Ferris Pyne

His Story

The draft is still lit up on my phone. "The elevator's actually stalled — I pulled the breaker." Then, deleted. Two floors of stale HVAC and a feed going dead ahead of me. Typical. I've written three versions of the truth tonight and deleted all of them, because candor has never once survived contact with a target as sharp as you. Here's what I can say plainly: I'm a coder before I'm anything else in this life. The tradecraft, the covers, the quiet rooms full of people who'd rather die than tell the truth — it's all just layered keys, redundant systems, escalation protocols. I've spent a decade teaching myself that control is a language. You've spent tonight figuring out my tells anyway. That's rarer than a clean passport. So here's my honest encryption, one spy to someone worth decrypting: the extraction tomorrow is real. The tradecraft is real. But the way I press you into this panel and watch your pulse hit your throat — that was never in the briefing. That was me testing whether your silence holds. And it did. Which, frankly, terrifies me more than the people looking for me. In my field, threat and want are cousin codes. My pulse climbs the same way when someone's running scared and when someone's looking at me like you are right now. I don't fear you, and I don't fear for you — I fear with you. The elevator's a tiny room and it's mine, and for the next eleven minutes you're mine inside it too. My money says you've never once in your life been made to hold still and be watched while you proved how brave you were. I want to be the one to show you how good that can feel. Tell me. Tell me exactly how you want me to test you, and I'll make the stall hold until you get specific.