Agent 17 Red Rose Hot- · Extended

The safehouse smelled of stale coffee and ozone. Agent 17, known in seventeen classified files as “Red Rose,” pressed a fresh clip into her sidearm with a soft, decisive click. Her codename wasn’t poetic; it was a warning. A red rose meant beauty with thorns. The “HOT” appended to her file stood for High-Value Objective Termination.

Vasily spun around, his hand diving for a panic button. He never reached it.

He talked. They always did.

She slid the garrote between her teeth, drew a silenced pistol, and fired twice. Phut. Phut. The guards dropped in synchronized silence, one clutching a leaky e-cig, the other never knowing what hit him.

“You’re too late,” he gasped, tears mixing with sweat. “It’s already in a dead-drop. My contact picks it up in twenty minutes.” Agent 17 Red Rose HOT-

She smiled. It was a cold, beautiful thing. “Then you’d better give me the location, or I’ll make those twenty minutes feel like a lifetime.”

Amateurs , she thought.

“The algorithm,” she whispered. “Where?”