---The bullet missed Ethan by inches.Sparks flew as it ricocheted off the altar, forcing him to dive for cover behind the stone pedestal. The Seed orb clutched tight in one bleeding hand, he rolled just in time to avoid a second shot—this one tearing a chunk out of the ancient wall beside him.“Contact left!” Wren yelled, returning fire with deadly precision. “She’s not here to talk!”Jules ducked behind a fallen pillar, yanking Ethan down beside him. “Who the hell is this woman?”“Helena Vale,” Ethan growled. “Daughter of Marcus Vale. One of the original Nine.”Jules cursed. “I thought she was dead.”“Then you weren’t paying attention.”The crimson-coated woman strode forward through the crossfire as if bullets were whispers. Her guards moved like phantoms—silent, fast, brutal. Within seconds, half of the Nine’s operatives were dead or retreating. The rest were caught in the crosshairs of chaos.Helena raised one hand, and her team halted.“You’ve been busy, Ethan,” she called acro

---“Silas Cross is dead.”The words dropped from Ethan’s mouth like a hammer, but the image on Wren’s screen said otherwise.A surveillance still—grainy, timestamped from six weeks ago—showed a man in a lab coat exiting a Helix-owned bio-research facility in the Swiss Alps. Face partially obscured by snow gear, but unmistakable.Silas Cross.Ethan’s father.Alive.Wren’s voice was sharp. “Facial match is ninety-eight percent. Gait analysis confirms the rest. It’s him.”Ethan stared at the image, blood rushing in his ears. His father, the man he buried in his memory, the legend he was chasing, wasn’t a ghost.He was a weapon. Helena’s weapon.“What the hell is Project Revenant?” Camille whispered.Ethan’s jaw clenched. “Something worse than death.”---Hours later, the war room was alive with motion.Camille hacked into Helix’s Geneva node. Jules traced satellite logs. Wren coordinated drone surveillance.Ethan stood at the center, silent. Focused. Fire in his veins.Finally, Jules sl

Boom.The blast ripped through Geneva’s finance district like a thunderclap from hell. Shockwaves rolled down the avenues, shattering glass across four blocks, tossing parked cars into storefronts, and igniting sirens in every direction. The Vault Axis tower—a Dominion front Ethan had fortified for years—collapsed in a roaring avalanche of smoke, steel, and burning concrete.Within minutes, the ripple effect spread worldwide.Trading floors in New York, London, Tokyo, and Dubai froze. Monitors flickered static, then black. Currency values flatlined mid-transaction. And deep beneath the digital chaos, ten offshore accounts bled out nearly seven hundred million dollars—all siphoned away in seconds.It wasn’t an attack.It was a message.And its sender carved it in digital blood with a mark Ethan thought buried forever:𝕋9.The True Nine had returned.---“I want eyes on everything!” Ethan barked as he stormed into the Monaco estate’s command suite, his voice like a whip crack. The nerv

---“Ethan?”Wren’s voice cracked with disbelief. “Is that… really your father?”Ethan didn’t answer.He couldn’t.The man standing inside the open pod looked exactly like Silas Cross—same storm-gray eyes, same powerful stance, even the faint scar over his brow from a car bombing back in Mumbai.But the man in the chamber wasn't blinking. Just standing there… too still. Too perfect.Synthetic. Engineered. A construct.Then the second pod opened—and Marcus Vale stepped out like death made flesh, his breath slow, mechanical… eyes burning with controlled rage.Kael’s voice rang out, smug and cold.“Gentlemen, meet Protocol Omega—the Lazarus cycle’s first successful resurrection of a legacy brain. A cloned body enhanced with combat nanocytes, fed every file your father ever encrypted.”He smiled cruelly at Ethan.“Say hello to your better.”---“Light the charges,” Ethan growled.Wren hesitated. “They’re still moving—what if—?”Ethan didn’t wait. He raised his sidearm and fired directly i

---“Liora Vale…”Ethan repeated the name like a curse passed down through bloodlines. His voice cracked the silence inside the war room. Camille’s eyes stayed locked on the photograph—the child Ethan never remembered, the man he never expected to see holding his hand: Kael Vale, Helena’s father. The man Ethan thought he’d buried years ago.Camille’s lips trembled. “She died… or so we thought. All records of Helena’s sister vanished after the fire that killed their mother.”“Which means someone didn’t want us knowing she was alive,” Jules added, stepping closer to the blood-painted wall. “Or maybe… someone made sure she became something else.”Ethan turned to Camille, eyes cold. “Tell me everything you know about Liora Vale. Now.”---Camille swallowed hard, her voice shaky. “Liora was the quiet one. The obedient daughter. Helena was the wild card, the trained assassin, the family’s razor edge. But Liora... she was the mind. Gifted. Calculated. She had an IQ off the charts, graduated