"Scar?! Scar!? SCARLET!"

A voice echoed in the background, desperate, raw, and in panic. But it was distant, muffled, like Scarlet was caught in the limbo between dream and reality, the voice sounding both distant and painfully close.

'Where the hell was I?'

"Wake up!" the voice yelled again, thick with desperation.

"I SAID WAKE THE FUCK UP!"

Startled, Scarlet jerked awake, her body jolting upright. Her vision swam through a haze of gray and orange, struggling to focus until finally settling on a pair of green eyes boring into her. The rest of the face was hidden behind what looked like a blood-stained strip of t-shirt.

Scarlet's eyes met with green ones, looking at her worriedly. The lower half of her face was covered with a cloth that seemed to be ripped from a shirt. 

"Oh thank the hell, thought you'd gone and died on me, you stupid bitch," Khilani's voice cracked, relief warring with exhaustion, her hands trembled as they gripped Scarlet's shoulders.

A groan ripped from Scarlet's throat as pain exploded behind her eyes, her brain feeling like it was being shredded by rusty nails. The thick smoke burned her lungs with each breath, making her retch and her silver eyes stream. The acrid taste of burning plastic coated her tongue.

"What..." she tried to speak, but ended up coughing up black phlegm instead. 

Through the tears and smoke, reality slowly came into focus. Orange flames devoured everything they touched, crawling up walls and across furniture. The heat pressed against her skin. 

Her home was on fire.

"We're under attack!" Khilani shoved a gun into Scarlet's hand. In the distance, gunfire and explosions could be heard. 

Attack...her home was under attack!

Scarlet scanned the surroundings which was supposed to be the living room, taking in the sight of blood-splattered walls and bodies scattered around them. Some still twitched. Most didn't. Flames licked at their clothes, the smell of burning flesh mixing with gunpowder and smoke.

Memories of what had happened appeared in her mind. She had just come back after four months on a mission. Entering through the foyer, she was greeted by the housemaid. It was a face she was used to seeing for decades yet the moment she saw her today, Scarlet knew something was terribly wrong. She could feel the fear reak off the maid, raw unfiltered fear. But she had no time to react as the explosion happened right before her eyes, throwing her body far off and she lost consciousness. 

Suddenly, the glass exploded inward as the window beside them shattered, razor-sharp shards slicing through the air. Scarlet's arm came up on instinct. A piece of glass buried itself deep in her flesh, blood running down her skin.

"Where are the others?" Scarlet asked as she yanked the out without flinching. Her silver eyes had gone cold, darker than storm clouds and twice as dangerous.

"Don't know. I was in the lab when it all went to hell," Khilani helped her up, "Can you walk?" She eyed the blood coating Scarlet's clothes. It was impossible to tell whose blood it was. 

"Been through worse." The words had barely left her mouth when a grenade rolled toward their feet. Without wasting a second, Khilani's boot connected with it, sending it spinning back the way it came. They dove behind a pillar as the explosion ripped through the air, followed by screams that were cut off too quickly. Debris flew around and wet chunks of what used to be people spattered against the wall.

"We need to move. Others will be heading out if they're still breathing." Scarlet told her. 

A figure in black tactical gear and a mask appeared in the doorway. Scarlet's gun barked once. The figure dropped, adding another corpse to the collection.

The main entrance was a death trap now, buried under smoking rubble from the last explosion. Scarlet's eyes darted to the shattered window, their only way out. She jerked her head toward it and Khilani nodded, understanding without words.

They moved like shadows, staying low. While Khilani kept her weapon trained on the doorways on either side, Scarlet crawled to the window, glass crunching under her elbows but she felt nothing. Two more bodies hit the floor before they reached the window.

Scarlet pressed against the wall, scanning the grounds below. The night was alive with muzzle flashes and screams, gunfire echoing across the compound.

"Fucking hell," Scarlet muttered, counting at least three separate firefights happening on the lawn alone. "They sent a goddamn army."

"The fuck?" Khilani's shot took another attacker in the throat, painting the burning doorframe with arterial spray. Her eyes landed on the tattoo on his neck. "The Phantom!"

""What?" Scarlet looked over her shoulder and also saw the tattoo. "How'd they even find us?"

The Yin Palace was the fortress where the deadliest members of 'the house of death' lived, hidden away on an island that officially didn't exist, protected by security systems that cost more than small countries. For someone to launch an open assault on the House of Death's stronghold meant someone had talked. 

The two slipped through the window, using shadows to hide themselves. The compound had become a war zone, air thick with gunpowder and screams. Burning debris rained down around them.

"The swimming pool," Scarlet whispered, recognizing the pattern of shots from their people. She could recognize the sound of their team's weapons anywhere. She had trained with them, killed with them, and survived because of them.

Khilani nodded, and they began their deadly dance through the grounds, using burning vehicles and bodies for cover. Rounding the corner of what used to be the garage, they caught their first glimpse of the Olympic-sized pool. The water reflected the inferno around them, dancing flames making it look like lava. A body floated face-down in the center, dark blood spreading out from it like ink. 

"Scarlet! Khilani! Thank the fuck you two are here!" Marvos's voice carried from behind a low wall, his face streaked with soot and blood. His favorite Armani jacket was shredded, and his left arm hung at an awkward angle. But his eyes were alert and deadly, scanning constantly for threats.

At a distance stood Hector and Marcella, each holding a gun of their own. 

Scarlet's feet stumbled, her world tilting sideways as her eyes met Hector's. Something inside her chest cracked, a feeling worse than anything she had ever felt. 

In that moment, an explosion rocked the east wing of the compound. The blast was close enough to feel the pressure wave, to see the debris arcing through the night sky. But Scarlet barely registered it. 

Everything else blurred away as she sprinted forward, her silver hair streaming behind. Her focus locked on Hector, the man who had given her everything. Who had walked into that orphanage twenty years ago and brought her into their dark world, – of family forged in violence, of love expressed through lessons in killing, of belonging found among the deadliest people on earth.

She grabbed his arm, pulling him behind her. When she turned back, the gunshot cracked across the courtyard. Pain exploded through her chest, hot and sharp and somehow still less painful than the betrayal that had caused it. Behind her, voices shouted her name, but they seemed to come from miles away. Scarlet's gaze was fixed on Marcella holding the smoking gun with shaking hands.

"Why?" The word escaped Scarlet's lips.

Scarlet could not understand Marcella's actions. She could not understand the emotions that her best friend was feeling. It had just been a few months but in that time, her emotions had changed so much. Her loyalty had turned into vengeance...but vengeance for what? What had happened in those four months for Marcella to harbor so much hatred for the man who had raised her? 

Tears carved clean tracks down Marcella's dirt-streaked face. "You should not have come tonight."

Multiple shots rang out in rapid succession. Marcella's body jerked as rounds tore through her from different angles. She crumpled, those brown eyes never leaving Scarlet's face, an apology written in them that would never be spoken.

Scarlet's legs gave out, her gaze never moving for Marella's. She felt Hector catch her, lowering her to the ground. She looked up at him, this pillar of strength who'd taught her everything about survival, about family. For the first time in her life, she saw something in his eyes that she had never seen before. 

Pain. Raw and human pain that stripped away the legend and left only a father watching his daughter bleed.

It scared her more than any enemy.

"Fa-fath-" The words stuck in her throat. 

"Shh...don't talk, save your energy," Hector's voice was rough, his hand pressing desperately against the hole in her chest where blood pulsed out with each weakening heartbeat. His eyes, usually cold and dangerous, were wild with something close to panic.

"We need to get her out of here!" Marvos exclaimed, his frantic eyes fixed on Scarlet before he shot someone else in the distance. 

Scarlet tried to respond, but her mouth wouldn't cooperate. Her breath came in shorter gasps, as if someone was slowly tightening a noose around her lungs. Her gaze drifted upward, finding the moon hanging low and bloody in the smoke-filled sky. It seemed to grow larger, swelling until it filled her vision with crimson light.

Then it began to fade, darkness creeping in from the edges like spilled ink. A soft exhale escaped her lips, carrying with it whatever words she'd meant to say. Her body went slack in Hector's arms, her silver eyes dulling.