Chapter Text
Simon Riley moved through the Manchester warehouse as if it belonged to him.
No, not belonged.
A lifetime living in shadows led to places like this being made for him, as his natural environment. Sharp corners, the stench of cleaning fluids, and flickering fluorescent lights. Combined together, the environment became hostile enough to drive out the rats out weeks ago.
Each step landed silent. The soles of his shoes, coating over the leather, absorbed the noise. The breeze from industrial fans blasted against his face, which was covered in a skin-tight leather mask that covered everything but his dark, emotionless brown eyes. Nothing, not even a single strand of hair, would fall out of his mask. The pattern of a skeleton on the mask gave him the look of a Grim Reaper come to take souls to the afterlife.
“The Ghost of Manchester”
A moniker he’d earned as a professional hitman for the last 15 years.
A moniker he was proud of, as it put fear into the most evil hearts in this world.
A moniker he hated, because it meant, like a Ghost, he could never truly live.
He listened to the warehouse, carefully. The cold air filtering through broken panes three stories up, the dripping of water off a rusted pipe, the scuff of someone else’s foot somewhere to the north, running, loudly, not realizing they were being heard.
“For all your bragging, you’re just an amateur, aren’t you? All bark, no bite. At least, not against someone who can fight back.” Simon thought.
He checked his outfit, ensuring everything was just right. His suit was charcoal, tailored sharp to the line of his shoulders, the black tie marked with a geometric pattern of the Riley Crime Syndicate a constriction he’d learned to forget. Hands gloved, black leather, like a second skin. The weight of the pistol under his jacket was a comfort, an old friend. He paused behind a stack of palletized printer boxes, letting his pulse slow until it matched the tempo of the building’s hollow breathing.
“I’ll pay you anything! Just leave me alone! You already killed my men! You blew up my stashes! Ruined me! I get it! I’ll surrender! I'll do whatever you want! Just don't kill me! Please!” The desperate voice called out. More running. The sound of crates being pushed to the side. An attempt to hide.
He caught a whimper, a voice, trying to be silent, but desperation always tripped people up.
Simon recalculated. There were two ways up to the target, both visible from his current position. His target had made for higher ground, which was almost touching. The stupid ones tried the door to escape him and got themselves blasted by the pipe bomb he’d set. The desperate ones tried to fight back, with bullets or knives, not realizing that weapons didn’t always make people safe. The clever ones thought height made them safe. Thought being the operative word.
Simon’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, memorizing every shadow.
The warehouse was all poured concrete and dust, filled to the brim with crates and pallets, with the December weather giving it the sort of cold that got into your teeth. High above, sodium lights buzzed but never fully lit the place. The air smelled of pallet wood, damp, and an underlying bite of cleaning solvent that nobody bothered to dilute.
The family’s hit was a man named Mirza, thirty-two, some kind of foreigner, but at this distance ethnicity was academic and wouldn’t have mattered if he was American, a Brit, or anyone else. Dead was dead.
Mirza was blight on Manchester and a blight on “proper” syndicates like the Riley Family. He was the head of an up-and-coming Cartel, who’d been making waves, and was the current “King” of the underground. The bastard dealt in human trafficking, disgusting sex crimes, the kind of drugs that broke down the very fabric of a proper country, and was, as Simon’s old man said “a trash person” who was rumored to do all sorts of terrible things to good people.
The Riley Family wanted his connections to Manchester cut, permanently, and tonight Simon was the knife. In the span of a week, The Ghost of Manchester had already cut down Mirza’s personal guards, bombed his drug warehouse, gutted his human traffickers like fish, and tonight… The final domino would drop.
Simon eased himself along the wall, careful to keep two points of contact, and listened for the scuff again. There: east side, just above the forklift cage, a panicked breathing muffled behind a row of rusted file cabinets.
He moved.
Four steps, then cover, then three, then another pause.
His breath never wavered.
The only real danger tonight was if he got sloppy. Of course, he never did.
He glimpsed a silhouette hunched by the railing, hands clutched tight around a pistol. Simon resisted the urge to sneer. You could always spot the fake gangsters; they never checked the backstop, never noticed the way their own movement telegraphed. He kept low, took the metal stairs two at a time, soft as a rumor.
On the landing, he held his position and waited. It didn’t take long. Mirza edged out, pistol in a trembling hand, scanning the gloom beneath.
With practiced ease, Simon took out his pistol, just shy of touching the man’s cropped hair, and shot him in the back of the head. The sound of the silencer was little more than a polite cough in all that emptiness. The body jerked, legs folding under, arms slack as laundry. The man’s gun clattered and bounced off a steel step.
Simon waited a count of three. When nothing moved, he approached. He nudged Mirza with the toe of his shoe, confirmed the twitching was just nerves firing on the way out. Waited until the signs of life were gone, for certainty.
Blood puddled fast in the cold. Simon stepped over it, leaving no prints. He collected the spent casing, dropped it in his jacket pocket. He considered the face, eyes open, mouth slack with the beginnings of surprise, and felt nothing, which was how it was supposed to be.
He checked the horizon out the warehouse window, saw only the sodium glow of city night.
Manchester was a throb of distant lights, the calloused hands of industry layered over itself for centuries. He could see the parking lot from up here: empty except for his own nondescript sedan and the battered Civic that belonged to the overnight security guard, who would never know this had happened at all, fast asleep in his booth.
Simon exhaled, counted heartbeats, recalibrated. He made a quick sweep for cameras, there were two, both aimed at the loading dock, both already looped. He’d arranged that on the way in, careful work with a stolen keycard and a thumb drive.
No witnesses, digital or otherwise.
He took the stairs down, slow, erasing his own presence as he went.
At the base, he paused to wipe the banister with a cloth, because even with leather gloves and all his measures, you could never be too careful.
The spot where Mirza died, Simon left that untouched. He never staged scenes. It was cleaner for all involved to let the finders decide how it had happened instead of giving them hints. Forensics would have a theory. They always did. More often than not, they were wrong. Sometimes, they knew. Didn’t matter. The Ghost of Manchester was just a story. A modern day Baba Yaga used to scare naughty children and be the ace in the Riley Syndicate’s pocket.
At the door, Simon paused to check his reflection in the wire-meshed glass. No blood, no sweat, not even a wrinkle in his suit. He opened the door and let the damp night air hit him, re-tied his gloves, and started walking. He was three blocks away before the first siren sounded, unrelated, probably, but you could never be certain.
He walked with purpose, the pistol chucked into the nearest riverbed with a soft plunk, every movement calculated to attract no notice. He wondered what Mirza’s last thoughts had been.
Fear, anger, regret, or nothing at all. The question didn’t linger in his mind as they usually did.
There would be no more assignments, no more names.
That was the deal for this one.
“I wipe out an entire Cartel for you, I don’t want money or cars, or fancy jewelry. I’d like, instead, to be decommissioned. Allowed to leave. To be on-call, if necessary, but otherwise, the Ghost wishes to move on to the afterlife.”
“Done. Make it happen.”
He reached his car, slid into the driver’s seat, and closed the door without a sound. The world outside was drab, colorless, the streetlamps casting long shadows that dissolved before they ever reached him. Simon looked at his own hands on the steering wheel. They were steady, exactly as they should be.
He felt for the keys in his pocket, started the car, and blended into the city like an ordinary citizen.
The job was done.
He had already forgotten the hit’s name.
+++++
Simon let himself into his flat with a code.
Physical keys were too easy to copy; the number changed every three days, just in case. He swept the entry with habit, eyes flicking over the seams of the baseboards, the locks, the slant of the living-room window.
Nothing out of place.
The space was less home than holding cell. A sofa, gray and blocky. A wooden crate for a coffee table. No books, no art, nothing on the walls. The kitchen counter held exactly one mug, one spoon, one fork, one knife, and a drip coffee machine. In the corner, an air mattress with a single blanket, easily folded.
The only color in the room was the slab of bruised sky beyond the glass.
He stripped in the bathroom, double-bagging the suit and tie and shoes. He scrubbed hands and face, paying special attention to the hairline and the webbing of his fingers. The mirror above the sink was as clean as he’d left it, which was to say, it reflected only what he wanted to see.
Simon removed the mask last, letting a plume of blonde hair unfurl, short, cropped, rarely cared for. He tucked the mask into the waistband of his boxers.
He took the bundle to the fireplace, an obsolete Victorian holdover rendered functional by his own hand. The suit burned slow, the fabric curling in on itself, tie knot crisping black before it fell apart. The smell reminded him of old debt and funerals. He waited until there was nothing but ash, then stirred the embers and closed the flue.
Packing was a ritual.
Simon moved through it the way a surgeon preps a body: precise, efficient, no hesitation. The duffle bag was canvas and leather, fresh and new. He laid it open on the bed and lined the bottom with rolled clothing, two pairs of jeans, three black T-shirts, one wool jumper. Each was folded to the exact width of his forearm, sleeves tucked in, edges aligned.
He checked the spare pistol, field stripped and oiled only last week. Slid in two magazines, wrapped in a towel, placed them side by side. Then the sheathed knife he kept strapped to his leg, handle worn smooth from years of use. The bag’s outside pocket got his travel documents, a phone, and a charger with three international plugs.
He did not own much else. The toiletries were travel-sized, the books on his phone, the bedding from a discount store. No photographs, except one: a three-by-five from another world, laminated to withstand the years. The boy in the center wore a dark blazer and a sullen expression; the woman had high cheekbones and Simon’s same eyes; the man at her side, Simon’s father, rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder, face carved into a careful smile. The backdrop was a velvet curtain, studio props. The family had worn black because the dress code had demanded it.
Simon let the photo linger in his hand. He studied the placement of the fingers, the slight tilt of his mother’s head, the way his father’s suit fit like armor. He closed his eyes, counted to three, and slipped the photo into the bag’s hidden compartment.
The walls of the apartment echoed, hollow even with him inside it. He took the time to wipe down every surface, finger-smudge, and loose hair. The air mattress was folded up neatly in its bag, the duffle zipped tight. The garbage was already out, the fridge empty but for three bottles of mineral water and a single yogurt. He finished the yogurt standing at the sink, threw the spoon away with the other utensils. Water went into his bag for the trip.
The final sweep took five minutes. Simon worked top to bottom, checking closets and vents, looking for signs of his own life. He found none, as it should be. Even the faint scent of burnt ash had already faded.
He set the duffle by the door and sat on the sofa, hands folded in his lap. There was nothing left to do but wait. The silence was not oppressive; it was exact, calibrated, the absence of error. He listened to the distant siren echo, to the elevator rattle in its shaft, to the tick of the radiator as the building warmed itself.
He considered sleep, but it never came when called.
Simon heard his father before he saw him. The elevator’s arrival was a muted bell, followed by a shuffling of footfalls outside the flat’s reinforced door. Three quick knocks, staccato, code from an earlier era. He rose, adjusted the fit of his “civilian” t-shirt over the waistband of his jeans, and opened the door.
Thomas Riley was not a man you forgot in a crowd. He filled the frame in his navy suit, the fabric tailored so perfectly it erased decades from his posture. His white hair gleamed in the corridor’s dim light, and the crags of his face might have been chiseled by the same architect who’d laid out the city’s cathedrals. The old man’s eyes, cold and precise, took in Simon with a single sweep before moving to the interior. There was no hello. There hadn’t been since he was a child.
“Clean,” Thomas said. He stepped in, shoes whispering against bare hardwood.
Simon shut the door, engaged the deadbolt. “That’s the point.”
Thomas did not remove his coat. Instead, he drifted around the room as if it were a showroom, fingers trailing over the crate-table, the hollow-sounding walls, the duffle bag at the door. He stopped at the window and looked out over the city, lips compressed. “You’ve made it easy. I like that. I can rent this property to a right proper family by dawn. Let their mess obfuscate further.”
Simon waited. He’d learned early that patience was his father’s preferred weapon, and matching him for silence was more effective than any retort.
The old man turned, eyeing the ashes in the fireplace. “You burn the suit?”
Simon nodded. “All of it. Except the mask.”
“Waste.” Thomas allowed himself a small smile, then crossed the room to stand just inside Simon’s personal space. “Is it done?”
“Mirza is finished. His organization has fallen. No complications. No loose ends.”
“Good.” His father’s approval was always spare, measured out like medicine. “contract is closed, but that won’t stop the scavengers from digging around the edges.” He reached into his breast pocket, withdrew a small envelope. “You’ll find the details inside. Keys to a cottage in Wynndale. Cash. A bank card to your new account. No other strings. Everything here is legal and doesn’t touch my criminal side. Just as you asked for.”
Simon accepted the envelope. From the heft and weight, probably a hundred thousand pounds. The bank card? Probably 10 times that, given the wealth that Simon had to launder to escape this life.
The transfer was brief, almost surgical. Their fingers did not touch.
Thomas studied his son with a kind of professional curiosity. “You don’t want to know why this one mattered so much to me?”
Simon shook his head. “Doesn’t change the outcome.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Thomas said. He sounded almost disappointed, though it was hard to tell if it was for Simon’s benefit, or his own. “You were always efficient. Even as a boy, you never wasted time with the why. Your mother always said you got that from me, and I have to agree.”
“Someone had to be.” The words slipped out before Simon could corral them, but the old man didn’t react.
He gestured for Simon to sit, then perched himself on the armrest of the sofa, elbows on his knees. For a moment, neither spoke. The only sound was the city’s low hum filtering through the glass.
“There’s nothing left for you here,” Thomas said finally. “Not after tonight. The accounts are closed, the files erased. If anyone asks, you died in Portugal last year with a private funeral. Any coincidence in name is just that. Coincidence.” He allowed himself a brief glance at the photograph, the only artifact Simon hadn’t packed. “You should burn that, too.”
Simon looked away. “I’ll handle that later.”
Thomas nodded, almost approving. “Good. Clean is best.”
They sat in the silence for another span, old scars knitting themselves beneath the surface.
Finally, Thomas pushed himself to his feet. He straightened his suit, fixed the line of his tie. “I won’t call on you again. That’s not a threat. It’s a promise.”
Simon felt something loosen in his chest, a tension he hadn’t known he’d carried. “Thank you.”
His father reached out, offered a hand. They shook, the grip firm but not lingering. Before Thomas withdrew, he placed his other hand on Simon’s shoulder, weighty, deliberate. Then, without further ceremony, he pulled his son into a brief, hard embrace. Simon stood rigid, absorbing the gesture, unsure if it was meant as punishment or reward.
When Thomas stepped back, his face had shifted. Some of the steel had softened, leaving a blueprint of the man who had once been his father, before he became The Architect of Manchester, the designer by which all of England followed.
“You will be missed,” he said, voice even. “As both son and Hitman.”
Simon inclined his head. The words hung in the air, neither acknowledged nor denied.
Thomas let himself out. The door closed, and the lock engaged with a finality that felt absolute.
Simon stood in the middle of the empty apartment, the envelope in his hand, the burden of fifteen years pressing against the thin walls. He looked at the fireplace, where the last suit had turned to ash, and then at the duffle by the door.
He sat back on the sofa, head in his hands, and let the silence roll over him. The city lights flickered outside, indifferent to the transfer of power, the erasure of lineage.
+++++
Simon left before dawn, engine turned over with the faintest whisper. The city was different at this hour, emptied out, not yet rebuilt by the day shift. He took the back roads, winding past industrial estates and shuttered petrol stations, steering clear of cameras and memory.
Rain slicked the streets, coating everything in a dirty sheen. Headlights carved narrow cones through the mist. Inside the car, it was quiet, the heater running just enough to keep the windows from fogging over. The duffel laid to rest in the passenger seat, its straps coiled tight. In the footwell, a box of supplies: water, extra fuel canisters. He'd loaded the trunk with care, ensuring nothing would rattle or shift.
Simon kept to the speed limit, eyes flicking to the mirrors every thirty seconds. Even now, with the job done and the last ties cut, vigilance was reflex. He logged every car that overtook him, memorized the colors and makes, traced their taillights until they vanished. When a blue van held position in his blind spot too long, he changed lanes, watched to see if it followed. It didn’t.
The envelope was in the glovebox. Sometimes he thought about opening it, about reading the details, but it was safer not to. The less he knew, the less anyone could extract if they tried. The keys to the Wynndale cottage were heavy in his pocket, unfamiliar metal pressing against his thigh as he drove.
Manchester’s skyline receded in the rearview, glass and steel dissolving into the low clouds. The motorway carried him north, past fields bristling with frost, sheep hunched against the weather, occasional flashes of town through the trees. He counted every turnoff, checked for police cruisers hiding behind embankments, ignored the hunger that gnawed at his gut. There’d be time enough for food later.
He let himself think, for a while, about the place waiting at the end of this drive.
Wynndale, a market town equal parts rural and urban, tucked into the hills, nothing remarkable except its distance from everything else. He’d been there once, years ago, on business. The memory was little more than a blur of rain, a pub with sticky floors, his hands cold on a pint glass.
This time, it would be different. No more names, no more contracts. Just empty days and the sound of his own breath in the quiet.
He tried to imagine what that would feel like, but it wouldn’t come. His mind always circled back to the job, to the list of things he’d done and the length of the list still to be written. He wondered if men like him ever really stopped.
Or if, in the end, the only way out was the way Mirza had gone.
Simon’s phone vibrated once, unknown number, disposable. He let it go to voicemail. After two minutes, he powered it down and dropped it into the canal at the next service station, watching the circles ripple out and vanish.
He refueled, bought black coffee and a sandwich he didn’t care for. In the loo, he ran water over his wrists, stared at his reflection in the metal-mirrored glass. He looked the same as he always had.
That was the problem.
Back on the road, the rain thickened, hammering the windscreen. The car’s wipers beat a slow, monotonous rhythm. The miles slid by, and with each one, the past receded just a little more.
Simon drove until the city was a rumor behind him, until the only thing ahead was the ribbon of tarmac unspooling into darkness. He gripped the wheel tight, felt the strain in his shoulders, the familiar ache of anticipation.
He didn’t know what waited for him in Wynndale.
He didn’t know what “living” meant.
He didn’t know if he’d miss being the Ghost of Manchester.
He aimed for it anyway.
“What could do go wrong?” Simon thought, idly.