Damien Voss hadn’t worn a tie in fourteen months.He used to keep them aligned by color—navy to charcoal, silk to linen, a little trick he picked up from an MI6 station chief in Jakarta. That man was dead now. Bomb in a rented motorbike. Wrong place, wrong time. Or right time, depending on who you asked.Voss hadn’t spoken to anyone from the Service since London burned him. A botched extraction, a blown safe house, and three agents dead. Officially, it was called a “strategic miscommunication.” Unofficially, Voss became a liability. They didn’t fire him. They just stopped returning his calls.Now he taught tactical fieldwork to private contractors and war tourists who paid too much for the illusion of danger. Istanbul was cheap, warm, and full of people trying to forget things. He fit right in.But the voice on the phone—that clipped, familiar tone—dragged him back like gravity.“Who is this?” Voss had asked.“You don’t need to know. You just need to get on a plane.”“Give me one reas

Damien Voss hated politics.He hated the way truth got reshaped into half-statements, how facts bled under pressure, how silence was often louder than any scream. But more than that, he hated knowing that if Specter was in play, someone with a title—and a budget—had ordered it.Inside the summit’s off-site command center, he scanned the rotating schedules. Security had been “enhanced” after Rydell’s last rally. That meant more guards, more cameras, more chaos.“Look at this,” Malik said, zooming in on a digital floor plan.“Coatroom access. Normally restricted. Now it’s shared between two cleaning vendors—one registered just two weeks ago.”“Fake company?”Voss nodded. “Specter likes doors no one else sees.”They traced the vendor to a small logistics office in Warsaw. Dead end. The records were scrubbed so clean, even the metadata had metadata.Malik looked over. “So what now?”“We bait him,” Voss said. “We pull the schedule forward. Make it look like Rydell’s speech is moving up by

Voss ducked into a shuttered bookstore on Rue des Jardins, the musty air thick with dust and rotting pages. It was the kind of place people forgot. Perfect.He closed the hidden door behind the travel guides and sat still in the dark.Lira had missed her shot. That meant she’d either retreat—or escalate.His money was on the second option.He activated his burner tablet. It ran off a VPN network last used in a failed op in Marrakesh. He accessed a NATO shadow feed. Pings were lighting up across multiple diplomatic channels—Specter’s signal was bouncing through dead satellites, ghost protocols, blacklisted intel servers.It wasn’t sabotage.It was broadcast.He wasn’t hiding information.He was delivering it.Voss stared at the data feed: dossiers, private communications, troop movements, policy leaks.This wasn’t a kill mission.It was a reveal.Malik stood at the digital operations table back at command, fingers flying across the screen.“I’m seeing a pattern,” she said into her mic.

Julien Rehn hadn’t slept in three days.The shadows under his eyes weren’t just from exhaustion—they were from years of knowing something too dangerous to forget. Operation ATHENA wasn’t just a contingency. It was insurance. A weaponized failsafe NATO built during a cold war within its own walls.And now someone had activated it.He copied the files to an encrypted stick drive and shoved it into his coat. The original hard drive? Smashed to pieces. He wasn’t taking any chances.The buzzer rang downstairs.He froze.Two floors down, footsteps moved silently.Not Voss.Not Malik.Specter.Outside, Voss and Malik exited their black SUV two blocks from Rehn’s apartment.“We go quiet,” Voss said. “If Specter’s here, we don’t get a second chance.”Malik pulled a compact sub-weapon from her belt. “What’s the plan?”“We don’t need to catch him. We just need Rehn alive.”They split—Voss from the north alley, Malik from the south fire escape.Time was running thin.Inside the building, Rehn rea

Paris was eerily calm that night. The soft hum of traffic outside the Palais Garnier contrasted with the darkness that cloaked its inner corridors. The Opera House had been closed for maintenance, but its secrets were always open to those with the right keys.Specter wasn’t the first to arrive, but he’d been watching for days.The vault beneath the Palais was a relic. Designed to protect millions in precious artifacts, it had been left largely forgotten after an early 20th-century heist attempt. Still, its security was among the tightest in Europe—sensors, locks, codes, and even lasers that could slice a person in half if they failed to navigate the path correctly.But Specter had navigated it all before. This wasn’t about brute force—it was about patience.Inside, Malik, Voss, and Rehn were circling above ground, waiting for their moment. Malik stared out over the city’s skyline, tension crackling in her veins. She knew Specter had one step ahead. Always. And if they didn’t move soon