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The man died without a sound.
Bond watched him slump forward across the café table, the espresso still steaming between them, a thin red line running from the corner of the man’s mouth down his chin. No convulsions. No drama. Just a life ending quietly in a crowded square where tourists laughed and pigeons strutted like they owned the place.
Bond didn’t flinch.
He finished his own coffee, stood, and walked away before the body even hit the pavement.
Rome was loud, bright, and utterly indifferent. Perfect cover for a murder.
The man’s name had been Luca Ferretti, a mid-level broker who sold information the way other men sold shoes. He’d asked for protection. He’d paid for it. And he’d still ended up dead. That alone meant this wasn’t a simple leak.
It meant someone inside wanted him silent.
Bond adjusted his jacket as he disappeared into the crowd. His earpiece crackled once, then went dead. Black static. Not interference, intentional silence.
Someone had cut the line.
By nightfall, Bond was bleeding.
The safehouse in Trastevere was compromised, windows blown inward, furniture overturned, the smell of cordite thick in the air. Two bodies lay sprawled near the kitchen, throats cut with military precision. No struggle. Clean work.
Bond crouched, running gloved fingers along the edge of the wound. Familiar technique. European. Old school.
Not amateurs.
A floorboard creaked behind him.
Bond spun, fired once, click. Empty.
The man tackled him before he could reload, smashing him into the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth. Bond drove an elbow backward, felt cartilage crunch, then rolled, grappling for control.
They slammed into the table, wood splintering, fists and knees colliding in close, brutal silence.
No wasted movement. No shouting.
The man tried to go for Bond’s gun. Bond snapped his wrist, wrenched the weapon free, and drove the barrel under the man’s jaw.
For a moment, they stared at each other, sweat, blood, recognition.
“You,” the man rasped. “You don’t know what side you’re on anymore.”
Bond pulled the trigger.
The body collapsed, boneless.
Bond stood there breathing hard, ribs screaming, knuckles split. He felt old in moments like this. Not tired, used. Like a tool that had done too many jobs.
He grabbed the man’s phone. One unread message blinked on the screen:
DELIVERED. PROCEED TO PHASE TWO.
No sender.
London didn’t welcome him back.
The rain soaked through his coat as Bond crossed the Thames, the city a smear of sodium lights and wet asphalt. MI6 felt colder than usual, sterile, stripped. Eyes followed him that shouldn’t have known he was coming.
M met him alone.
She looked smaller behind the desk, but her eyes were sharp as ever.
“You went off-grid,” she said.
“You pulled the plug,” Bond replied.
A flicker. Just a flicker.
“That wasn’t my call.”
Silence stretched.
Then she slid a file across the desk. Black folder. No markings.
“This is what Ferretti was selling,” she said. “Internal movement logs. Asset names. Kill authorization chains.”
Bond opened it.
His name stared back at him.
Not just once, repeated. Missions he’d never been briefed on. Orders he hadn’t executed. Operations attributed to him that ended in scorched rooms and dead civilians.
A ghost wearing his face.
“They’re using you,” M said quietly. “Or framing you.”
Bond closed the folder. “Who signs off?”
M hesitated.
That was answer enough.
The first betrayal came with a smile.
She met him in Istanbul, Elena Kovács, former SIS liaison, eyes like cut glass and hands that didn’t shake. She hugged him like an old friend, kissed his cheek, and led him into a hotel room overlooking the Bosphorus.
They didn’t talk at first.
They never did.
After, she lit a cigarette and sat naked by the window, smoke curling around her shoulders.
“You’re being hunted,” she said.
“I know.”
“Not by them.” She exhaled. “By us.”
Bond propped himself on one elbow. “Then why are you here?”
She turned. “Because I don’t know which version of you is real anymore.”
The answer came five seconds later when the door blew inward.
Gunfire shredded the room. Bond rolled, grabbed his pistol, returned fire through plaster and glass. Elena screamed, then stopped.
Bond crawled to her.
She was slumped against the bed, blood soaking the sheets, eyes already glazing. Her hand clutched his sleeve.
“They needed a villain,” she whispered. “Someone unstoppable.”
Her fingers went slack.
Bond stood slowly, rage cold and controlled.
He didn’t mourn.
He catalogued.
By the time he reached Prague, the bodies were piling up.
Men who knew too much. Men who knew too little. Safehouses burned. Contacts vanished. Every trail led back to one name buried deep in the architecture of British intelligence, a man who’d survived purges, scandals, reforms.
Sir Malcolm Harker.
Architect. Patriot. Untouchable.
Bond broke into his compound at dawn.
No alarms. No guards in sight. Too easy.
The basement was where the truth lived, servers humming softly, screens alive with surveillance feeds from across Europe. Black ops stacked on black ops, all off-book.
And at the center of it all: Bond.
Video footage played, edited, seamless. Him pulling triggers he’d never pulled. Him walking away from fires he’d never started.
A myth manufactured from fragments of truth.
Harker’s voice echoed behind him.
“They believe what they’re shown.”
Bond turned.
Harker stood with two armed men, calm, hands folded.
“You were perfect,” Harker continued. “Disposable. Effective. You made the world afraid in the right places.”
Bond raised his gun. “You used my name to bury your mess.”
Harker smiled. “I gave it purpose.”
The guards fired.
Bond dove, bullets tearing through server racks, sparks raining like metallic snow. He rolled, shot one man in the knee, the other in the throat. Harker fled deeper into the compound.
Bond chased him through concrete corridors, down stairwells slick with blood, until they reached a dead end overlooking the river.
Harker turned, panting. “You can’t kill me. I’m the system.”
Bond fired anyway.
The bullet tore through Harker’s shoulder, spinning him into the railing. He screamed as he fell, body striking stone, then water.
Bond watched the river swallow him.
No confirmation. No closure.
That was the cost.
MI6 erased the operation.
Officially, Bond never existed there.
Unofficially, he was given a choice: disappear quietly, or keep working in the dark where no one could claim him.
Bond chose the dark.
Weeks later, he stood alone on a beach in Sicily, waves crashing under a moonless sky.
His phone buzzed once, coordinates, a name, a time.
Same job. New lie.
Bond slipped the phone into his pocket and walked away from the water, shoulders squared, face set.
Betrayal had stripped him clean.
Violence had sharpened what remained.
And somewhere out there, someone still believed they could control him.
They were wrong.
Bond was done being a ghost.
Now he was a reckoning.
Bond watched him slump forward across the café table, the espresso still steaming between them, a thin red line running from the corner of the man’s mouth down his chin. No convulsions. No drama. Just a life ending quietly in a crowded square where tourists laughed and pigeons strutted like they owned the place.
Bond didn’t flinch.
He finished his own coffee, stood, and walked away before the body even hit the pavement.
Rome was loud, bright, and utterly indifferent. Perfect cover for a murder.
The man’s name had been Luca Ferretti, a mid-level broker who sold information the way other men sold shoes. He’d asked for protection. He’d paid for it. And he’d still ended up dead. That alone meant this wasn’t a simple leak.
It meant someone inside wanted him silent.
Bond adjusted his jacket as he disappeared into the crowd. His earpiece crackled once, then went dead. Black static. Not interference, intentional silence.
Someone had cut the line.
By nightfall, Bond was bleeding.
The safehouse in Trastevere was compromised, windows blown inward, furniture overturned, the smell of cordite thick in the air. Two bodies lay sprawled near the kitchen, throats cut with military precision. No struggle. Clean work.
Bond crouched, running gloved fingers along the edge of the wound. Familiar technique. European. Old school.
Not amateurs.
A floorboard creaked behind him.
Bond spun, fired once, click. Empty.
The man tackled him before he could reload, smashing him into the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth. Bond drove an elbow backward, felt cartilage crunch, then rolled, grappling for control.
They slammed into the table, wood splintering, fists and knees colliding in close, brutal silence.
No wasted movement. No shouting.
The man tried to go for Bond’s gun. Bond snapped his wrist, wrenched the weapon free, and drove the barrel under the man’s jaw.
For a moment, they stared at each other, sweat, blood, recognition.
“You,” the man rasped. “You don’t know what side you’re on anymore.”
Bond pulled the trigger.
The body collapsed, boneless.
Bond stood there breathing hard, ribs screaming, knuckles split. He felt old in moments like this. Not tired, used. Like a tool that had done too many jobs.
He grabbed the man’s phone. One unread message blinked on the screen:
DELIVERED. PROCEED TO PHASE TWO.
No sender.
London didn’t welcome him back.
The rain soaked through his coat as Bond crossed the Thames, the city a smear of sodium lights and wet asphalt. MI6 felt colder than usual, sterile, stripped. Eyes followed him that shouldn’t have known he was coming.
M met him alone.
She looked smaller behind the desk, but her eyes were sharp as ever.
“You went off-grid,” she said.
“You pulled the plug,” Bond replied.
A flicker. Just a flicker.
“That wasn’t my call.”
Silence stretched.
Then she slid a file across the desk. Black folder. No markings.
“This is what Ferretti was selling,” she said. “Internal movement logs. Asset names. Kill authorization chains.”
Bond opened it.
His name stared back at him.
Not just once, repeated. Missions he’d never been briefed on. Orders he hadn’t executed. Operations attributed to him that ended in scorched rooms and dead civilians.
A ghost wearing his face.
“They’re using you,” M said quietly. “Or framing you.”
Bond closed the folder. “Who signs off?”
M hesitated.
That was answer enough.
The first betrayal came with a smile.
She met him in Istanbul, Elena Kovács, former SIS liaison, eyes like cut glass and hands that didn’t shake. She hugged him like an old friend, kissed his cheek, and led him into a hotel room overlooking the Bosphorus.
They didn’t talk at first.
They never did.
After, she lit a cigarette and sat naked by the window, smoke curling around her shoulders.
“You’re being hunted,” she said.
“I know.”
“Not by them.” She exhaled. “By us.”
Bond propped himself on one elbow. “Then why are you here?”
She turned. “Because I don’t know which version of you is real anymore.”
The answer came five seconds later when the door blew inward.
Gunfire shredded the room. Bond rolled, grabbed his pistol, returned fire through plaster and glass. Elena screamed, then stopped.
Bond crawled to her.
She was slumped against the bed, blood soaking the sheets, eyes already glazing. Her hand clutched his sleeve.
“They needed a villain,” she whispered. “Someone unstoppable.”
Her fingers went slack.
Bond stood slowly, rage cold and controlled.
He didn’t mourn.
He catalogued.
By the time he reached Prague, the bodies were piling up.
Men who knew too much. Men who knew too little. Safehouses burned. Contacts vanished. Every trail led back to one name buried deep in the architecture of British intelligence, a man who’d survived purges, scandals, reforms.
Sir Malcolm Harker.
Architect. Patriot. Untouchable.
Bond broke into his compound at dawn.
No alarms. No guards in sight. Too easy.
The basement was where the truth lived, servers humming softly, screens alive with surveillance feeds from across Europe. Black ops stacked on black ops, all off-book.
And at the center of it all: Bond.
Video footage played, edited, seamless. Him pulling triggers he’d never pulled. Him walking away from fires he’d never started.
A myth manufactured from fragments of truth.
Harker’s voice echoed behind him.
“They believe what they’re shown.”
Bond turned.
Harker stood with two armed men, calm, hands folded.
“You were perfect,” Harker continued. “Disposable. Effective. You made the world afraid in the right places.”
Bond raised his gun. “You used my name to bury your mess.”
Harker smiled. “I gave it purpose.”
The guards fired.
Bond dove, bullets tearing through server racks, sparks raining like metallic snow. He rolled, shot one man in the knee, the other in the throat. Harker fled deeper into the compound.
Bond chased him through concrete corridors, down stairwells slick with blood, until they reached a dead end overlooking the river.
Harker turned, panting. “You can’t kill me. I’m the system.”
Bond fired anyway.
The bullet tore through Harker’s shoulder, spinning him into the railing. He screamed as he fell, body striking stone, then water.
Bond watched the river swallow him.
No confirmation. No closure.
That was the cost.
MI6 erased the operation.
Officially, Bond never existed there.
Unofficially, he was given a choice: disappear quietly, or keep working in the dark where no one could claim him.
Bond chose the dark.
Weeks later, he stood alone on a beach in Sicily, waves crashing under a moonless sky.
His phone buzzed once, coordinates, a name, a time.
Same job. New lie.
Bond slipped the phone into his pocket and walked away from the water, shoulders squared, face set.
Betrayal had stripped him clean.
Violence had sharpened what remained.
And somewhere out there, someone still believed they could control him.
They were wrong.
Bond was done being a ghost.
Now he was a reckoning.
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