Like Training a Ghost

The knock came at 6:55 a.m.

Not loud. Not urgent. Just two dull taps against the doorframe — like a metronome running on discipline.

Dev was already awake.

He sat up, put his boots on, and didn't ask where they were going.

Alex stood outside the cabin, her coat zipped halfway, steam rising from her thermos. The sky was a flat sheet of overcast, turning the snow from white to a dull, bruised gray.

She handed him a small black bag without a word. He followed her into the woods.

No trail. No footprints.

She led with perfect confidence — weaving between the trees, taking a zigzag pattern he silently memorized.

Two hundred meters in, she stopped near a dead tree split by lightning.

She unzipped the bag. Pulled out a matte black pistol. Clean. Unadorned. Full-size.

"This is yours now," she said. "Until you earn something better."

Dev took it without flinching. It was heavier than he expected. Cold through his gloves.

She didn't teach him how to hold it.

Didn't explain the weight. The sights. The recoil.

She just pulled a single round from her coat pocket and handed it to him.

"One shot per day," she said. "Miss, and you spend the rest of the daylight learning why."

He loaded it.

Clicked the safety off.

No target was set.

She pointed at a thick knot in a far tree. Roughly twenty meters out.

He raised the pistol.

No hesitation. But no grace either. His stance was awkward. Elbows too high. Breathing uneven.

He fired.

The sound cracked through the woods like a bone snapping. The recoil jolted his arm. The bullet struck tree bark — four inches to the left of the knot.

He lowered the gun slowly.

Alex didn't speak.

She just turned and walked back toward the cabin.

He followed.

No words were exchanged on the way back.

But the silence didn't sting.

It wasn't judgment.

It was a lesson.

The days fell into rhythm.

Not routine — routine implies comfort. This was something else. A drill. A beat.

Alex never yelled. She didn't correct with volume. Only movement. Wordless gestures, occasional nods. Every mistake had weight, and every correction came only once.

Day two was knife handling.

She placed three different blades on the table and said, "Pick one."

Dev chose the smallest.

She didn't comment. Just showed him the grip. The angle. The pivot of the wrist.

They didn't use targets. They used empty cartons filled with sand. She slit hers silently, one after another. Dev followed.

His cuts weren't perfect, but they weren't sloppy either.

Day three: movement drills.

He was made to walk through the woods in thick snow with a coin balanced on his head. Any noise above ambient broke the exercise.

If it fell, he started over.

Day four: shadow trailing.

Alex would leave the cabin without a word. Dev had to follow without being seen. Once, she disappeared completely for an hour. He found her in a tree, watching him from above like a sniper.

"You missed three prints," she said. Then vanished again.

By the end of the first week, he had mapped the forest perimeter in his head. Knew the distance between the fence posts buried under snow. Knew which trees had traps, which didn't.

She never asked how.

He never told her he listened to her boots at night when she thought he was asleep.

She hummed when she calibrated her rifle.

Tapped her mug twice before drinking.

Shifted her right shoulder whenever she was lying.

He noticed all of it.

And when she trained, he mimicked her stance — not out of admiration, but precision.

She didn't mention it.

But the next time she set out the knives, she laid hers beside his. Equal.

The forest wasn't just woods anymore.

It was memory. Measurement.

Dev knew every ridge, every path where wind cut harder through the trees, every log that snapped louder when stepped on. He could run it blindfolded — and she hadn't even asked him to.

One morning, Alex handed him a scarf and said, "Walk with me."

They didn't speak for the first ten minutes. She led the way, boots crunching softly through semi-frozen brush.

Then, she stopped at a clearing. Turned. Gestured to the snow beneath their feet.

"Count your steps from the cabin."

Dev answered instantly. "Two hundred thirteen."

She nodded.

She took a rock from her pocket. Tossed it toward the treeline. "Which direction would you run if someone opened fire right now?"

He turned in place once. "West. Low hill. Good coverage."

Alex pointed at a tree missing bark at the base.

"What's different about this one?"

Dev blinked once. "There's no powder snow around it. You tripped the snare yesterday and didn't reset it."

A slight twitch of her mouth — not a smile, but not disapproval either.

They walked on.

"Why haven't you asked who I am?" she said suddenly.

Dev didn't look at her.

"Because I already know."

Her eyes shifted. "Oh?"

"You were trained to disappear. You can lie without blinking. You didn't hesitate when you handed me a loaded gun. But your shoulder rises a little when you're bluffing, and you sleep with a knife in your boot holster."

He glanced at her, flat-eyed.

"You're not hiding who you are. You're daring me to figure it out."

Alex didn't respond immediately.

Then: "And who do you think I am?"

He stared forward.

"You're the person who didn't look away."

The snow had hardened overnight.

Enough to carry weight without sound if you moved just right. Enough to make mistakes fatal.

Dev was up before sunrise. No alarm. No instructions. Just a coiled instinct.

He didn't ask permission. He just walked the perimeter with two lengths of wire, a smooth rock, and a rusted spoon he'd sharpened over three nights while she thought he was asleep.

He found a narrow bend between two trees — one known path, one dead end.

He placed the snare low. Covered it with a dusting of snow. Attached the rock to a branch overhead, tied with perfect tension.

It wasn't designed to injure.

Just to catch. Just to signal.

He walked back to the cabin. Ate breakfast. Watched the clock.

At 11:04, she opened the door with a grunt.

At 11:07, the snare snapped shut with a crack and a curse.

He kept reading his manual on firearms. Didn't flinch.

She returned seven minutes later. Snow in her hair. Blood on her glove — not from injury, but from instinct. Her knife had sliced the wire clean before it coiled her leg.

She didn't speak.

But later that night, she dropped a small black pistol beside his plate.

Not the one from the field.

A different one. Lighter. Sleeker. Engraved initials filed off.

He didn't ask why.

After dinner, he took it apart. Cleaned every piece.

Put it back together.

Loaded it.

Set it on his nightstand.

Didn't thank her.

But left his room door cracked that night — just an inch.

The trap outside was gone.

But the wire?

She'd kept it.

Dinner was simple.

Boiled rice. Eggs. Water from a thermal jug. The kind of meal designed to keep someone alive, not full.

Dev ate quickly, then cleaned his weapons at the table. A small cloth. A disassembled pistol. His hands moved with surgical rhythm.

Alex sat across from him with a thick, creased file folder — old pages, field notes, some printed in code. She flipped through them slowly, pen in hand but never writing.

For a while, only the soft click of metal and the turning of paper filled the room.

Then Dev broke it.

"Why'd you pick me?"

She didn't look up.

"You didn't smile."

He waited, expecting more.

Nothing came.

He blinked once. "That's it?"

Alex closed the file. "You didn't perform. You didn't beg. You didn't pretend you weren't dangerous. That told me everything."

He held her gaze.

"You don't like kids?"

"I don't like being lied to by them."

Dev didn't nod. Didn't blink. Just went back to cleaning the trigger housing.

She stood. Gathered her papers. Moved toward her room.

At the doorway, she paused.

"You're not here to heal," she said, almost offhand. "I'm not here to fix you. We survive. That's all."

Then the door clicked shut.

Dev sat still for a long time.

Then, quietly, he reached into his jacket.

Pulled out the silver ring. Then the platinum one.

He looked at them in the dim light — one dull, scratched. The other clean, quiet.

He didn't put them on the desk.

He slipped both under his pillow.

And turned off the light.