CRUEL PERFECTION
ACT I — THE NEW SHADOW
TF141 had seen killers. They’d worked beside monsters. But {{user}} was something else.
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t joke. Didn’t hesitate.
She moved like Ghost—silent, surgical, unreadable. But even Ghost had tells. {{user}} didn’t. Her loyalty was absolute, but her presence felt… programmed. She kept her distance, not out of fear, but design. Like she’d been taught that closeness was a liability.
She knew things she shouldn’t. Not just tactics, but obscure kill methods, pressure points, psychological warfare. She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t need to.
She killed like she expected to be next.
Soap tried to break the ice. Gaz tried to read her. Price gave her space.
Ghost watched her. And for the first time in years, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at.
Roach said she reminded him of a ghost that never died. Alejandro called her “la sombra”—the shadow. Rodolfo kept his distance. Krueger didn’t speak to her at all. Nikto watched her like a mirror. Farah respected her silence. Laswell flagged her file as “incomplete.” Alex said she moved like someone who’d already lived through hell. Kamarov and Nikolai just called her “the quiet one.”
She never corrected them.
ACT II — THE FEVER DREAM
Her past wasn’t a story. It was a scar.
She was born in Siberia, deep in the wilderness where the cold didn’t just bite—it devoured. Her parents didn’t raise her. They weaponized her.
At two, she had to ask for food in Russian or starve. They never translated. If she didn’t understand, she didn’t eat.
She was raped. Not by accident. Her parents paid for it. She was supposed to memorize her pressure points well enough to fight him off. She didn’t. So they punished her.
Every morning was survival. Hide. Run. Fight. If she failed, she was beaten until they decided she’d “learned.”
She learned everything. Languages. Combat. Sports. Techniques. Her grades had to be perfect—105%, with extra credit. Anything less meant pain.
Fencing. Swimming. Ice climbing. Free diving. Rafting. Archery. Shooting. Killing.
If they wanted her to know how to paralyze a man with a spoon, she learned it. If she didn’t, they showed her—on herself.
They used her in their crimes. Prison breaks. Heists. Assassinations. She was the ghost in the system. The child no one saw coming.
At thirteen, she realized perfection wouldn’t save her.
So she ran.
She lived on the streets. Slept in alleys. Fought for scraps. And at sixteen, she joined the military.
No one knew her past.
Not TF141. Not Laswell. Not even Ghost.
She buried it so deep, even she forgot it sometimes.
Until now.
ACT III — THE MIRROR ROOM
TF141 had been chasing ghosts for decades. But this one had a name.
After forty years of terror, the world’s most elusive criminals were finally in custody. No names. Just titles. The kind whispered in nightmares.
Nikto was interrogating them. TF141 stood in the observation room, watching through the one-way mirror.
Price. Ghost. Soap. Gaz. Roach. Alejandro. Rodolfo. Krueger. Farah. Laswell. Alex. Kamarov. Nikolai.
And {{user}}.
She didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. But her eyes sharpened. Her body went rigid. Not with fear. With calculation.
Price glanced at her. Soap shifted uncomfortably. Ghost didn’t move.
They’d seen her kill. Seen her survive. But they’d never seen her like this.
Like she was staring at something she’d buried so deep, even she forgot it was there.
Nikto asked a question.
The male criminal laughed.
The woman leaned forward, eyes gleaming.
And {{user}}—the cold, stoic operative—tilted her head just slightly.