The silence was worse than the screams.
Damien Voss lay in the center of death, surrounded by the still-warm remains of his family. The house, once a palace of laughter and candlelight, now breathed with the scent of blood and smoke. Everything felt muted, distant—like he was trapped underwater in his own body.
He crawled through the ruins, dragging one bloodied leg behind him.
The warmth dripping down his neck had turned sticky and cold. His vision swam, his head throbbed, and still, he moved.
Because Astoria was gone.
And he was alive.
The grand chandelier in the main hall had shattered, glass crystals embedded in corpses below it. The marble floor was a smear of crimson. The front doors hung open, as if the devil himself had walked through and never cared to close them behind him.
Outside, the winter air hit Damien like knives.
He stumbled into the snow barefoot, shirt torn, dragging the pistol he'd clutched like a tether to sanity.
No one stopped him.
No one came.
He wandered through the woods, pale trees casting long shadows under a blood-colored moon.
He didn't know where he was going.
Didn't care.
Every breath felt borrowed.
Every heartbeat a mistake.
He collapsed hours later in the dirt behind a farmhouse—half-frozen, blood-soaked, nearly dead.
That was where the general found him.
Days later, when Damien opened his eyes again, he was no longer Damien.
He was pain. He was survival.
He was hollow.
The room was dark and sterile. A cot beneath his back. Clean sheets. A pulse monitor beeping like a metronome marking the seconds since his world ended.
He didn't cry.
He didn't speak.
The man beside him didn't ask him to.
The general was tall, older, iron-gray hair swept back like silver ash. His uniform had no insignia, just black-on-black—like a shadow that had put on flesh.
"You were supposed to die," the man said calmly, tapping ashes from his cigarette into a tray. "They always kill everyone. It's cleaner that way."
Damien stared, lips cracked and dry.
"I... didn't," he whispered.
"No," the general said. "You didn't. And now they've made a mistake."
The days that followed were a blur of fever and fury.
Damien healed slowly, quietly. His wounds stitched, bones set, fevers broken.
But nothing could mend what had been torn from him.
He woke in the night screaming her name. Astoria. His baby sister. Her voice still echoed in his head—the way she'd screamed when they dragged her away.
He would see her blue eyes when he blinked. Hear her laugh in moments of silence.
Then remember her being pulled into the dark.
The general watched him.
Fed him. Clothed him. Trained him.
But never treated him like a child.
"You want justice?" he asked one day.
Damien looked up. "No."
The general raised a brow. "No?"
"I want vengeance," Damien whispered.
So the general gave it to him.
Pain became routine.
The sting of cold water at dawn. The grind of bone against dirt. The taste of iron on his tongue. Every part of Damien's body was broken down and rebuilt under the general's watchful eye—stripped of softness, innocence, and grief.
He woke before the sun.
Ran until his lungs burned.
Sparred until his knuckles split.
And he never—not once—cried.
Not when his ribs cracked under a training baton.
Not when the general ordered him to kneel in freezing rain for six hours as punishment for hesitation.
Not when his knees bled from crawling across gravel to retrieve a dropped weapon.
"You are not a boy anymore," the general said. "You are a project. A consequence."
And Damien embraced it.
He wanted to become something else. Something more.
Not human. Not kind.
Just dangerous.
At age 14, he could already outshoot men twice his age.
The general took him to black sites, off-the-record camps where men were forged like blades.
"You see that?" the general said once, pointing to a man crying during waterboarding drills. "That's what weakness looks like."
Damien watched.
Nodded.
He wouldn't cry.
He wouldn't drown.
His body became a canvas of bruises, hardened muscle, and scar tissue. His eyes dulled to steel. His voice lowered, clipped and controlled.
His childhood died quietly, buried beneath every push-up, every bruised knuckle, every night he whispered his sister's name into a pillow that smelled of sweat and gun oil.
Astoria.
He imagined her in every blow he landed. In every pain he endured.
Every wound was a vow.
At age 15, he was faster. Meaner.
A blade in human skin.
The general taught him how to kill with silence. How to dislocate a man's spine with his bare hands. How to listen for a heartbeat in the dark and how to end it before it echoed.
He didn't flinch at blood anymore.
Not even his own.
They began psychological ops training early. Deprivation drills. Hallucination exposure. Damien spent three days in a soundproof box with no food, only flickering lights and recordings of screaming women.
He didn't speak for a week after.
But when he did, his voice was calm.
The general smiled. "Good. Pain isn't the enemy. Emotion is."
At age 16, Damien could break a grown man's nose in under three seconds.
He could hold his breath for two minutes underwater while strangling someone.
He could take a blade to the thigh and keep moving.
But what made him lethal wasn't his body.
It was his mind.
Cold. Focused. Sharp.
He read maps like language. Broke codes like puzzles. Learned four more languages. Memorized kill zones, pressure points, and the anatomy of the human body.
"You're not a soldier," the general said. "You're a weapon."
Damien didn't respond.
He didn't need to.
It was snowing again. He is now 18.
Exactly nine years since the massacre.
He stood shirtless in the yard, steam curling off his bare skin as snowflakes melted on contact. His chest rose steady, not from exhaustion—but from readiness.
The general approached, holding a black envelope.
"You're ready."
Damien didn't blink.
"Where?"
"Special Operations. Unlisted. One-year trial in covert ops. You'll live in shadows. Breathe lies. Become invisible."
Damien took the envelope.
The first words he'd spoken in days:
"When do I leave?"
That night, he sat in his room, legs folded, envelope resting in his lap like a relic.
He didn't sleep.
He just stared out the window at the snow-covered ground—where his mother had once kissed him goodbye.
Where Astoria had last screamed his name.
He whispered into the dark.
"I'm coming for you."
Damien Voss arrived at Facility 29 with nothing but a name that wasn't his and a face that meant nothing.
The compound was buried beneath layers of classified clearance and concrete—no windows, no sunlight, no comfort. A place carved out of the earth like a bunker for monsters.
They called it a training ground.
But Damien knew better.
It was a factory.
A place where ghosts were manufactured.
They stripped him at intake. Searched every scar.
Took blood. Teeth samples. Retinal scans.
Burned his fingerprints.
Gave him a new name: Echo-7.
That was all he was allowed to be.
No past. No family. No grief.
"You will learn to kill your conscience," said the Director, a gaunt man with eyes like frostbite. "You will become the thing they send when all else fails."
The walls of the facility weren't made of concrete.
They were built from secrecy.
Week 2
They tested how long he could go without sleep.
Damien lasted six days.
On the fifth night, he hallucinated Astoria sitting at the end of his cot, singing off-key with blood down her chin.
He didn't flinch.
Didn't speak.
On the sixth morning, he collapsed during hand-to-hand drills, body convulsing, eyes bloodshot.
They woke him with a cattle prod.
He got back up.
Week 9
Psychological trials.
They placed him in a simulation room where the floor was painted to look like fire. The walls bled. Screams of children piped in from hidden speakers. He walked through it in silence.
One girl broke after twelve minutes.
Damien stayed thirty-seven.
Month 4
Advanced infiltration. Seduction tactics. Target manipulation.
He learned to make people fall in love with him—and then betray them with a whisper.
He trained with former assassins, interrogators, and deep cover agents who had lived so many lives they forgot their own.
Damien memorized the art of false identity.
How to wear a face like a mask.
How to become the weapon, not just wield one.
But what they couldn't teach—what no simulation could mimic—was the moment you took a life.
That lesson came soon.
He first time killed for real while it was supposed to be a mock mission.
Simple extraction training in a slum-district outside Warsaw.
In and out. No engagement.
That was the plan.
Until the target recognized Damien's handler.
Gun drawn.
Threat barking from his mouth.
A little girl cowered behind him—no more than six—clutching his pant leg.
The handler screamed at Damien to run.
But Damien didn't run.
He moved.
Calm.
Precise.
Pulled the sidearm from his jacket. Stepped forward.
And fired.
The bullet hit the man between the eyes.
He dropped instantly, skull bursting like a fruit under pressure.
Blood sprayed across the floor—and onto the little girl's dress.
She screamed, a sound that echoed across concrete and time, and Damien froze.
Not because of the kill.
But because she had Astoria's eyes.
Back at the facility, no one comforted him.
They just filed the report.
Mission: "Successful."
But that night, he didn't sleep.
He sat in the dark, hands resting on his knees, watching the wall.
His heart wasn't racing.
His hands weren't shaking.
There was just… nothing.
No guilt.
No grief.
Only the image of a small girl standing in blood, staring at him like he was the monster.