SOMEONE'S WATCHING 2
1340 Words
Aisha pulled her sleeves down and stepped out into the hallway, her ID badge swinging lightly against her chest. The corridor hummed with fluorescent lights, and the carpeted floor muted her footsteps. She walked with quick, contained excitement, her very first morning break in a United States defense security firm. Who would have thought?
She found the small kitchenette tucked right beside the server room — nothing glamorous, just a coffee machine, a sink, and a refrigerator with a strict “Label Everything” policy stuck on the door.
Mr. Ojo always liked his coffee sweet and milky, the kind that barely tasted like coffee at all. So she reached for the sugar first. Her hands were steady, but her heartbeat wasn’t. It still hasn’t settled since that cryptic warning folder.
She forced a smile. New environment jitters, she told herself.
The coffee machine sputtered and hissed as it filled the paper cup. She pulled out her phone, unlocking the screen just to feel anchored to something familiar. A selfie of her with her mother at Murtala Muhammed Airport stared back at her — her mom trying to smile through tears.
You’ll make your father proud, she had said.
She would. She had to.
Aisha exhaled slowly, then slid her phone back into her pocket and turned toward the doorway.
That was when she saw him.
A man stood across the hallway — far enough not to be intrusive yet close enough that she should have seen him earlier. He was leaning casually against the wall, arms folded, wearing the typical contractor badge on a black lanyard. His clothes were professional but not polished — dark pants, fitted tactical-style shirt, boots instead of dress shoes. Too practical. Too grounded. Too… ready.
Their eyes met.
It lasted less than a second — a quick collision of gazes.
His expression didn’t change. No polite smile. No awkward nod. Just sharp attention, as if his stare were a silent assessment.
Aisha’s fingers tightened around the coffee cup.
“Sorry,” she said automatically, though she hadn’t bumped into him or spoken to him before. She tried an awkward half-smile.
He didn’t respond. Not even a blink.
Just those dark, calculating eyes.
She looked away first, heat rising behind her ears, and hurried back toward the office, clutching the coffee like a lifeline.
Ghost watched her disappear into the workspace.
He exhaled once, his version of releasing curiosity.
It wasn’t supposed to be there. Curiosity gets operatives killed.
But something about the way she apologized — for nothing — lingered.
A habit formed from navigating the world carefully.
Someone used to shrink to avoid threats.
Yet she wasn’t weak. He could tell.
Her shoulders held discipline.
Her eyes held pain — old pain, sharpened into determination.
He straightened and tapped the earpiece hidden beneath his collar.
“Ghost to Argus.”
A faint buzz of encrypted static responded. “Copy. Status?”
“She’s here. Access-level low. Clean so far.”
“And the file?”
“Locked. She didn’t open it.”
A pause.
“She will.”
Ghost said nothing. He knew.
Argus continued: “When she does, you proceed with plan C.”
Plan C.
The clean one, death without evidence. A ghost kill.
His hand closed around a small coin-sized chip in his pocket, an untraceable signal scrambler he could plant near her workstation. SPHINX technology. Deadly yet elegant.
He pushed away from the wall and walked, silent as a memory.
Aisha sat back at her desk, trying to calm her pulse. She set down the coffees, forcing a normal pace.
“Thank you,” Mr. Ojo said, immediately grabbing his cup. He didn’t look up, typing something urgently into the encrypted console.
She nodded but couldn’t shake the strange chill itching under her skin.
“That man,” she whispered before she thought it through.
Mr. Ojo finally looked up. “Which man?”
“In the hallway… tall, dark shirt… boots.” She laughed nervously. “He just stared at me. Like he knew me.”
Mr. Ojo rubbed his forehead. “Plenty of contractors here. Some of them are former military. They forget civilian manners.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”
But Aisha wasn’t convinced.
Boots in an office filled mostly with engineers?
That wasn’t a coincidence.
She turned back to her computer screen, but her gaze kept flicking to the office entrance — expecting to see those eyes again.
Ghost passed through the security gate, pausing only long enough to swipe his forged contractor badge. Everything about him was precision. Calculated. Controlled.
He did not let his thoughts linger on her.
Aisha Lawal was simply a name on a file.
A target with a timeline.
A variable to eliminate once she crossed a line.
Unless… he could neutralize the threat before that point.
If she never opened that folder again…
If she walked away from CipherCore…
If she returned to her normal life… He could cancel the mission.
But that wasn’t how these things worked.
SPHINX didn’t allow loose ends.
His jaw clenched, a muscle feathering with annoyance — not at her, but at the mission design.
He hated messy orders.
He pushed through a maintenance door and descended into a restricted server sub-level — motion sensors disabled by his entries through legitimate access. Here, encrypted drives held the project he had been part of — Project Serpent — a kill directive hidden inside cybersecurity assets. Code that could locate and frame targets within seconds.
Assassinations disguised as cyber defense.
And now… she had brushed against the truth.
His phone vibrated — a coded transmission.
He opened it with his biometric thumb scan.
A photo displayed: Aisha leaving the airport months ago.
Then another: Aisha outside her Brooklyn apartment.
Then: Aisha this morning — inside CipherCore, folder glowing red against her desk.
Surveillance already saturated her life.
Ghost stared at the images for a long moment, longer than protocol approved.
Then he deleted them, pocketed the scrambler, and moved silently back into the world above.
Aisha tried to focus on her network mapping task, but her eyes drifted to the forbidden folder again. The seal shimmered faintly like an invitation disguised as a warning.
One click.
That was all it took.
“What if…?” she whispered.
But before the thought fully formed, a new message pinged on her screen:
> FROM: IT_SECURITY
Reminder: Do NOT access unauthorized directories.
Violations are auto-logged.
She flinched.
Mr. Ojo glanced over. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just… notifications,” she replied.
She clicked away quickly, cheeks warming with the guilt of merely thinking about breaking rules.
The screen returned to her basic assignment... creating a dummy firewall hierarchy for a training environment. She typed mechanically, though her heart wasn’t in it.
She felt like something was happening around her.
Something she wasn’t supposed to notice.
A shadow of a threat she couldn’t name.
Ghost stood outside her office window on the neighbouring rooftop — hidden by glare and distance. Wind brushed across his face, cooling the heat that had settled unexpectedly under his skin.
Through the glass, he watched her.
The way she straightened when nervous.
How she adjusted her hijab absentmindedly while thinking.
How she bit her lower lip when unsure.
How she didn’t realize she was in danger.
His phone buzzed again.
Argus: Proceed.
Ghost: Not yet.
Argus: You question orders?
Ghost: I follow strategy.
Argus: You’re getting soft.
Ghost’s icy gaze lingered on the keypad for a moment.
Soft… He almost laughed.
He had buried softness long ago.
Yet… when he looked at her
he felt something shift — a vibration in the quiet part of his chest.
He shut it down.
Mission first.
Always mission first.
He turned away from the glass, disappearing into shadow.
Inside, Aisha shivered, a sudden chill sweeping over her, and rubbed her arms.
She didn’t know why she felt like someone had just stopped looking at her.
But she was right.
For now.
- Writer
