Code Name: Guilt

The rain hadn’t stopped in three days. It slashed across the cracked windows of the safehouse in northern Berlin, masking the low hum of encrypted radios and the soft tapping of Agent Mara Voss’s fingers against her ceramic mug. The bitter taste of stale coffee didn’t bother her. After years in black ops, nothing did—except guilt.

Code Name: Guilt.

That was what they called her. Not to her face. No one was stupid enough for that. But she’d read the debriefs, seen the unredacted notes. "Psych profile: guilt-driven operative. Efficient. Dangerous. Disposable."

She wasn’t always like this. Once, she was an idealist. A translator for the U.N. Peacekeeping Forces. A believer. Then came Montenegro. Then the boy.

Now, she only worked for shadows.

The door creaked open. A man entered, his soaked trench coat clinging to him like regret. Anton Zell. Ex-BND, now her handler. He tossed a manila folder onto the table. No greetings. No apologies. Just business.

“New op,” he said, stripping off his coat. “Target’s in Warsaw. Biometric name: Kazmir Volkov. Russian arms broker. He’s selling a black-market neurovirus to the highest bidder. You’re to intercept. Confirm. Eliminate.”

Mara opened the folder. A passport photo stared back at her. Volkov had kind eyes. That made it harder. But not impossible.

“Why me?” she asked.

Anton arched a brow. “Because this isn’t a clean job. And you’re good at dirty ones.”

He didn’t need to say more. Volkov was protected—by oligarchs, mercenaries, and political debts. Anyone else would spark a war. But not her. She didn’t exist.

She left that night.

Warsaw’s winter air bit through her coat like broken glass. She tracked Volkov through underground clubs and off-grid clinics, always a day behind. He was cautious, but not paranoid. He thought the game was still about weapons and buyers. He didn’t know it was personal now.

She caught up with him in a forgotten Soviet-era warehouse turned nightclub. Neon lights pulsed against crumbling concrete. Mara moved like a ghost through the crowd, her gloved fingers resting lightly against the silenced pistol beneath her coat.

Volkov was in a private booth, flanked by two bodyguards. He was laughing, drunk, alive. She hated him for that.

She waited.

At 2:43 a.m., Volkov exited through the back. The guards lit cigarettes. Amateurs.

Mara was already there.

She struck like memory—fast and painful. One shot silenced the first guard. The second spun, but she was quicker. A sharp elbow to the throat, a twist, and silence again.

Volkov ran. She didn’t chase. She followed.

He ducked into a stairwell. She descended after him, boots barely making a sound. At the basement landing, she found him cornered, holding up a shaking pistol.

“I’m just a broker,” he said, eyes wide. “I don’t even know who bought the virus. I just—"

Mara raised her gun.

“Wait!” he cried. “You don’t have to do this!”

Her finger hesitated. Just for a second.

Then she shot him in the leg.

Volkov screamed, collapsed. The gun skittered across the concrete.

She crouched beside him. “Who has the neurovirus?”

“I-I don’t know,” he stammered. “Encrypted deals. Proxy buyers. I sell. That’s all.”

She looked into his eyes and saw it—the truth. He was just a link in the chain.

But someone had to break it.

She stood. “You’re going to live. But you’re going to wish you hadn’t.”

She returned to Berlin. Rain still pounded the windows.

Anton was waiting. “Report.”

“Volkov’s alive. But broken. He’ll talk.”

Anton blinked. “You let him live?”

“He was useful.”

“That’s not like you.”

Mara didn’t respond. She walked past him, poured herself coffee.

“You’re getting soft,” he said. “That’s a liability.”

She sipped. “No. That’s guilt.”

He tilted his head. “You think that makes you noble?”

“No,” she said. “It makes me dangerous.”

He left without another word.

---

That night, she opened a hidden drawer beneath her bed. Inside, a yellowed photo: a boy with black curls and a gap-toothed smile. Montenegro. Civilian casualty. Her fault.

The Agency covered it up. She didn’t.

Every mission since then was a penance. Not to the world. To herself.

She didn’t believe in redemption. But she believed in justice. The kind born in shadows. Bought with blood. Paid in regret.

Her codename was Guilt. And as long as she carried it, no one would hide in the dark for long.

She picked up her weapon. Somewhere out there, someone else was selling death.

And Mara Voss was coming for them.