Dust choked the air as four Polish GROM Jeeps barreled down the dirt road.
"PHOENIX 1, do you copy!" the team leader barked into dead comms. "Three clicks from target—where's our fucking overwatch?!"
Drey's fingers tightened on his rifle. No birds. No crickets. Just the wrong kind of quiet.
The lead Jeep slammed its brakes.
A broken-down truck blocked the road, its hood propped open, engine steaming. Looked like a breakdown—but no driver in sight.
Too late.
Black sedans rolled in behind, sealing the trap.
"INCOMING!"
Three RPGs streaked from the treeline.
BOOM.
— The RPGs hit. Fire swallowed the Jeep. As the world flipped, Viktor didn't see smoke
—he saw Captain Gorman's face the day he'd ignored his gut. The man had frowned at the intel. "This feels staged." But Viktor had shrugged. "Orders are orders."
—then blackness.
Consciousness returned in fragments.
Drey's ears rang, his body pinned under smoldering metal.
Rook, half-buried beside him, gurgling blood, shoved a pistol into Drey's hand.
Shadows moved—not rescue teams. Bratva cleaners, executing wounded GROM operators.
"Play dead," Rook whispered.
A boot crunched near Drey's head. A Russian voice chuckled: "No survivors. Especially not the sniper."
Gunfire. Silence.
Drey held his breath until the killers left. Two hours later, Polish commandos found them—the only heartbeats in a graveyard of their brothers.
WARSAW, 72 HOURS LATER
A sterile interrogation room. Drey's bandages reeked of antiseptic.
"You disobeyed orders," the general spat. "Got your team slaughtered."
Drey's laugh was broken glass. "Our comms were jammed. The RPGs were Russian. You know who bankrolled this."
The general slid a file across the table. Photos of Rook's apartment—raided, overturned.
"Sign this confession," the general said softly, "or the next raid hits your family."
Drey's pen scratched paper.
5 YEARS LATER – WIŚLICA BAR
Pod Zamkiem—a dim, wood-paneled bar in rural Poland, smelling of cheap beer and fried pork fat.
Drey slouches at the bar, vodka glass clutched like a lifeline.
Two girls—Kasia and Ania—eye him with wary curiosity.
KASIA smirking "You're not from here. Military?"
DREY grins, taps his empty sleeve—no unit patch
"Used to be. Now I'm just a… tourist." Leans in, whiskey-breath thick. "You girls like sightseeing?"
ANIA laughs, and nudges Kasia "Depends. You got a tank parked outside?"
DREY acts mock-offended "Tch. I'm more of a stealth operator. Winks. "Quiet. Precise."
Kasia snorts into her beer. Drey's smile doesn't reach his eyes.
KASIA rolled her eyes "So why Wiślica? Nothing here but cows and old churches."
DREY staring at his glass "Churches are good for confession. Cows don't ask questions."
An awkward pause ensued. Ania shifts in her seat.
ANIA chuckled nervously "Uh… you confess often?"
DREY got suddenly intense. "Only when I've killed someone."
The girls froze. Bar noise faded. Drey laughs—too loud, too sharp. "Kidding! Jesus. You should see your faces—"
Marek the Bouncer looms behind him. "Time to go, soldier."
DREY sighs, doesn't turn "Three options, Marek. One: You walk away. Two: I walk away. Three: You carry me out." Grins over shoulder. "Guess which one's fun?"
Marek grabs his shoulder. Drey's head snaps back—CRACK—forehead meets nose. Marek staggers. The bar erupts.
KASIA scrambled back "Psycho!"
Drey gets a few punches in before three men drag him out. He's laughing as they toss him into the mud.
DREY yelled after them "Tell Ania I meant the cow thing as a compliment!"
Silence. Rain. He fumbles for his flask—empty. The laughter dies. Somewhere, a church bell tolls.
A dingy motel outside Wiślica—rain slashes against the windows, neon sign flickering.
Drey sat in the dark, blood dripping into the sink from his face. Those punches had dented him good.
He pressed a vodka-soaked rag to the cut and muttered a curse—the sting barely registered.
"You Polish boys are always this slow?" Rook's voice crackled in his memory, tinny through old GROM squad comms.
FLASHBACK – 5 Years Earlier Slavco Dokmanovich's Arrest
"I'm telling you, brother," Rook laughed, adjusting his scope. "No wife, no kids—just Belgian chocolates and Hungarian girls who don't ask questions."
"And STDs that'll make you cry mid-piss," their medic, Kasia, shot back.
Drey's lips twitched. His crosshairs settled on a terrorist sprinting toward a black Lada—3,700 meters, wind speed hell, heartbeat steady. The terrorist ducked inside.
"Drey. We got a squirter. You got this?" their captain asked.
Bang.
The Lada's windshield exploded in pink mist.
"Jesus Christ," Rook whispered. "That's a fucking record."
PRESENT DAY
Drey cleaned his Glock with practiced precision, lost in thought. The TV played static—white noise to drown out the ghosts.
Then—a knock.
Too quiet. Too deliberate.
No one knew he was here; he'd booked the room that evening.
He aimed the pistol at the door, finger on the trigger. "Last chance to walk away."
The door creaked open. A shadow slumped against the frame—Rook, gaunt, drenched, clutching a bleeding thigh.
DREY lowering the gun, voice sounded like a rusted metal "Christ. You look like hell."
ROOK (grimacing, collapsing into a chair):
"Feels like it too. Took two bullets for the fucking honor of crawling back to you."
Drey tossed him a towel, then ripped open the medkit. It'd been almost four years since they last saw each other. No questions. No small talk. Just blood and brotherhood as Drey dug the bullet from Rook's leg with a whiskey-sterilized knife.
Rook spat out the truth between gritted teeth:
"Remember the op? The one that got us burned? Wasn't just bad intel. Our commanders sold us. Bratva paid them to make it look like our fuck-up."
Drey's hands still. The wound in his shoulder—from the RPG blast—ached like it was fresh.
"Names," Drey growled.
"I've got a burned USB drive. Bank transfers. Voice recordings. Even a fucking thank-you note from Lev himself. I have it in a locker in Warsaw, ." Rook's eyes flickered with excitement. "I also know a girl in Warsaw that can get us new papers too, so we can go dark and plan our next move. I'll meet her as soon as I can."
"Bullshit. Even in your pitiable state, you're hunting."
Rook grinned—that old, reckless smile from their GROM days.
"Just a little recon. Be back before you miss me."
Drey watched him limp toward his black Volvo rental parked outside the motel. "Biggest mistake" of Rook's life.
(BREAKING NEWS)
"...tragedy on the Poniatowski Bridge tonight. A car veered off the roadway, plunging 30 meters into the Vistula. Police suspect mechanical failure..."
Drey's beer bottle shattered in his fist.
The footage showed a black Volvo—Rook's rental—cartwheeling through the air.
No skid marks. No brake lights.
Drey's blood turned to ice.
Drey packed in 90 seconds flat. Guns. Cash.
Rook's blood-stained jacket he'd left behind.
Then he drove towards a back-alley in Łódź.
Drey kicked open the door to a grimy basement in Łódź, the kind of place where the air smelled of rust and regret.
A flickering bulb swung overhead, casting jagged shadows on stained concrete. The surgeon—Dr. Wójcik, a wiry man with trembling hands and a face like a scared rat—froze mid-stitch on some poor bastard's arm.
The patient bolted, clutching a dripping bandage, leaving Wójcik alone with the intruder.
Drey didn't waste time. He shoved his Glock against Wójcik's sweaty forehead, the barrel kissing skin.
"New face. New prints. No questions."
Wójcik's eyes darted to the gun, then to Drey's face—bruised, bloodied, and radiating cold menace. "Y-You won't recognize yourself," he stammered, voice cracking like thin ice.
Drey smirked, a predator's grin. "Good. I'm tired of this mug anyway. Too many people know it—and not the fun kind."
He leaned closer, whiskey-breath hot on Wójcik's cheek. "You're gonna carve me into someone else. And if I hear you squeak to the cops, the Bratva, or your fucking mother, I'll come back and turn your face into modern art. Picasso'd be jealous."
Wójcik swallowed hard, nodding like a bobblehead on a dashboard. "I-I don't talk. Never talk. Discretion's my… my thing."
"Discretion Is your lifeline," Drey corrected, pulling a wad of crumpled notes from his jacket—blood-flecked cash, Rook's last gift.
He slapped it onto the table, the bills fanning out like a dirty rainbow. "Five grand. Cash. You count it, you keep it, you forget me. Or—" he tapped the Glock on Wójcik's temple, playful but firm—"I leave you counting stars instead."
Wójcik's hands shook as he scooped up the money, his fingers brushing a drop of dried blood. "It's… it's enough. More than enough. Please, just—sit down. I'll get the tools."
Drey holstered the gun but kept it in reach, easing into a rickety chair that creaked under his weight. "Make it quick, Doc. I've got a date, and I'd hate to show up looking like yesterday's roadkill."
Wójcik fumbled with a syringe, spilling half the anesthesia on the floor in his panic. "You'll sleep through it. Wake up… new."
Drey grabbed the man's wrist, stopping him cold. "You don't get to play God while I'm dreaming of cows. No knockouts" he said with a note of finality, released him with a shove, then peeled off his shirt, revealing scars that told stories Wójcik didn't dare ask about.
The surgeon's breath hitched, but he nodded, grabbing a scalpel with a hand that wouldn't stop twitching.
Drey stared into a cracked mirror propped against the wall, his reflection a mess of rage and ruin. The blade hovered over his cheek.
"Last thing," Drey said, voice low, almost a growl. "Remember this: I found you once. Don't make me find you again. And next time, I won't pay in cash."
Wójcik's gulp echoed in the damp room. He started cutting, the surgeon's scalpel sliced into Viktor's cheekbone. Pain flared white-hot, but his mind dragged him back—to another wound, another betrayal.
Fifteen years old, kneeling on the linoleum of his family's apartment. His father, Lieutenant Arkady Petrov, sat slumped at the kitchen table, a service pistol limp in his hand. Blood streaked the wall behind him in a jagged arc. Too high for a self-inflicted shot. And the gun—left-handed grip, though Arkady shot right.
Young Drey reached for the note beside his father's hand. "Forgive me" in block letters. Wrong. His father wrote in cursive, looping and messy, like he was always in a hurry to finish paperwork.
The door creaked. Drey froze. A voice from the hallway—a Bratva lieutenant he'd seen at the precinct, laughing with his father's partner. "Make sure the kid doesn't see."
Drey's fingers brushed his father's shoulder—Still warm. "I am sorry, dad" he whispered, hot tears dropping from his eyes.
Then he vaulted out the fire escape—straight into the arms of the Polish Army recruiters.
"Hold still," Wójcik muttered, stitching flesh into a new face. Viktor clenched his jaw. A ghost for a ghost.