger, I've forged immigration records... You don't need to know anything more."

"Juno." Vega lowered her voice, tapping the bottom of the glass tumbler lightly against the wooden desk. "Clack." A crisp sound interrupted her best friend. "I saw the eyes of the man sitting in that Escalade through the rearview mirror. Those weren't the eyes of an ordinary mafia boss. He knows what I took. I need to know who my opponent is before boarding that plane."

Juno let out an exasperated sigh. She pushed up her glasses slightly, typing a string of encrypted commands bypassing the Tor security barrier. The middle screen instantly switched to a pitch-black interface, a blood-red spinning wheel appearing alongside a highest-level warning text: RESTRICTED DATABASE - LEVEL 0.

"The underground satellite system only keeps three pages of files on him," Juno whispered, her dazed eyes staring at the newly appeared text. "Real name: Roman Ashcombe. Military alias in the international arena: The Architect of Steel. He controls 'The Foundry'—a financial conglomerate cum private military organization holding over forty percent of the world's experimental weapons stockpiles and biometric encryption tech."

Juno turned to look at Vega, her eyes behind her glasses brimming with genuine panic:

"Look at this line, Vega! 'Ashcombe's Rule: No negotiation. No retrieval. Only eradication.' Three years ago, a top assassin gang in Eastern Europe stole a hard drive containing his encryption algorithm. Roman Ashcombe didn't use the police, nor did he put up a bounty. He personally led men to wipe that boss's entire lineage off the world map in exactly seven days. Not a single soul survived."

Vega stared intently at the screen. The photo attached to the file was merely a tall silhouette standing in a gloomy study in Rome, wearing a flawless black suit, holding a glass of wine, revealing the profile of a face with a high, straight nose and a resolute chin.

Cold. Overwhelming. Utterly ruthless.

That was the exact silhouette she had caught a glimpse of through the dark glass of the Cadillac Escalade on the I-90 highway.

"He never loses anything," Juno swallowed, her voice losing its pitch. "Vega, that hard drive you just stole... it's the key to accessing his global surveillance satellite network. You just thrust your hand into the world's biggest hornets' nest!"

Vega fell silent. She brought the glass to her lips, finishing the last gulp. The ice cube clinked against the glass wall in lonely isolation. Deep inside her, the unease didn't turn into fear; instead, it triggered a surging rush of adrenaline—the instinct of a predatory beast realizing it is being stalked by a much larger predator.

"Eight o'clock this morning," Vega said calmly, pulling out her P320 pistol to recheck the magazine. "We're leaving this place. Even if he's a demon, he can't find two ghosts in South America."

"Yeah... right. We vanish," Juno nodded eagerly as if to reassure herself, her ten fingers beginning to execute commands to shut down the server. "I'll destroy all these hard disks right now..."

CRASH!

A loud noise shattered the quiet space.

Every large window glass pane facing the street of the apartment shattered into thousands of shocking debris fragments scattering into the mist. The freezing night wind along with the drizzle instantly rushed into the room, sending papers flying across the desk.

By the reflex of someone living in the barrel of a gun, Vega lunged to embrace Juno, dragging both of them down behind the thick oak desk right before the shards of broken glass could pierce them.

The sound of the wind howling through the window opening echoed with a dull roar.

No subsequent gunfire followed. No sirens wailed. No heavy footsteps rushed.

Everything fell back into a terrifying, suffocating silence.

Vega slowly lifted her head, her sharp gaze sweeping across the room. On the concrete wall right behind where Juno had been sitting—precisely less than ten centimeters from her head—was a deep, hollow hole.

A military-grade .50 caliber sniper bullet had pierced the bulletproof glass, embedding straight into the wall.

That wasn't a missed shot.

With that distance and firing angle, the assassin could have entirely blown Juno's or Vega's head off in a single breath. This was an astonishingly precise shot, calculated down to the millimeter to embed itself in the wall right beside them.

A warning. A brand.

Vega crawled back toward the wall, using her dagger to gently pry the shiny metal bullet out of the concrete. On the body of the large-caliber bullet, a tiny emblem shaped like an iron gear seal and flame was laser-engraved with extreme sophistication.

The trademark of The Foundry.

Vega's phone—the device with the SIM removed and network connection completely severed—suddenly lit up its screen.

There was no ringtone. Only a single message appeared from an unknown number, popping up across the pitch-black screen:

"YOU DRIVE VERY WELL, GHOST WHEEL. BUT THERE'S NOWHERE YOU CAN RUN."

Vega's spine turned freezing cold. She looked out the shattered window frame, staring into the pitch-black night of the city of Chicago submerged in rain dust. At some high-rise building kilometers away, a pair of cold eyes was passing through a thermal scope, leisurely tracking her every move.

The game of cat and mouse had officially begun.