A FACE FROM THE PAST

Chapter 10

A Face from the Past

The knock on the door had been the harbinger of something he couldn't predict, something that rattled the fragile structure of his reality. He had expected the worst, and he was right to. The woman who entered wasn't someone he had expected—yet her presence, her eyes, stirred something deep within him. Something that had been buried for far too long.

She stood in the doorway, her silhouette barely visible in the low light. Her long, dark hair cascaded over her shoulders, and her eyes, though filled with uncertainty, held an unmistakable intensity. There was something about her that felt both familiar and foreign, as if his mind recognized her even though his heart refused to. She took one step into the room, and his instincts flared.

He didn't trust anyone. Not anymore. But this woman... she was different. He could feel it.

"Who are you?" His voice was low, cold, but it trembled slightly despite his efforts to remain composed.

The woman took another step forward, her gaze locked on his as if searching for the man she once knew—or perhaps the man she wished to find. She didn't speak for a moment, as if weighing the consequences of her words. Finally, she broke the silence. "I know you."

His hand instinctively gripped the gun at his side, his other hand flexing into a fist. "You don't know me," he snapped. "You're mistaken."

But she shook her head, and the slight tremble in her voice betrayed her resolve. "No, I do. You were different before all of this. Before you became... Phantom."

The word hung in the air like a curse, a reminder of the man he had become, the ghost he was now. But she was saying something that made no sense. She was claiming to know him before his transformation, before the agency had erased his past, his identity. Before his entire life had been rewritten.

His thoughts scrambled as the pieces began to shift, but nothing about her made sense. There was no memory of her, no recollection of this woman, her face, her name. Yet, there was something in the way she said it—something that struck him at his core, making him question the fragments of his memories that had once been so sure, so clear.

"You were..." she hesitated, almost as if afraid to continue. "You were once someone else. You had a different life—a real life. And I... I was part of it."

The words hit him like a slap, and for a moment, the world around him seemed to tilt. The weight of what she was implying—of what she was offering—felt like an anchor in the sea of his confusion. Could it be true? Could this woman really know him before he had been erased, before he had become Phantom?

"Who are you?" His voice was sharper now, tinged with the desperation that had been growing ever since he first started unraveling the truth about himself.

But before she could answer, a loud crash echoed from the hallway outside, followed by a series of heavy footsteps. His eyes snapped to the door, instinctively reaching for his weapon. He had trained for this, had lived in this constant state of alertness. But this felt different. He could feel it in the air.

The woman's expression shifted from one of determination to fear. "We need to leave. Now."

"Who are they?" he asked, his hand on the door frame, ready to make his move.

"I don't know," she whispered, her eyes darting to the corner of the room, as if expecting someone to burst in at any moment. "But I think they're after us both."

Before he could react, the door flew open, crashing against the wall with enough force to send dust raining down from the ceiling. Several masked men, their faces obscured, rushed into the room, guns drawn.

The woman didn't hesitate. She bolted for the window, shoving aside the curtains as she reached for the latch. She moved with the precision of someone who had lived this kind of life before, and yet there was a desperation in her actions that betrayed her calm demeanor.

The first gunshot rang out, shattering the quiet of the room. He instinctively dove to the side, his heart pounding in his chest as he hit the ground and rolled. The gunfire that followed was deafening, but he knew the drill. He had been trained for this moment—trained to survive. He scrambled to his feet, and the woman was already gone, her figure vanishing into the night through the open window.

He didn't think. He moved.

There was no time to question her, no time to wonder why she was here, why she was claiming to know him. His only focus was survival.

He darted toward the door, firing two quick shots into the advancing figures, the silenced gun in his hand as steady as his heartbeat. They didn't stand a chance. The first man went down with a grunt, collapsing to the floor, while the second staggered back before a bullet found his chest.

The third man, however, was different. He was faster, more agile. A blur of motion that seemed to anticipate every move he made. The man lunged toward him, his knife glinting in the low light, and for a split second, he felt the cold steel graze his side.

A flash of pain shot through him, but his mind was already elsewhere, already calculating his next move. He retaliated, grabbing the man's wrist and twisting it until the knife clattered to the floor. With a sharp, precise motion, he struck—his fist connecting with the man's throat, forcing the air from his lungs. The assassin staggered back, clutching his neck, before falling silent, his body crumpling to the ground.

The room was quiet again, the only sound the heavy breaths of his pursuers as they lay motionless on the floor. His pulse thundered in his ears as he scanned the room for any other threats. But the woman was gone. She had vanished into the night, leaving him with more questions than ever.

He wasn't sure whether he should feel relief or dread. He had been trained to be an expert at reading people, at interpreting their actions. But this woman—her sudden appearance, her knowledge of him, her insistence that he had once been someone else—it all felt like a trap.

Still, there was something in the way she had looked at him, something in her eyes that tugged at the remnants of his fragmented memories. The fact that she knew him before the agency had erased his past meant she was connected to something he couldn't remember—something that was buried deep within him.

And that was enough to make him want to follow her, to find out who she was and what she knew about his life before he became Phantom.

But not now. Now wasn't the time.

He took a deep breath, his mind racing with the possibilities. Whoever had come after him—whoever was hunting them both—wouldn't stop. Not now, not ever. But the woman had given him something to hold onto. A sliver of hope that his past wasn't as lost as he had thought.

He had to find her.