7:55 AM ,at an Unknown Location, Underground Facility The cold hits Darius before the pain does. His limbs are bound—metal cuffs pin his wrists to a reinforced steel chair. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, and a rhythmic drip of water echoes through the cavernous chamber. There’s a metallic taste in his mouth. His head throbs like a war drum, each pulse a cruel reminder that he’s still alive. He tries to move. Bad idea. Electricity jolts through the cuffs like liquid fire, slamming him back into the chair with a violent snap. He grits his teeth to keep from screaming. “So,” comes a voice from the shadows, slow and cruel, “the great Darius Raines finally gets caught.” Darius’s eyes focus. A silhouette steps forward. Not Veldt. Worse. Lucien Marek.&n

 1:10 PM ,Safe-house, Oslo Outskirts The flickering flame in the fireplace reflects off Darius’s eyes as he reviews the decrypted data on the screen. His mind churns through the information like gears grinding through steel. Geneva. The Black Summit. Names he’s heard whispered behind doors sealed by power and blood. Cassia slides into the seat beside him, holding a cup of black coffee. No words—just presence. Just understanding. “We’re running out of time,” Darius mutters, tapping the blinking red node labeled “Summit Alpha.” “Lucien was just the first lever. Someone else is still pulling the strings.” Cassia sets the cup down. “Who?” “I don’t know yet. But whoever it is… they want me alive.” She arches a brow. “You sure about that?”<

The jet sliced through the clouds like a ghost through memory, smooth, silent, and surrounded by a sky that seemed far too peaceful for the war they’d just survived. Darius sat in the back, shoulders tense, eyes locked on the encrypted tablet in his hands. The sunlight danced over his knuckles, revealing fresh bruises layered atop old scars. The weight of what had been done—and what hadn’t—was pressing against his ribs like concrete. Cassia appeared in the aisle beside him, holding two cups of coffee. She handed one over without a word. He took it, nodding his thanks. “Europe’s burning,” she said finally, sliding into the seat across from him. “Hydra’s shell companies are being gutted. Arrests are already underway. World leaders are panicking because their strings just snapped.” Darius sipped the bit

5:45 AM,at Zurich, Switzerland The city lay quiet under a gray morning mist, unaware that its digital underbelly was about to erupt. Inside a sleek high-rise nestled in the financial district, a private server room glowed with sterile blue light. The building belonged to no public institution—no government, no corporate entity. It was Hydra’s last legitimate foothold, a private data citadel guarded by biometric encryption, silent alarms, and mercenaries paid more than the Prime Minister. But none of that mattered to Darius now. He stood across the street in a black trench coat, eyes narrowed behind mirrored lenses, watching the digital heartbeat of Karr flicker across the stolen tablet in his hands. The last remnants of her consciousness were here—uploaded not into one location, but spread across a spiderweb of decentralized neural AI nodes. Cassia stood beside

 1:00 AM ,En Route to Luxembourg The black SUV cut through the night like a predator stalking its prey, slicing through the snow-glazed roads of the Austrian Alps. Inside, tension sat thick between Darius, Cassia, and Jules—no music, no conversation, just the soft hum of tires and the occasional flicker of satellite data updates on the tablet strapped to the dash. Cassia kept scanning the laptop screen. “She’s still broadcasting. No origin point. It’s bouncing through too many proxies to trace.” Darius didn’t take his eyes off the road. “She’s baiting us.” Jules grunted. “Well, it’s working.” They were heading toward the only data vault in Europe that hadn’t gone dark in the last 48 hours. A classified Hydra backup facility hidden beneath the Luxembourg financial district. If the ghost of D