He enters the diner, eyes already locked on the counter. “Sergeant Vespera,” he says. The color drains from the Delta operators’ faces. Lisa lifts her sleeve. The raven catches the light. The General’s gaze hardens… then softens. Without a word, he reaches for his own cuff and rolls it back—

…Without a word, he reaches for his own cuff and rolls it back—

His forearm reveals the exact same ink.

The raven. The lightning bolt. The words in Gothic script: Mors in tenebris.

Death in the dark.

A murmur rolls through the diner, like a gust of wind before a storm. The two Delta operators stiffen. One of them gulps audibly. The other stares at the floor, the false bravado leaking out of him like air from a tire.

The General stands tall, his presence stretching across the narrow space like a shadow. He’s older now — silver around the temples, heavier in the chest — but his voice slices through the tension like a honed blade.

“Release her,” he says, voice low.

The smirking operator does. Slowly. Too slowly.

Lisa steps back, her eyes locked on the General’s. Not in fear. In recognition.

“It’s been a long time, sir,” she says quietly.

The General nods, face unreadable. “Too long. I’d heard rumors. Ghost stories. A waitress at a roadside diner who moves like a phantom. Some said you were dead.”

“I was,” Lisa replies.

The words hang in the air, and no one in the diner dares to speak.

The General gestures toward a booth in the back, away from the counter, away from the crowd. “Walk with me.”

Lisa unties her apron, folds it in half, and sets it on the counter. The waitress blinks, mouth open, but says nothing.

They walk past the stunned lunch crowd. Past the operators who now sit frozen in place. Lisa glides like mist. The General follows, not a step behind.

They slide into the booth.

“Talk,” he says.

Lisa looks out the window. The Chevrolets idle, quiet but ready. Her eyes drift back to the table.

“I left after Caracas,” she says. “You know that. I burned everything. Changed everything.”

“Except the ink.”

“I needed to remember who I was. Even if no one else could.”

The General nods. “And now?”

“Now I serve coffee to truckers and soldiers who don’t know what they’re looking at.”

He doesn’t smile, but his eyes narrow like he almost could. “One of my sources said you stopped that robbery in Nashville. Off duty. No weapon. Five armed men.”

Lisa shrugs. “They were sloppy.”

“And the three contractors who disappeared outside Bowling Green? The ones who used to run dark ops in Syria?”

Lisa’s voice drops. “They shouldn’t have followed me home.”

The General exhales, slow. Controlled.

“Lisa, we need you. Langley flagged a leak. High-level. Someone’s selling coordinates. Flight paths. Convoy routes. We’ve lost two birds in the last month. The signature looks familiar.”

Lisa stiffens. “How familiar?”

“Blackbird familiar.”

Her face turns to stone. “No one from Blackbird survived but us.”

“That’s what we thought.”

Silence.

Then Lisa leans forward, her voice tight. “If they’re back—”

“They’re not just back. They’re hunting us.”

The word us lands like a shot.

Lisa closes her eyes. Memories crash through her — desert winds, blood-soaked gravel, the smell of burning fuel, the sound of her team’s last breath through the comms.

She opens them again. Cold. Focused.

“What’s the play?” she asks.

The General slides a thin folder across the table. “We hit an outpost tonight. Quiet. Clean. We need eyes, hands, instincts that don’t show up on heatmaps or drone scans.”

Lisa flips open the folder. Inside: a grainy satellite photo, a list of aliases, and a name that hits her like a gut punch.

“Dante Strickland.”

Her voice cracks around it.

The General nods. “Your old second.”

“He died in Morocco.”

“No body. Just ashes and wreckage. And now he’s moving pieces behind the curtain.”

Lisa’s fingers tighten around the paper.

She remembers the way Dante used to smile before a kill. The way he always walked half a step behind her. The way he whispered, “We don’t serve nations. We serve shadows.”

If he’s alive — and selling Blackbird secrets — he’s not just a threat.

He’s a ghost dragging the past back with him.

Lisa closes the folder. “I’ll need a weapon. And an exit plan.”

“You’ll have both.”

The General starts to slide from the booth, but she stops him with a question that cuts through both of them.

“What about the kid?”

He freezes.

Lisa’s eyes are sharp. “You said everyone died. But if Dante’s alive… what about the child?”

The General hesitates.

Then: “There’s chatter. A girl. Twelve. Moves like water. Vanished from a safehouse in Berlin last month.”

Lisa breathes in. Deep. Controlled.

“I’ll find her.”

The General nods once. “Then we’re back in.”

By the time they stand, the diner is emptying. The Delta operators are gone. Vanished. Only the waitress lingers, wide-eyed, watching Lisa like she’s seeing her for the first time.

Lisa reaches behind the counter, pulls a black duffel from beneath the prep shelf. It’s already packed.

The General raises an eyebrow.

She smirks. “You don’t serve in the dark and not expect to be hunted.”

They step outside. The sky shifts — clouds rolling in like old sins returning.

Lisa climbs into the passenger seat of the middle Chevy.

The General joins her.

As they pull out, she watches the diner fade in the side mirror, like a dream she’s waking from. The streets ahead blur into fields, then forests, then the edges of an operation no one talks about — a forgotten facility carved into a Kentucky hillside.

By nightfall, she’s in black fatigues again.

The ink on her arm hidden once more.

They approach the compound just after 0200.

No lights. No heat signatures.

Exactly what Lisa expects.

Inside, it’s colder than it should be. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that wraps around you like a noose.

She moves first. Silent. Deadly.

Two guards. One sleeping. One careless.

She leaves them both breathing — barely.

Down the hall, a door hums with residual power.

She runs her hand along the keypad. Pauses. “Dante always did like puzzles.”

Then she rips the panel open and hotwires it in twenty seconds.

The door opens.

Inside — chaos.

Screens. Maps. A terminal blinking with live feeds. And in the center of it all: Dante.

Older. Scarred. But those eyes — same obsidian rage behind calm calculation.

He turns slowly, as if he’s known she’d come.

“Vespera,” he says.

Lisa doesn’t blink. “You’re dead.”

He smiles. “So are you.”

They circle each other, years collapsing between steps. No one else in the room breathes. Even the screens seem to pause.

“You built this?” she asks.

“No,” he replies. “We did. You just walked away.”

“You burned the mission. Betrayed the oath.”

“I freed us.”

Lisa’s hand twitches toward her belt.

“I could end this now,” she warns.

He steps closer. “But you won’t. Not until I tell you what they did to her.”

Her blood chills. “Who?”

“Your daughter.”

The world stops moving.

“I saw her die,” she whispers.

“You saw what they wanted you to see.”

He tosses a flash drive across the floor. It skitters to her feet.

Lisa picks it up. The screen behind Dante flickers to life.

Video.

A girl. Dark hair. Agile frame. Twelve. Spinning a disarmed rifle like a baton, then vanishing behind a smoke screen.

The timestamp: six days ago.

Berlin.

Lisa can’t breathe.

“You lied to me,” she says.

“They lied to both of us,” Dante replies.

Then he presses a button.

The room erupts — smoke, alarms, power cut.

Lisa rolls, weapon up, but Dante is already gone.

The General’s voice crackles in her earpiece. “Extraction now. Move.”

She bolts through the corridor, heart pounding not from fear — but from something far more dangerous.

Hope.

Back in the Chevys, as dawn slices the sky in pale orange slivers, Lisa stares at the flash drive in her hand.

A single word on the label:

“RAVEN.”

And below it:

“She lives.”

Lisa doesn’t look back again.

She’s done hiding.

There’s a war coming, and this time—it’s personal.