The midnight air over Brooklyn tasted like salt and old grease, a stark contrast to the sterile, expensive air of the Thompson Manor. I perched on the edge of a rusted water tower overlooking my old community college. Below me, the campus was a collection of shadowed brick buildings, looking like ancient tombs under the flickering orange glow of streetlights.
"Position check," I whispered into the comms.
"I'm at the perimeter," Ethan's voice crackled in my ear. He sounded tense. "Vance is definitely ahead of schedule. My sources at the 13th say she left her apartment twenty minutes ago. She's not waiting for morning, Oliver. She knows we're coming."
"Let her come," I muttered, pulling the carbon-fiber mask over my face. "William, you in?"
"System access confirmed," William replied from the safety of the manor's basement. "I've looped the security cameras in the administrative wing. You have a seven-minute window before the guard on the night shift does his rounds. The physical ledger you're looking for is in the 'Storage C-4' basement. It's a fireproof vault."
"Copy that."
I dropped from the water tower, my black cloak billowing behind me like a shadow. I hit the pavement with a silent roll and moved toward the side entrance of the Records Building. This was the place where Andrew Parker had tried to build a normal life. I remembered walking through these doors with a backpack, my head down, trying to ignore the ache in my ribs from a fight the night before. I had been a ghost even then—a student with no past, trying to secure a future that didn't belong to me.
I forced the memories down. Emotion was a luxury I couldn't afford tonight.
I reached the vent of the basement level and used a laser cutter to slice through the grating. I slipped inside, landing in a narrow hallway lined with dusty filing cabinets. The air here was thick with the smell of damp paper and ozone.
"I'm in the hallway," I reported.
"Three minutes to the guard's rotation," William warned. "Third door on your left. Code is 4492."
I reached the heavy steel door of C-4. I punched in the code, and the lock hissed open. Inside, it was a graveyard of information. Thousands of folders, organized by year, containing the lives of people who had long since moved on.
I moved to the 'P' section. My heart hammered against my ribs. There it was. A thick, leather-bound ledger labeled Registration: 2018-2020.
I pulled it out and flipped through the pages. My breath hitched as I found it.
Student Name: Parker, Andrew.
Major: Physical Education / Sports Science.
There was my signature. Bold, jagged, and unmistakably mine. Next to it was the emergency contact I had listed—a fake name and a burner phone number that had long since been deactivated.
"I have the ledger," I said.
"Get out of there, Oliver! Now!" Ethan's voice was urgent. "A black sedan just pulled into the faculty lot. It's Vance. She's alone, but she's armed."
"I need to burn the backup files in the registrar's office," I insisted, grabbing the ledger. "If I leave the paper copies, she'll find the admission essay. It has my fingerprints on it."
"You don't have time!" William shouted.
I ignored him. I bolted out of the vault and sprinted up the service stairs toward the main office. I could hear the heavy thud of the front doors opening downstairs. Vance was inside.
I reached the registrar's office and kicked the door open. I didn't have time to be subtle. I grabbed the 'Parker' file from the cabinet and threw it onto the desk. I pulled out a small incendiary device—a magnesium flare William had designed for 'instant disposal.'
"Vance is on the stairs, Andrew! Get out!" Ethan's voice was almost a scream.
I ignored him for three more seconds. I clicked the flare and dropped it onto the pile of papers. White-hot flames erupted instantly, eating through the files, the ledger, and the desk. The smoke was thick and acrid.
I turned to the window, but the door behind me burst open.
"Freeze! NYPD!"
I stopped, my hand on the window frame. I didn't turn around. I knew that voice. It was cold, sharp, and filled with a hunter's triumph.
"I knew it," Vance said, her footsteps echoing in the smoke-filled room. "I knew you couldn't resist. You're not just a vigilante; you're a man trying to erase himself."
I slowly turned my head, the mask hiding my expression. Vance was standing ten feet away, her service weapon leveled at my chest. Her eyes were red from the smoke, but her aim was steady.
"You're burning your own life, Hotdog. Or should I call you Andrew?" she asked, a smirk playing on her lips. "I saw the signature. I saw the medical records. You're a match."
"You have nothing, Detective," I said, my voice modulated and deep through the mask. "Everything you think you know is currently turning into ash."
"I have you," she countered. "Drop the mask. Now. Or I'll fire."
"Oliver, I'm at the back door! I'm coming in!" Ethan's voice rang in my ear.
"No, Ethan! Stay back!" I whispered, too low for Vance to hear. If Ethan showed up now, his cover was blown forever.
I looked at the fire behind me. It was spreading to the curtains. The alarm began to blare—a high-pitched, deafening shriek that filled the small office.
"This building is old, Detective," I said, stepping toward the window. "In five minutes, this entire wing will be gone. Is your promotion worth your life?"
"I'm not leaving without your face," Vance said, her finger tightening on the trigger.
I didn't give her the chance. I threw a flashbang at her feet.
BANG.
The room exploded in white light. Vance cried out, shielding her eyes. In that split second, I dived through the glass window.
The cold night air hit me as I fell two stories, landing on the roof of a parked van. The glass shattered under me, but I didn't stop. I rolled off and sprinted toward the perimeter fence.
"I'm out! Ethan, move!"
I saw the black motorcycle roar to life at the end of the alley. Ethan skidded to a stop, and I jumped onto the back. We tore out of the campus just as the first fire engines began to wail in the distance.
An hour later, we were at a safe house in Queens—a small, dingy garage that smelled of gasoline. I pulled off the mask and collapsed against a workbench. My lungs burned from the smoke, and my hands were covered in soot.
Ethan stood by the door, his helmet still in his hand. He looked at me with a mixture of fury and relief.
"That was too close, Oliver. Way too close."
"It's done," I said, coughing. "The ledger, the files, the admission records. They're gone. Andrew Parker is officially a ghost."
"Vance saw you," Ethan reminded me. "She saw your height, your build. She's going to be even more convinced now."
"Let her be convinced," I said, looking at the flickering fluorescent light above us. "She has no physical proof. No handwriting, no fingerprints, no photos. She's a detective with a theory and no evidence."
"She's also going to be looking for a man with smoke inhalation and fresh glass cuts," Ethan said, pointing to my bleeding arm.
My phone buzzed. It was a message from William.
"Vance is back at the precinct. She's furious, but she's not filing a report on the fire yet. She knows she looks like a failure. But Andrew... she just made a phone call."
"To who?" I asked out loud.
"To the hospital. She's asking for Emily. She wants to know if Emily was 'on call' tonight."
I stood up, the exhaustion vanishing. My protectiveness roared back to life. "She's going back to Emily. She thinks she can break her."
"Oliver, wait," Ethan said, grabbing my shoulder. "You can't go to the manor like this. You smell like fire and you're bleeding. If you show up now, you're handing her the win."
"Then you go," I said, grabbing Ethan's jacket. "Go to the manor. Be there when she arrives. Tell her I'm... I'm at a late-night board meeting. Give her an alibi."
Ethan looked at me for a long moment. "And what about the kiss, Oliver? What about the way she looked at you at the gala? I can give you an alibi for the police, but I can't give you one for her heart."
"Just keep her safe, Ethan," I whispered. "That's all that matters."
I watched him ride away into the night. I was alone in the dark, a man with two names and no identity, watching the smoke of my past rise over the skyline of New York.
Andrew Parker was dead. But as I looked at my reflection in a dirty mirror, I realized that Oliver Thompson was starting to feel like a ghost, too.