The night crept in, velvet and heavy with secrets. Ethan crouched by the cracked window of their new safe house—a dusty apartment above a closed-down pawn shop. The city below simmered with flickering neon and muffled sirens, each sound another reminder that they were living on borrowed time.Mara paced behind him, arms folded tight across her chest. “We need to make a move. Staying here is suicide.”Ethan didn’t turn. “Marcus knows we’re close. He’s baiting us. Pushing the noose tighter every hour.”She exhaled sharply. “And yet here we are—waiting.”“No.” He rose, jaw tight. “We’re listening.”They’d intercepted a scrambled frequency fifteen minutes earlier—one only someone with Lazarus clearance could decode. Ethan’s fingers flew across the ancient laptop’s keyboard, deciphering the buried message hidden in binary static.He finally cracked it.[TARGET MOVE: SITE GAMMA — 0200 HRS][ESCORT: OMEGA TEAM][PRIORITY: LEVEL BLACK]“Site Gamma,” Ethan muttered. “That’s a Rayburn fallback

The chopper blades faded into the distance, leaving behind a tremor in the cold night air. Ethan crouched behind a stack of rusted cargo containers, eyes locked on the entrance to the underground facility below the abandoned naval yard. Beside him, Mara checked her sidearm, her breath pluming like smoke in the freezing wind.“This is it,” she murmured. “Below us lies whatever Rayburn doesn’t want the world to see.”“Then let’s see it,” Ethan replied, eyes sharp. “Before Marcus gets here.”They descended through the shattered grates of a defunct maintenance shaft. The stench of mold and old sea brine grew thicker with every step. Echoes followed them—metal groaning under years of neglect, distant humming machines still alive with a sinister pulse.Ethan’s memory flickered again—brief, like lightning in fog.A white hallway. Doors sealed tight. A voice saying: “Subject 19 is stable.”He didn’t tell Mara.Not yet.The corridor opened up into a wide chamber lined with old consoles, some s

 The silence in the underground safehouse stretched thin, punctuated only by the whirring of the decrypted terminal. On screen, Aiden Vale’s file glowed in stark, clinical font.Status: ACTIVE.Designation: LZ-001.Location: SITE VANTA.Ethan stared at the image—his brother’s face was unmistakable, only older, leaner, as if time had burned through his soul and left only ash behind. Aiden had died in 2029. Killed in a black ops mission in Eastern Ukraine. Or so they were told.“What the hell is Site Vanta?” Ethan muttered, hands clenched on the edge of the desk.Mara scrolled further. “Off-book facility. No official designation. Buried under several layers of shell corporations.”Cato spoke up from behind. “I’ve heard whispers. It’s not just a lab. It’s a graveyard.”Ethan turned. “Graveyard?”“Where they bury things too

For a long moment, neither Ethan nor Mara moved.Violet Arden stood like a phantom against the sterile corridor, untouched by time, reality, or consequence. Her presence alone felt like an offense against everything they thought they knew—against death itself.“You should be dead,” Mara said, raising her weapon just slightly.Violet didn’t flinch. “And yet… here I am. You’re not the only one they lied to.”Ethan stepped forward slowly, eyes scanning her every twitch. She wasn’t armed. At least, not visibly. But there was something about her posture—disciplined, clinical—that made him uneasy. “Start talking.”Violet nodded toward the door behind her. “Inside. I’ll tell you everything. But if you want the truth, you’ll need to see it for yourself.”Ethan exchanged a glance with Mara. He could read the doubt in her expression, but there was also resolve. They didn’t come this far to retreat now.They followed Violet through the sliding doors—and into the heart of the ARX Sigma facility.

The rain hadn’t let up since midnight, now hammering down like it was trying to bury all of New Elysium’s sins beneath water and broken glass. The wipers on Silas Ward’s car screeched across the windshield, clearing a momentary path through the deluge as the city lights bled into one another like a watercolor gone mad.Silas’s hands gripped the wheel tighter. The warehouse district loomed ahead, a sprawl of industrial bones long abandoned by legitimate business but thriving in the underbelly of illicit trade and blood money. His phone buzzed once—an encrypted message from an unknown number.“He’s here. You’ve got 30 minutes before it’s cleaned.”Silas didn’t need to ask who “he” was. Tobias Vale. The name had become a bitter taste in his mouth over the past week. Former intelligence asset, turned ghost, turned the root of everything that had gone sideways—starting with the Eden T