The Puppeteer's Game

Chapter 14

Ghost Contact

The operations room felt sharper, colder. Not from the lights—but quiet. Not tense, just...watching.

Miguel stood at the board, one hand resting on the table's edge. Behind him, the usual tangle of photos, glyphs, and red thread still clung to the wall like a nervous system gone rogue. A new face had joined them that morning—Tomas Garrido's old ID photo, yellowing at the corners, pinned just beneath the symbol labeled Marionette. The lines branching from it looked like fractures in glass.

No one had said much since the envelope.

The Phantom's message was still fresh in everyone's mind—not because of what it said, but how it got there. Typed. Cold. Intentional. A violation.

Miguel shifted, arms crossing. His face gave away nothing.

Behind the glass, the server's hum seemed louder than usual—or maybe it was just that no one dared speak over it. Security had doubled. Drones swept the perimeter on the hour. Logs were now signed by hand. Even coffee breaks had schedules.

Ramos came in first, quiet, a folder under his arm bristling with sticky tabs. He gave Miguel a nod, but didn't sit. Just leaned near a cabinet, flipping through pages without really reading.

Emily arrived next, looking drained—not from sleep, but from carrying too much for too long. Without a word, she headed to the back monitors and rechecked the logs for the third time.

Monteverde was the last to arrive—walked in steadily, but his shoulders were stiff and his eyes sharper than usual. He stayed silent, dropping a USB on the table.

"External sweeps are clean. Nothing strange in the last two drops," he said.

"Doesn't mean we're safe," Ramos muttered.

No one argued.

Miguel finally turned to face them. "From now on, nothing leaves this room unless it's handwritten or said out loud, no digital sends. No cloud. No backups."

Emily glanced over. "That'll slow us down."

"That's the idea," Miguel said. "We're not sprinting anymore. We're being hunted."

Monteverde's voice cut in, dry: "So the Phantom shows up, and we start digging trenches?"

Miguel held his gaze. "No. We stop pretending the war hasn't already started."

He turned back to the board. His eyes landed on Tomas's photo—young, a little too thin, still hopeful. Before the fall. Before the hiding.

"This isn't a leak," Miguel said quietly. "It's a design. And we're already inside it."

No one had a rebuttal.

Outside, sunlight crawled over the compound walls, casting angled shadows into the room. Inside, they stood surrounded by glass, wires, and ghosts, waiting for the next string to twitch.

At 2:07 p.m., it did.

No sound. No alert. Just a blinking folder, suddenly there, in the root directory of a server that hadn't touched the internet in over two days. It was labeled: Enjoy the Show.

Miguel didn't hesitate. He opened it.

Inside was a single text file.

Your strings are showing.

Let's see who pulls harder.

—P.

He said nothing. Just turned the screen toward the others.