2001. Location: Classified
They said I was dead that day.
I heard it on the radio first. Static, then a voice I didn’t recognize.
“Target eliminated. Repeat, target eliminated.”
There was relief in that voice. Finality.
As if the words alone could bury me.
The explosion was supposed to erase me.
My name. My records. My family photos in my locker.
Everything that proved I had once been a person.
I remember the heat. I remember the sound like the world tearing in half.
I remember falling, and thinking, *This is it. This is how it ends.*
It didn’t.
Hands pulled me from the rubble. Strong hands. Gloved.
A face I’d never seen before, half-covered by a mask and dust.
His eyes were the only thing I could see. Cold. Assessing.
Not kind. Not cruel. Just... professional.
"Can you walk?" he asked.
I tried to answer. My throat was full of smoke and blood.
I nodded instead.
"Good," he said. "Because from now on, you don't exist."
That was the first sentence of my new life.
"Welcome to the Underground."
They don’t tell you about the silence.
That’s the first thing that hits you when you go underground.
Not the dark. You get used to the dark.
Not the cold. You get used to the cold.
It’s the silence.
No birds. No wind. No traffic.
No normal people living normal lives above you.
Just the hum of generators, the drip of water, and your own breathing.
For 25 years, that was my world.
My name wasn’t my name anymore.
I was "Asset 7". Then just "7".
Then eventually, I stopped answering to anything at all.
Names are liabilities. Names get people killed.
The base was buried 300 feet below a desert that didn’t officially exist.
Concrete corridors that stretched for miles.
Rooms with no windows. Doors that required three levels of clearance.
And people. Dozens of us. Ghosts.
We trained, we waited, and when the call came, we disappeared.
We were the people sent to do the things that couldn’t make the news.
The problems that couldn’t be solved with diplomacy or a press conference.
If a government fell and no one reported it, we were probably there.
If a weapon vanished and no one asked questions, we made it vanish.
I told myself it was for the greater good.
That’s what they tell you on day one.
"You're protecting people who will never know your name."
"You're keeping the world safe from things it isn't ready to see."
For a while, I believed it.
My first mission came 6 months after "I died."
I was 22. Young. Stupid. Eager to prove I deserved to be alive.
The briefing was 3 minutes long. No PowerPoint. No maps on a wall.
Just a manila folder and a handler who never gave me his real name.
"There's a facility," he said. "Off the grid. They’re moving something.
Something that shouldn’t be moved.
Your job is to make sure it doesn’t get to its destination."
"Who’s 'they'?" I asked.
He looked at me like I’d asked the dumbest question in the world.
"Does it matter?"
It did. But I didn’t ask again.
We went in at 0300. Four of us.
No flags. No patches. No dog tags.
If we were caught, our country would deny us.
If we died, we’d be listed as missing, presumed dead.
Again.
The facility was underground too. Of course it was.
Everyone important lives underground now.
It’s safer that way. Harder to bomb. Harder to find.
The plan was simple. In, secure the package, out.
15 minutes.
It took 4.
The package wasn’t a weapon.
It was a person.
A girl. Maybe 16. Eyes wide with terror, wrists bound, mouth taped.
She looked at me and I saw myself 6 months earlier.
Scared. Confused. Wondering what she did to deserve this.
"Move," my team leader hissed.
We moved.
We got her out. We got clear.
By sunrise we were back in the desert, and the facility was burning behind us.
The news never reported the fire.
The girl never existed.
And I... I got a commendation that no one would ever see.
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
I kept seeing her face.
I kept wondering what "something that shouldn’t be moved" meant.
Was she a weapon? A witness? A mistake?
I asked my handler the next morning.
He stared at me for a long time. Then he said,
"7. The day you start asking questions is the day you become a problem.
Don’t become a problem."
I nodded. I filed the report.
I went back to training.
That was mission one.
There were 200 more after it.
You learn things in 25 years.
You learn how to kill a man 12 different ways and make it look like an accident.
You learn how to disappear for months and reappear with no one noticing.
You learn which lies to tell yourself so you can sleep at night.
You also learn who to trust.
And more importantly, who not to.
The Underground has rules.
Rule 1: No names.
Rule 2: No questions.
Rule 3: The mission comes first. Always.
Break a rule, and you disappear.
For real this time.
I watched it happen. Twice.
Good soldiers. Better than me.
One asked too many questions.
The other hesitated on a mission.
One day they were there. The next, their bunk was empty.
No one talked about it.
That was Rule 4.
So I kept my head down. I followed orders.
I became good at my job. Too good.
They started giving me the missions no one else wanted.
The black sites. The extractions. The clean-ups.
I told myself I was making a difference.
That somewhere, someone was safer because of what I did in the dark.
But the silence started to get to me.
And the questions I wasn’t supposed to ask started piling up.
Who were we really working for?
Why did some missions feel wrong?
Why did the targets keep changing?
Why did the people we "saved" never get to go home?
I pushed it down. For 25 years, I pushed it down.
Until the last mission.
It was supposed to be routine.
Another extraction. Another ghost to pull out of a bad situation.
The location was in Southeast Asia. A city that wasn’t on any map I was allowed to see.
The target was a man. Former asset.
He knew too much.
My orders were clear: Extract him. Debrief him.
And if extraction wasn’t possible...
Well. You know.
I found him in a basement, bleeding out from a gut shot.
He looked at me and he smiled. Like he’d been waiting for me.
"7," he whispered. My number. Not my name.
"You shouldn’t have come."
"Come with me," I said. "We can get you out."
He laughed. It turned into a cough. Blood on his lips.
"There is no 'out'," he said. "Not for us. Not anymore."
He grabbed my wrist. His grip was surprisingly strong.
"They’re lying to you. They’ve always been lying.
The Underground... it’s not to protect the world.
It’s to control it."
I pulled away. "You’re delirious. You’re losing blood."
"Check the files," he said. "File Omega. It’s all there.
The real reason we exist. The real reason for the 25 years."
Then he died.
I sat there for a full minute.
The mission was compromised.
My orders were to leave the body and exfil.
I didn’t.
I took his dog tags.
Blank. Of course they were blank.
But inside the tag, folded into a tiny square, was a piece of paper.
Coordinates. And two words: *File Omega.*
That was 3 weeks ago.
I haven’t reported it.
I haven’t gone back to base.
For the first time in 25 years, I’m off the grid.
And they know it.
I can feel them looking for me.
Drones in the sky. Eyes in the city.
The same people I used to work for are now hunting me.
Because I asked a question.
Because I became a problem.
So this is my confession.
This is why I’m breaking 25 years of silence.
If you’re reading this, it means I didn’t make it.
Or it means I’m close to the truth.
File Omega is real.
And what’s in it will change everything you think you know about the last 25 years of war.
The people I trusted...
The people who told me I was protecting the world...
They’re the ones I should fear most.
And I’m going to prove it.
This is Chapter 1.
Chapter 2 starts with me finding out what File Omega is.
If I live long enough to write it.
END OF CHAPTER 1
