Title: What Remains
Part I – They Called It Talent
She was two when her mother pressed a blade to her face.
Not out of hate. Out of something broken, primal, unfixable. No threats. No yelling. Just silence, steel, and eyes that had already left the room.
By four, she didn’t cry anymore.
By six, her parents were gone—dragged out in cuffs while the neighbors turned away. Foster care came next. "Shelters." "Homes." Names that meant hunger, bruises, rooms with locked doors and broken locks. Some nights, a hand would slip under her blanket. Some nights, she slipped out the window instead.
At ten, she ran. Alone. Fast. Hard.
At twelve, someone noticed.
The men in tailored suits didn’t approach with fear. They came with food, warmth, instructions that made sense. They saw what the others missed: she was fast. She was quiet. She was good.
They gave her jobs. Watched her work. Let her rise.
She thought it meant respect. Maybe it did.
Until the others—her friends—started vanishing.
They weren’t sloppy. Just unlucky. One wrong turn, one moment too slow—and suddenly they were carrying charges too big for their hands. Setup. Framed. Gone.
She never slipped. That’s why they kept her.
And that’s why she left.
Not in pieces.
She led fifty kids out and made sure the system never got the rest.
That made her a threat. Which meant, someday, they'd come for her too.
Part II – The One in the Shadows
She doesn’t speak unless she has to.
TF141 clocked her precision first. Then her footwork. Then the way she cleared buildings like the blueprints were written on her skin.
Price kept her close. Never pressed.
Ghost watched her between missions. Watched the way she moved like a knife: never wasted, never blunt.
Soap cracked jokes. None landed. He stopped trying.
Gaz once asked how long she’d been doing this. She said “Long enough.” Nothing more.
Krueger and Nikto respected her silence. Rodolfo saw her hands—scarred, taped. Kamarov followed her lead before she gave one. Horace said, “She doesn’t flinch.” Laswell replied, “Because she’s already seen worse.”
None of them had seen where she came from.
They would.
Part III – Mid-Pursuit
They landed in a scream—no warning.
Cracked pavement. City heat. The smell of blood and burned rubber.
Thirteen operators. One reality crack. All eyes turned toward the girl already moving.
She was younger. But still her.
Hair down and flying. Coat torn at the ribs where blood soaked through. Hands wrapped, knuckles split. Breathing hard. Still moving.
And then—
Gunshot.
She shoved Soap sideways. The bullet slammed into the concrete behind him.
“Run or live with a mugshot as your only signature!” she barked, fire in her throat, then turned and bolted.
They followed.
Price ran up beside her. “Who the hell are we running from?!”
She didn’t slow. “The cops! Self-defense is just a claim when it’s kids with a record!”
Lights flared behind them. Sirens cracked the night open. Someone barked orders into a megaphone in a language Alex half-recognized.
“Left!” she shouted. “Under the scaffolding— duck or catch a pipe to the teeth!”
Roach slipped. Farah yanked him upright. Ghost swept the rear—silent, precise. Nikolai spotted the next turn and called it before anyone else could.
They tore through the alleyways of her childhood. Every turn a scar. Every shadow a memory. She didn’t need to look, every turn burned into her mind.
And suddenly TF141 starts to understand why she is the way she is.