The Vanguard safe house was buried deep beneath the scorched remains of an old monastery in northern Kazakhstan. Its stone walls had been reinforced with psychic shielding and spectral cloaks, rendering it nearly invisible to most forms of surveillance. Even then, the team moved in silence—half from exhaustion, half from the weight of the revelations they'd uncovered in the Arctic.Samuel stood at the central terminal, the map of Tibet glowing on the screen. His gaze remained fixed on the blood-red blinking dot—Sarah’s signal, flickering like a heartbeat from the mountains that now felt more like a tomb.Joey leaned against a pillar nearby, cleaning the barrel of his rifle with methodical focus. “Two siblings. Three roles. Catalyst. Gate. Silencer.” He exhaled. “Feels like we’re stuck in the middle of someone else’s prophecy.”Samuel didn’t reply. His mind replayed the final moments in the Arctic vault—his father’s voice, the raw vial of Chronogen, and the implication that Sarah had b

The city of Lisbon shimmered beneath a dusky sky, its tiled rooftops glowing gold as the sun dipped behind the horizon. Street vendors packed up their wares. Ships rocked gently in the Tagus River. To the untrained eye, everything seemed peaceful—undisturbed.But Samuel could feel it.The air was too still. The shadows stretched too long.Something was watching.From the rooftop of an abandoned hotel, he scanned the old quarter below. Joey crouched beside him, peering through a high-resolution scope, while Aria worked a signal scanner nearby, her fingers dancing over holographic glyphs.“We should’ve kept moving,” Joey muttered. “The signal flare from Mount Kailash could’ve alerted every rogue cell from here to Senegal.”Samuel didn’t respond. His senses were frayed—half tethered to the material world, half drifting in subtle frequencies only his evolved mind could hear. The recent stabilization of his double-helix had unlocked more than just balance. It had made him aware.Aware of e

The morning fog in the Andalusian hills rolled in thick, blanketing the landscape like a quiet warning. The safehouse, carved into the rock face, remained hidden beneath layers of enchantments and old-world architecture—shadows and silence clinging to every wall.Samuel stood alone in the communication chamber.The hologram on the table flickered—distorted briefly—then stabilized into the face he hadn’t seen in weeks.Lisa.Her hair was shorter now, uneven, as if cut hastily. Her face was gaunter than he remembered, and her eyes—once sharp with purpose—seemed distant. Not broken. Just... finished.“Samuel,” her voice echoed through the chamber, quiet and solemn. “If you’re hearing this, then I’ve already left.”Samuel said nothing. His hands rested against the edge of the table, fingers digging into the steel as he listened.Lisa continued. “I know you’re still fighting. Still chasing after truths that burn. And I know you think we’re all meant to stay by your side until the very end.

The morning fog in the Atlas foothills was unusually thick—unnatural, even. Like a curtain drawn by something sentient. Vanguard’s outpost in northern Morocco sat tucked between two ravines, its low visibility supposedly a defense against aerial tracking.But today, that fog was a weapon.Sarah stood at the edge of the perimeter, her breath curling in the air, eyes scanning the opaque valley below. She’d been restless since dawn, the whispers returning—distant, warbled, like ancient voices beneath water. At first, she thought it was residual trauma from the last gate pulse in Tibet. But now...Now it felt like something was calling.Joey stood a few paces behind her, one hand on the sidearm holstered at his hip.“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes at the horizon. “We haven’t fully re-secured the perimeter.”“I couldn’t sleep,” Sarah replied. “It’s louder at night.”“The whispers?”She nodded. “They’re different now. Focused. Like they’re... searching for

Snow howled against the facility’s ancient, iron-reinforced blast doors like a hungry ghost. Vanguard’s stealth transport had landed hours earlier, camouflaged beneath a shifting blanket of artificial snowdrift, and now the team was buried deep beneath a forgotten Siberian mountain—moving through corridors where frost coated even the light fixtures.They had come looking for intel. What they found felt more like a tomb.“This place gives me the creeps,” Joey muttered, sweeping his light across the icy walls, where symbols from the Orion files were half-scraped away—as if someone had tried to erase their meaning but failed.Sarah walked beside him, pulse rifle at the ready. “It’s a cryo-lab. Maybe even the first one. Samuel’s father was here.”Aria remained silent, her eyes scanning every crack in the steel walls. “Not just his father,” she said. “This is where the backups were stored. The genetic templates, the failed prototypes… and the ‘if everything goes wrong’ protocols.”Samuel,