CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
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Ghost did not recruit children.
It harvested them.
Li Xuefang was fourteen—real age—when she entered the lower ranks of Ghost under the identity: Leah Remini.
There was no ceremony.
No welcome.
Only a retinal scan that burned red across her left eye and the soft click of restraints disengaging behind her.
Inside, the air tasted of gun oil, ozone, and old blood.
She was assigned codename trials the same night.
They called her Subject L-07 during evaluations.
By week three they stopped calling her anything at all—because she had already become something else.
Fang.
Not because she was loud.
Not because she was ruthless.
But because she struck once.
And when she did—it was final.
She had already discovered something buried deep in encrypted archives:
Ghost had not just been involved in her parents' deaths.
They had orchestrated it.
She did not scream.
She did not break.
She memorized.
Every handler.
Every file.
Every whisper.
She would not burn Ghost down.
She would climb it.
Her first mission as Fang was surgical.
A corrupt biotech courier in Prague.
She moved through rain like vapor.
No wasted motion.
No trembling.
When the target begged, she paused.
That pause earned her punishment.
Fifty volts to the spine during debrief.
"Emotion is inefficiency," her handler said.
But she still paused.
That was the problem.
The kill sims were merciless. Holographic families begging, children running, soldiers turning weapons on their own. Every hesitation was punished with neuro-stims that felt like lightning sewn under the skin. Every clean kill earned thirty seconds of silence.
She met María three months later.
In the lower training halls of Ghost, children were not called children.
They were called "assets."
María was eight—small, feral, eyes too old for her face.
María's parents had delivered her to Ghost themselves. A parting gift, they said. "Make her strong enough that no one can ever take her again."
María hated everyone on sight.
Everyone except the quiet fourteen-year-old assassin who moved like shadow and never raised her voice.
Fang watched her from the upper balcony once.
A tiny girl bleeding from the lip—still standing.
Something in Fang shifted.
Not recognition.
Warmth.
One night, Fang found her curled inside a ventilation shaft, refusing food for the third day.
Fang: (Soft) Come down.
María hissed like a cornered cat.
Fang waited. Thirty minutes. No impatience. No threat.
Eventually María slid out, filthy, trembling.
Fang offered her half a ration bar.
Fang: Eat. Or you die slow. Your choice.
María snatched it. Bit. Chewed. Tears cut tracks through the grime on her cheeks.
Fang watched without comment.
The next night she brought another half bar.
And the night after.
On the seventh night María spoke.
María: Why do you care?
Fang: I don't.
A lie so clean it almost sounded like truth.
María: Then why keep coming?
Fang considered the question the way she considered every angle of a kill box.
Fang: Because someone once carried me when I couldn't walk.
María stared.
Fang stood.
Fang: Tomorrow you train with me. No crying. No running. Understand?
María nodded once—small, fierce.
From that day forward, under the Fang identity, María became hers.
Officially.
Not publicly.
Not as daughter.
Not as student.
Sister.
Fang taught her how to hold a knife without trembling.
How to breathe through panic.
How to defeat without hating yourself afterward.
And every time María asked why Fang never smiled, Fang answered the same way.
Fang: Smiles are for people who still believe the world can be kind.
But sometimes—only sometimes—when María slept against her shoulder after a fourteen-hour drill, Fang allowed her hand to rest on the girl's hair.
Gentle.
Brief.
Forbidden.
On the hundred and thirteenth day after, during a live-capture exercise in the sub-level kill-house, she cornered her assigned target: a simulated Ghost defector played by a real operative who had failed his last loyalty test.
He was twice her size. Armed. Desperate.
She disarmed him in thirty three seconds.
Broke his wrist, collapsed his knee, drove her elbow through his throat cartilage before he could scream.
When the lights came up, the overseer—a lean woman with silver-streaked hair—stood behind the observation wall.
A teenager stood beside her in silence.
Another figure also stood beside the overseer whose codename seemed to be Viper.
Fang's Handler bowed before the overseer.
Fang's Handler: I told you she's an item to be noticed, Overseer.
Li Xuefang wiped blood from her cheek with the back of her hand.
Overseer: So what are you suggesting?
She asked, her voice icy and low as snowflakes.
Fang's Handler: She'll fit in Division.
The overseer watched Fang deeper, and then said
Overseer: How would it feel to have an underling under you, Viper?
Viper paused and said lowly "Oh?"
That night they gave Fang the tattoo: a dark emblem etched into the right side of her lower back—the Ghost Division insignia.
And somewhere in the shadows of the armory, Viper watched her silhouette disappear down the corridor, the fresh ink still stinging beneath her shirt.
He smiled—slow, private, dangerous.
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