The Shadows of the Past

Chapter 1: A Ghost in the City

By Michael Jamal Mitchell

Dhalia Rae Carson didn’t need much. A one-bedroom apartment over a corner bodega. A couch that sagged just right. A cracked coffee cup from her last mission in Istanbul. And silence. The kind of silence that clung to walls like cigarette smoke and wrapped around your soul until you either learned to breathe it in—or drowned.

She didn’t smile much anymore. Didn’t trust much either. But she read the paper every morning with a slice of dry toast and a stare that could slice metal. The neighbors called her Miss Rae, though no one ever saw her come or go. She moved like wind—quick, smooth, whisper-quiet. A ghost in heels.

Once upon a dirty secret, Dhalia had slit throats for Uncle Sam and smiled about it. Now, she filed her nails with the same hands that once planted bombs under diplomats’ cars. Her demons didn’t whisper; they roared, but she’d gotten real good at ignoring them. Most days.

Then came the man.

It was just past midnight when the city coughed up something strange on the corner of Myrtle and Vine. Dhalia was three steps out of the bodega—hood up, eyes sharp, loaf of bread under her arm—when the black SUV rolled up like a curse. Two doors flew open like angry wings. Men in tactical black spilled out, moving like they rehearsed it. No sirens. No hesitation. Just hate in motion.

That’s when she saw him.

Tall. Tired. Barely standing. The man limped through the alley like he owed the pavement money. Chocolate brown skin glistened with sweat under the flickering streetlight. Blood painted the left side of his shirt, but his eyes—those eyes—were fierce. Smart. Heavy with things the world didn’t wanna hear.

Dhalia felt it before she knew what it was. Instinct. The kind of tug that made you move without thinking. Like something ancient woke up in her bones and screamed: That man is yours to save.

“Damn,” she muttered, already moving.

The first agent raised a stun-gun. Wrong move.

Dhalia hit the gas like muscle memory. She threw her bread in one hand, a switchblade in the other. One slice to the wrist—shock baton clattered. She side-kicked another in the groin so hard he moaned in reverse. The third one pulled a weapon. She spun behind him, whispered, “Too slow,” and cracked his elbow with her knee like a light switch.

Reynold—though she didn’t know his name yet—was watching from behind a dumpster. Bleeding. Breathing hard. His eyes wide, but not with fear. Recognition? Maybe. Like he saw something in her he forgot about in himself.

“You with them?” he asked, voice like gravel soaked in gospel.

She shook her head, slicing the air between them with her hand. “No, sugar. I’m the woman who just saved your Black behind.”

He chuckled. Painful but real. “Then I owe you.”

“Damn right you do,” she snapped. “Now move your feet before they send backup.”

He staggered toward her, and she caught him under the arm like they’d done this before. Maybe they had—in another life. One where spies didn’t burn out, and government science experiments didn’t bleed on Brooklyn sidewalks.

As they disappeared into the city’s steam and shadow, Dhalia knew two things for sure:

1. She should’ve stayed home.

2. This man—whoever the hell he was—just yanked her back into a war she’d barely survived the first time.

And damn it if she didn’t kinda like the feeling.

*******

By the time they reached her apartment, the city had tucked itself in for the night—except for the sirens in the distance and the occasional drunk arguing with a pigeon. Dhalia kicked open the back entrance to her building, dragging the bleeding stranger like they were old lovers doing a bad two-step.

“Watch the couch,” she muttered, half-dropping him onto it.

He groaned, pulling himself upright with the grace of a refrigerator on rollerblades. “You always this gentle?”

“Only with men who bleed on my rug,” she shot back, already rummaging through her first-aid kit.

Up close, he was even more of a puzzle. Muscles built from hard labor or harder training. Face like a story that never made it to print. Eyes that’d seen too much—and not nearly enough kindness. There was something… off about him, though. Not in a creepy way. In a wrong era, wrong body, wrong world kind of way. Like he was built for something ancient and dropped into the middle of Wi-Fi and street tacos.

“What’s your name?” she asked, wiping blood from his temple.

He hesitated. “Reynold.”

“That your real name or your government name?”

He smirked through the pain. “It’s mine. First thing they couldn’t take.”

She liked that answer. Not that she’d admit it.

“Well, Reynold, you got three cracked ribs, a concussion, and a gash in your side big enough to fit secrets in. Care to tell me who’s out here trying to erase you?”

He glanced at the window like the walls might grow ears. “Them. The ones who built me. Then broke me. Now they’re trying to bury the mess.”

She paused. “Built you?”

He nodded, slow and heavy. “Government lab. Early 2000s. They said I was the answer to a mistake made decades before I was born. Something about restoring balance, fixing history—whatever the hell that means. Gave me speed, strength, senses. Then Wraith came online.”

“Wraith?” Dhalia leaned in, her instincts flaring. “What the hell is Wraith?”

“Pain wearing a face,” Reynold muttered, the light in his eyes flickering. “He’s not human. Not fully. AI, psionic, something else. A system. A sickness. They made him when they feared I might start thinking for myself.”

He coughed, blood dotting his shirt like ink blots in a shrink’s notebook.

Dhalia sat back. “You’re saying they built you to fix a racist experiment from the sixties, then panicked and built something worse to keep you in check?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

She let that sink in. Then stood up, walked to the kitchen, poured a double shot of cheap bourbon into a chipped glass, and downed it.

“Well,” she said, licking her lips. “Ain’t that some high-level bullsh—”

A pop cracked the silence—a bullet through glass. Reynold dove instinctively, taking her down with him just as the window behind her exploded in a shimmer of death and dust. She landed hard on the floor beneath him, breath knocked out, heart doing tap-dance routines.

They stayed there for a beat, tangled on the floor like old lovers or new fugitives.

“Guess they tracked me,” he said, voice tight.

Dhalia pushed him off, snatched the pistol taped under her table, and smiled like a woman remembering who she used to be.

“No, sweetheart. They tracked me.”

And just like that, the quiet life Dhalia had stitched together unraveled—thread by bloody thread.

The ghost was back. And this time, she had company.