Agent 17 Red Rose Hot- -

She found him in the control room, a rotund man in an ill-fitting suit, sweating through his shirt. Two guards. One by the door, vaping. Another by the window, scanning the yard with a rifle that cost more than his monthly salary.

She lit a cigarette, the tip glowing like a tiny red rose in the dark.

“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.”

She released his wrist, and he slumped forward, sobbing with relief. As she turned to leave, he lunged for a hidden derringer taped under the console. Agent 17 Red Rose HOT-

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.

She moved like a ghost through the turbine hall. Her heels—thin, lethal, and surprisingly silent on the grated walkways—were her signature. Others wore tactical boots. Agent 17 wore stilettos. It unnerved people. It made them look at her legs instead of the razor wire garrote in her hand. She found him in the control room, a

She didn’t look back. Her hand snapped out, and a single, thin throwing knife—forged to look like a rose’s stem—buried itself in his throat. He made a wet, gurgling sound and collapsed.

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

Agent 17 was already there, one stiletto pinning his wrist to the console. He screamed. She pressed a finger to her crimson lips—a single, perfect red nail. Another by the window, scanning the yard with

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

Her target tonight: Vasily Krovopuskov, an ex-SVR asset gone freelance, peddling a quantum decryption algorithm to the highest bidder. He was hiding in a decommissioned thermal plant on the edge of the Black Sea. The heat was literal. Steam hissed from ruptured pipes, and the infrared overlay on her goggles painted the world in shades of angry orange and deep, dangerous red.

Amateurs , she thought.

“And tell Control,” she added, blowing a smoke ring into the humid air, “the Rose is still sharp.”