Born in the Crossfire

Chapter 2: Cold Burner

The storm hit right as Leo crossed into the industrial district. Rain came down in sheeted gray waves, washing away the smell of smoke and oil, but doing nothing to chill the adrenaline surging through his veins.

He didn't stop running until he reached the edge of the old rail yard on 4th Street.

An abandoned freight train sat rusted into the tracks, its steel siding overgrown with dead ivy. Leo ducked beneath a cracked cargo door, hoisted himself inside the boxcar, and collapsed against the cold wooden interior. He pulled his legs in, holding his breath, listening over the roar of the downpour.

No sirens. No screeching tires. Just the steady thrum of water against corrugated metal.

He was safe. For now.

Leo let out a shaky breath that fogged in the damp air. His shoulder throbbed where he’d scraped it sliding down the drainpipe, but he ignored the pain. Sliding his duffel off, he unzipped it and pulled out the matte-black Pelican case.

The small transponder light was still blinking a furious, rhythmic red.

SIGNAL TRANSMITTED.

"Great," Leo muttered, his voice raspy. "So whoever was listening knows exactly where this box was opened."

He grabbed his pocket knife, jammed the blade into the transponder’s plastic housing, and popped the battery loose. The red light died instantly.

In the dim light filtering through the boxcar door, Leo reopened the leather-bound notebook his mother had left behind. He flipped past the terrifying organizational chart—past the name Viktor Rostov and the blurred photo of the father he had never known—and began scanning the margin notes.

Sarah Vance had been meticulous. Every entry had precise timestamps, grid coordinates, and encrypted alphanumeric strings. But on the inside of the back leather cover, scratched faintly into the material with what looked like the tip of a pin, was a single ten-digit phone number.

Below it, written in his mother's distinct, sharp handwriting: IN EMERGENCY: CALL FREQUENCY 16. USE THE COLD BURNER.

Leo reached back into the Pelican case, shifting the disassembled Glock aside until his fingers brushed against a tiny, outdated flip phone tucked into a side groove. It was completely unbranded, heavy for its size, and encased in a thick rubberized shell. A cold burner.

He flipped it open. The screen lit up in monochrome green, displaying full battery bars despite sitting sealed for a decade. The device had no contact list, no web browser, and no signal bar—just a prompt reading: SECURE LINE READY.

Leo’s hands shook as he typed in the ten digits from the notebook.

He hesitated, his thumb hovering over the green call button. If he made this call, there was no going back to being a normal kid in the foster system. He’d be stepping straight into the ghost war his mother had died fighting.

Your father’s reach goes deeper than they know, her note had said.

Leo swallowed hard and pressed call.

The phone didn't ring. Instead, a series of digitized tones chirped through the tiny speaker, followed by absolute silence for five long seconds.

Then, a low, gravelly voice cut through the static.

"Vance is dead," the voice said coldly. "If you have this unit, you are either the team that killed her, or the agency collecting loose ends. Either way, this line is hard-traced. You have thirty seconds before an extraction squad locks on your grid."

Leo's chest seized. "Wait! Don't hang up!"

Silence on the line.

"I'm not an agency team," Leo said, his voice cracking slightly before he forced it steady. "My name is Leo. Sarah Vance was my mother."

The silence stretched so long Leo thought the line had dropped.

"Sarah didn't have a son," the voice replied, flattered now. "She was cleared for solo ops. A child is a liability she never would have brought into the field."

"She didn't bring me into the field!" Leo snapped, anger flaring through his fear. "She put me in the system to hide me! I have her notebook. I have the Pelican case, the encrypted drive, and the four passports under the names Miller, Vance, Dubois, and Rossi. And... I know about Viktor Rostov."

A sharp intake of breath sounded over the speaker.

"Where are you?" the voice demanded, the deadpan tone completely gone.

"An abandoned boxcar at the 4th Street rail yard," Leo said. "And I don't know who you are, but three black SUVs just kicked down the door of my foster home. They had silenced guns. I barely got out."

"Rostov’s hit team," the man grunted. "The transponder pinged their net when you unlocked the case. Listen to me very carefully, kid. If Rostov’s men are on the move, the agency’s clean-up crew isn't far behind. Neither side can afford Sarah's work to surface."

"Who are you?" Leo asked.

"Someone who owed your mother his life," the man replied. "Stay inside the car. Don't look out the door. Don't touch the gun in that case unless you hear steel cutting wood. I'll be there in six minutes."

"How do I know I can trust you?"

"You don't," the line crackled as the man hung up. "But right now, I'm the only thing keeping you from ending up like your mother."

The phone screen went dark.

Leo sat back against the wooden wall of the boxcar, the cold burner heavy in his hand. Outside, the rain lashed harder against the metal roof, masking the distant sound of approaching footsteps on the wet gravel.