They reached the harbor before dawn, when the world was still grey and unfinished. The air was heavy with the smell of salt and oil, and gulls wheeled over the water like scraps of paper caught in a slow wind. A lone cargo ship idled at the far pier, its deck lights flickering weakly through the fog.Lana pulled her coat tighter and glanced at Grey. “You’re sure the captain can be trusted?”“He’s not a captain anymore,” Grey replied. “Just a man who owes me a favor.”That didn’t answer her question, but she didn’t press. Trust was a currency they’d both learned to spend carefully. Too carefully.They walked the length of the dock, their footsteps muffled by rain. Around them, the city was beginning to stir — a distant siren, a flicker of headlights, the low hum of life returning to the streets. It felt strange to leave it all behind, but Lana told herself this was what survival looked like: not triumph, but distance.At the end of the pier, a man stepped out from behind a stack of cra

The Lisbon coast rose out of the mist like a memory half-remembered — pale rooftops, church spires, gulls circling in lazy loops over the harbor. The ship moored quietly at dawn, its engines dying into the hush of morning.Lana stepped off first. The boards beneath her feet were slick from night rain, the air thick with the scent of salt and oil. She’d been here once before — not Lisbon, but a place that felt just like this, years ago, when she’d still believed new cities meant new beginnings.Now, every harbor felt like the same promise with a different name.Grey followed a few paces behind, a duffel slung over his shoulder. He looked like a man who’d stopped pretending to blend in. There was no disguise anymore — just exhaustion, sharpened by purpose.“She said three days,” he murmured.Lana nodded, eyes scanning the line of fishing boats tied along the dock. “And she meant exactly three.”They moved inland through the waking city, narrow streets slick with rain, café lights flicke

By evening, the wind had shifted. It came off the water now, sharp with salt and the faint tang of oil from the docks. The city had started to stir again — lights flickering to life in apartments, the low hum of trains echoing from the distance. Yet everything felt slightly out of rhythm, as if the world itself sensed something buried was about to rise.Grey parked the car in an alley near the harbor and cut the engine. “We won’t have another night like this,” he said quietly. “Once we release the files, there’s no walking it back.”Lana stared through the windshield at the water’s edge. “There’s no walking back from any of this.”He watched her for a moment, studying the stillness in her profile. The weeks had carved something new into her — a quiet gravity that made her seem both older and more certain than before.“What’s our entry point?” he asked.“The broadcast tower near the district pier,” she said. “Old military relay. It’s still connected to the municipal grid, and if we rou

The rain began again halfway through Vermont — not the harsh, city kind that echoed against concrete, but a cold, patient drizzle that blurred the world into muted color. The air smelled of pine and soil. The road narrowed to a ribbon of cracked asphalt that wound between rolling fields, each more abandoned than the last.Lana sat with her arms folded, watching the trees sway past. The note lay on her lap, edges soft from handling. She had read it a dozen times since leaving New York, but each reading opened more questions than it closed.You were my proof.Proof of what? Survival? Redemption? Seraphine’s words had never been simple, and this was no different.Grey kept one hand on the wheel, the other resting lightly near his sidearm. His posture hadn’t eased since dawn. He looked like a man driving toward a reckoning he couldn’t name.“When we find this place,” he said, eyes still on the road, “we take nothing for granted. Doors, windows, floors—everything’s a trap until proven othe

By the time they reached Ashmere Hill, the sun had vanished behind a veil of heavy clouds, turning the countryside into a gray wash of silence and cold. The road wound steeply upward, flanked by pines that whispered with the sound of rain still trapped in their branches. The coordinates Marcus had given them ended at a rusted gate — the kind that hadn’t been opened in years.Lana stepped out first, boots sinking into the wet ground. Beyond the gate, the outline of a house stood faintly against the dusk — two stories, slanted roof, windows clouded with grime. It wasn’t grand like the Havel Estate, but it carried the same quiet weight of secrets left too long untold.Grey joined her, hands shoved into his coat pockets. “Looks abandoned.”“It’s meant to,” she said. “She’d never hide something in plain view.”He examined the gate latch — it was still locked, but the chain was new. Someone had been here recently. He broke it with a twist of the crowbar he kept in the trunk. The metal clank