Chapter 11 – Prague’s Furnace

Prague District 10. 04:56. Freezing rain taps like nails on rusted steel.

The truck jolted as it hit cracked pavement. Inside, the stench of antifreeze, wet canvas, and cheap tobacco clung to everything. No heat. No light. Just the sound of wheels grinding through the ruins of what used to be a checkpoint.

Soap shifted under the coarse blanket, the fake chemical burns on his cheeks still stinging from the application. His hands were numb. The ID tucked into his waistband read "Zoran Vidović," born in a town that didn't exist anymore.

Across from him, Ghost hadn't moved in twenty minutes. The ink smeared across his face had dried into cracked lines, almost tribal under the low flicker of the cargo light. He stared through a slit in the back door—silent, still, unreadable.

Up front, the driver barked into his radio in rough Czech. Words like contaminated, clearance, aid transport—all rehearsed. The man's name was Janek Kovac, a smuggler with old paramilitary tattoos and a half-dead eye. He didn't speak unless necessary.

The truck slowed. Outside, District 10 loomed—concrete towers gutted by fire, cranes frozen in mid-collapse, scaffolding tangled like broken ribs. The sky above flickered orange. Not sunrise. Industrial fires smoldering across the textile sector, turned Spectre territory.

Soap leaned closer to the door crack. "Smells like ash."

Ghost didn't blink. "That's the point," he muttered. "We're ghosts walking into a crematorium."

The truck bucked again, pulling onto a service road. No streetlights. Just the flicker of burning oil and the silhouette of crows roosting on transmission lines.

Kovac's voice came through the steel partition: "No stops. No names. If we slow, you lie. If they board, you kill."

Ghost responded without turning. "They won't board."

Soap looked at him sideways. "And if they do?"

Ghost adjusted the strap of the satchel across his chest, where the short-barrel Glock sat duct-taped inside a false AED case.

"Then we light the match."

The truck rolled on, deeper into the smoke-choked district.

---

Prague District 10. Kamenice Asylum. 05:23 hours.

The wrought iron gate groaned open under Ghost's pry bar, hinges rusted solid from decades of acid rain and bureaucratic neglect. The sign above—KAMENICKÝ PSYCHIATRICKÝ ÚSTAV—hung at a tilt, the last letters streaked by what looked like dried blood or rust. No one cared enough to tell the difference anymore.

Soap slipped through first, muzzle low, boots silent against the gravel. Ghost followed, pivoting to scan their six. The asylum rose in front of them like a brutalist coffin—slabs of concrete stacked with no grace, only weight. Windows sealed by steel shutters. Walls mottled with soot and birdshit. No lights. No sentries. Just quiet.

They didn't trust quiet.

The main doors yielded after a shove from Soap's shoulder. Inside, the air shifted—cold, wet, laced with copper and mold. Faint echoes traveled from deep within, like something trying to remember how to breathe.

Restraints still hung from the walls. Faded blood pooled under an overturned wheelchair. An oxygen tank lay on its side, valve rusted shut. Ghost scanned left, pistol sweeping through the rot-stained corridors. Soap held the mirror under the next corner, lips tight.

"Hallway clear. No movement—wait. Three bodies upstairs. Infrared's fuzzy."

"Posture?"

"Two vertical, armed. One horizontal. Could be restrained."

Ghost tapped twice on Soap's arm. Interrogate one. Eliminate one.

No words.

They moved up the stairwell like shadows on rails—silent, calculated. Every footfall placed, every angle checked. On the second floor, a security door yawned open at the end of a hallway lined with shattered fluorescent tubes. Past that: a faint moan. Human. Faint. Not pain—exhaustion.

Ghost paused, leaned into Soap's ear. "Room with two guards. Ten meters. You take right, I take left. Don't tag the hostage."

Soap nodded once, jaw flexed.

They breached on the third breath.

Two suppressed rounds cut the silence—one to the throat, the other clean through the orbital socket. The bodies dropped like puppets with the strings clipped.

The third figure didn't react. Couldn't.

---

The cell stank of piss, smoke, and scorched meat.

Ghost stepped in first, sidearm raised, eyes slicing through the dark. Fluorescent tubes dangled from their sockets above, strobing sickly light across shattered tiles and burnt insulation. The walls had been blackened by flame—on purpose. Someone had tried to burn the room clean. They'd failed.

Soap followed close behind, weapon up, breath tight.

"Christ," he muttered, voice low. "It's a butcher's closet."

"No. It's a message," Ghost said, stepping toward the gurney chained to the wall.

The man strapped down looked half-dead. Arms laced with needle tracks and bruises, skin waxy and raw where electrodes had kissed too long. One eye swollen shut. The other—haunted, but lucid. Still there. Still watching.

Dragunov.

The name clicked in Ghost's memory like a hammer to a firing pin. SVR handler. Burned years ago. Nobody had heard from him since Kyiv.

Soap moved to cover the door.

Ghost crouched beside the gurney. No restraints on the mouth. Didn't need any.

The man's tongue was gone—cut clean, the stump a black knot. But that wasn't the worst of it.

His chest. Someone had carved Cyrillic deep into the sternum, fresh scar tissue still blistered and red.

НЕ ГОВОРИ.

DO NOT SPEAK.

Ghost didn't reach for the notepad. He didn't need to.

"You know who we are?" he asked, voice low, even.

The man blinked once.

"You know Spectre's still active?"

Blink.

"You worked Mosul. 2017. Laswell. Alaric Voss."

The name twisted something in Dragunov's face—recognition, pain, guilt. All flared behind that one good eye.

A sound snapped down the hallway.

Soap turned his head, fast. "Footsteps."

Before Ghost could react, the hallway exploded into muzzle flashes. A burst of automatic fire cracked the silence, slamming into the doorframe behind Soap. He pivoted, dropped to a knee, and returned fire—tight groups, no panic.

One assailant crumpled against the wall, blood fountaining from his throat.

The second ducked behind a pillar and bolted, boots hammering down the metal stairs into the asylum's depths.

Soap reloaded, jaw clenched. "Bastard's heading for the basement."

Ghost ignored him for now.

Dragunov had moved.

With fingers shaking like leaves in a gale, the mute man dipped a fingertip into the blood seeping from his ribs and began scrawling across the floor.

Each letter took effort. Each line looked like it cost him years.

Ghost read it aloud as it formed, voice flat.

"'MOSUL. ALIVE. STOP DIGGING.'"

Soap exhaled, slow. "That a threat?"

"No. That's a warning," Ghost said, standing. "He's telling us Voss isn't buried. He's still breathing."

Dragunov looked up at them with something close to shame. Or maybe it was fear. Hard to say, without a voice.

Ghost tapped Soap's shoulder.

"We finish it. Basement. Now."

Soap nodded once. "Furnace?"

"Furnace."

And they vanished down the stairwell—heat rising to meet them.

---

The basement stank of old ash and rot. Every breath tasted like scorched teeth.

Ghost led the descent, boots whispering across rusted metal steps slick with condensation. Pipes snaked along the ceiling, fat with age, dripping warmth into the cold underground. Somewhere below, machinery groaned like a dying animal.

Soap muttered behind him, Uzi slung tight. "Feels like walking into a blast furnace."

Ghost didn't respond. He pushed the final door open—just enough to see.

Rows of steel drums lined the room like sarcophagi. Labels long burned off. The floor shimmered with grease and bone dust. A scorched ID badge lay melted into the tile. Half a jawbone sat beside it, teeth cracked.

"Jesus," Soap breathed. "They didn't just burn evidence. They erased identities."

"They erased people," Ghost said. Then he saw it.

Movement—left side. A boot vanishing behind a blast shield rigged from old riot panels.

Ghost stepped in. The door sealed behind him with a hiss.

Then another hiss. And another.

Steam burst from the overhead pipes in a shrieking rush, obscuring the far wall.

"AMBUSH!" Ghost shouted.

Gunfire erupted. Spectre operatives opened up from behind their cover—short bursts from suppressed bullpups, precise, brutal. Rounds ricocheted off the drums, punching hot sparks into the fog. Soap dove left, slid behind a broken incinerator, fired blind to suppress.

Ghost didn't blink. He grabbed a thermite grenade from his belt, ripped the pin with his teeth, and hurled it into the nearest drum.

A whump of air. Then fire—paper, bone, ash—ignited in a searing bloom, smoke rising fast, choking, blinding. The blast shield shadows vanished in the swirl.

Soap moved.

He found the coal chute hatch—rusted but open. Slid through like a rat, flanking low. The Uzi barked once. Twice. Two Spectre footsoldiers dropped, armor sizzling from the heat, eyes wide behind shattered visors.

Ghost advanced through the haze, shooting through outlines, not faces.

Another Spectre rushed him. Wrong move.

Ghost buried a suppressed round through his eye socket.

Smoke coated the room now, thick and filthy. The only light came from the flickering flames chewing through scorched files and flesh remnants.

Soap stumbled out of the chute, panting. "Clear?"

Ghost scanned the corners, weapon still raised. "Clear."

They didn't speak for a second. Just listened to the sound of the Furnace—roaring now, louder than before. Alive.

Then Ghost looked down.

A blood trail.

Back toward the stairs.

He followed it fast, rounding the corner to see—

Dragunov.

On his knees, gut torn open, holding himself together with raw hands. He'd dragged himself all the way down the hall, through the fire.

---

Dragunov's breaths came in short, wet gasps. Each one rattled like broken glass in his lungs.

Ghost crouched beside him, gloves slick with blood, useless against the pressure he tried to apply. The wound was too low, too deep. Soap stood watch near the furnace's threshold, weapon up, eyes scanning the smoke-choked corridor behind them.

Dragunov's eyes locked onto Ghost. No pleading. Just urgency. His fingers twitched, searching for something—then he shoved a bloodstained photo into Ghost's hand with what little strength he had left.

Ghost caught it. Stared.

Three figures. Mosul, 2017. He knew the angle, the timing, the damn camera. Laswell in local fatigues. Himself, mask half-raised, smiling for once. And Alaric Voss.

Not dead. Not burned out of existence like they'd all told themselves.

Alive.

Dragunov's mouth moved without sound. Tongue gone. Voice stolen. But his eyes screamed a truth no intel ever had.

On the back of the photo—ink faded, smeared: "He never left. You did."

Ghost felt the burn start in his chest. Not grief. Not guilt. Something sharper. Cold steel twisting in muscle.

A klaxon buzzed once—long, low. A mechanical voice crackled from a half-melted panel near the furnace wall.

> "INCINERATOR CORE OVERLOAD. TWENTY SECONDS TO THERMAL RELEASE."

The roar intensified. The furnace room shuddered.

Soap turned. "We've gotta move, now."

Ghost didn't answer. He slid the photo into his vest, then gripped Dragunov's shoulder. The man's body spasmed once—then stilled.

No prayers. No closing words.

Ghost stood.

"Go," he ordered.

They ran.

Steel screamed around them. Flames tore through paper and flesh. Overhead pipes burst, spraying superheated steam. A pressure valve exploded, showering the corridor in fire.

Soap ducked low, shoulder-checking a half-open blast door. Ghost grabbed him by the collar, dragged him.

---

The tunnel groaned behind them.

Ghost and Soap sprinted through heat haze and crumbling concrete as the asylum above began to tear itself apart. Fire pulsed through the ceiling like a heartbeat—violent, erratic, closing in.

They rounded a corner, boots splashing through runoff and ash-sludge, and hit the sub-basement's last door—an old maintenance hatch half-rusted shut. Ghost planted a boot, forced it open with a scream of metal, and shoved Soap through.

Then the lights died.

A soft whir echoed behind them. Not mechanical—deliberate. A powered hum that didn't belong in the dead guts of a forgotten facility.

A wall-mounted screen blinked on behind fractured glass. Static. Then signal.

Ghost froze.

A figure emerged from the noise—distorted, faceless, voice masked through layers of encryption. Not a feed. A trigger. A warning.

> "I offered mercy to the handler. I offered silence. You chose war. Now silence is all that remains."

Soap muttered, "That's him."

Ghost said nothing. The voice wasn't just modulated—it was designed. Sculpted to sound like nothing and everyone.

The screen flickered again. Firelight caught the edges of a wire coil snaking into the wall.

Soap stepped forward. "It's rigged."

Ghost's eyes tracked the line. "No—it is the detonator."

The screen cut to black.

The world followed.

A dull whumpf reverberated first—internal, choked. Then a shockwave ripped the walls behind them. The asylum exploded in a calculated burst—controlled thermobarics laced through the foundation. A fireball roared down the hallway, chasing oxygen and flesh.

Soap hit the floor.

Debris slammed into his back like a sledgehammer. Plaster rained down. Pipes burst overhead. Something groaned deep in the bones of the structure—and then dropped.

Ghost yanked him clear as the hallway behind collapsed into flame. He dragged Soap by the collar, boots skidding over wet tile and broken stone, coughing through soot, eyes burning.

They dove into a drainage shaft as the corridor behind collapsed—screaming rebar, vomiting flame.

Soap choked, half-blind. "Jesus—"

"Keep breathing," Ghost snapped. "We're not ghosts yet."

They slid into black water, the fire chasing them for a final second before dying at the threshold.

---

The storm drains under Florenc bled cold through their boots. Mold crept along the tunnel seams like rot on a corpse. Somewhere above, sirens howled and then went quiet—Prague pretending nothing had happened.

Ghost crouched beneath a gutted service light, the yellow beam of his torch pinched between two gloved fingers. In the other hand, the photo Dragunov had forced into his palm.

Ash still clung to the paper's edges, curling it like scorched bark. But the image remained—three faces frozen in a sunlit Mosul courtyard. Laswell, younger and tight-jawed. Ghost, unmasked, caught mid-blink. And Voss—Alaric—before the name Spectre meant anything.

Soap leaned against the wall, breath ragged. Blood stained his shoulder from a glancing shard, ignored. "You look like shit in that photo."

Ghost didn't look up. "Didn't know it was being taken."

"Yeah, you've got the expression of a man about to punch the lens."

Ghost peeled the corner back further.

Something shimmered where the fibers frayed—threadlike, metallic. Not ink. Not glue. He held it closer to the beam.

"Microdot," he muttered.

Soap straightened. "You sure?"

Ghost didn't answer. He pulled a lens kit from his belt pouch—CIA-issue, thumb-sized. Slotted the strip under glass. A faint click. The reader blinked green, then red. He twisted the dial, adjusted magnification.

Text bloomed, compressed and dense. Coordinates. Cipher keys. A single name at the header: WARD, JOSEPH – CLASSIFIED MISSION DESIGNATOR: SHADOW TOMB.

Soap whistled low. "Well, hell."

Ghost tapped the recorder on his tac vest and held it close. "Laswell, we've got a microdot off Dragunov's photo. Name pops—Joseph Ward. Mission log references Mosul. Looks like he was embedded with Spectre's op from the start."

Crackle. Then Laswell's voice, sharp and flat through the encrypted channel:

> "Ward went dark two weeks ago. No traffic. No pings. Last known location—Brussels. Ghost, that mission was sealed. Buried under seven layers of denial. If he's surfaced now... you're not chasing Spectre. You're chasing what we left behind."

Soap spat. "And whatever we left is crawling back up the pipe."

Ghost stood, slid the photo into a sleeve. "Dragunov didn't die for a lead. He died for a reckoning."

Laswell replied quietly.

> "Then get ready, Riley. This doesn't end with Spectre. It starts with us."

Ghost clicked the recorder off.

He didn't speak for a while. The tunnel dripped around them. The wind outside groaned like something sick.

Soap finally asked, "You believe she's clean in this?"

Ghost slid his mask tighter. "Doesn't matter. We dig anyway."

---

The tunnel reeked of rust, old urine, and rot. Water dripped from cracked tiles, steady as a clock running out of time. Ghost paced beneath the flickering glow of a dead metro sign, boots crunching broken glass and rat bones. The light overhead buzzed—ready to die, but not yet.

Soap sat with his back to the wall, one leg stretched, the other bent at the knee. He flicked a spent shell casing between his fingers, lost in thought. Blood still soaked his left sleeve. He hadn't mentioned it, and Ghost hadn't asked.

Ghost clicked Laswell's encrypted drop again, just to hear it once more. Her voice came sharp through the speaker, scrubbed of emotion:

> "Ward isn't just missing. He's been erased from the grid. We're not just chasing Spectre. We're chasing the rot inside our own house."

He stood still now, eyes fixed on the wet concrete floor. Like it might split open and offer answers.

Soap broke the silence. "So what now?"

Ghost looked over his shoulder. "Then we dig. Start with the foundation."

Soap pushed to his feet, slow and deliberate. "And if it's Ward? If he flipped?"

Ghost didn't blink. "Then we bury him."

No heat in the words. No edge. Just fact. Like calling wind cold or fire hot.

A breeze slithered through the tunnel—a whisper of something moving far above. Sirens? Distant. Uninterested.

Soap muttered, "This foundation you're talking about. Sounds like it's already rotten."

Ghost turned away, his silhouette vanishing into the dark ahead. "Then we tear it down."