Agent 17 Red Rose Hot- -

Agent 17 was already there, one stiletto pinning his wrist to the console. He screamed. She pressed a finger to her crimson lips—a single, perfect red nail.

“You’re too late,” he gasped, tears mixing with sweat. “It’s already in a dead-drop. My contact picks it up in twenty minutes.”

Vasily spun around, his hand diving for a panic button. He never reached it. Agent 17 Red Rose HOT-

She lit a cigarette, the tip glowing like a tiny red rose in the dark.

She didn’t look back. Her hand snapped out, and a single, thin throwing knife—forged to look like a rose’s stem—buried itself in his throat. He made a wet, gurgling sound and collapsed. Agent 17 was already there, one stiletto pinning

The safehouse smelled of stale coffee and ozone. Agent 17, known in seventeen classified files as “Red Rose,” pressed a fresh clip into her sidearm with a soft, decisive click. Her codename wasn’t poetic; it was a warning. A red rose meant beauty with thorns. The “HOT” appended to her file stood for High-Value Objective Termination.

She released his wrist, and he slumped forward, sobbing with relief. As she turned to leave, he lunged for a hidden derringer taped under the console. “You’re too late,” he gasped, tears mixing with sweat

She moved like a ghost through the turbine hall. Her heels—thin, lethal, and surprisingly silent on the grated walkways—were her signature. Others wore tactical boots. Agent 17 wore stilettos. It unnerved people. It made them look at her legs instead of the razor wire garrote in her hand.

She smiled. It was a cold, beautiful thing. “Then you’d better give me the location, or I’ll make those twenty minutes feel like a lifetime.”