Three months. That's how long they'd been ghosts. They'd traded the decaying urban jungle for the vast, silent expanse of the American Southwest, holed up in a dusty, single-wide trailer on the edge of a forgotten town that consisted of a gas station and a diner that served pie no one ever ordered. The money came from small, untraceable jobs Joseph found on dark web forums—fixing code, creating digital ghosts, nothing that would draw the attention of the Consortium. It was a meager, paranoid existence, a world away from penthouses and supercars.Alexander was under the trailer, elbow-deep in its rusted underbelly, trying to patch a leak in the water line with duct tape and a prayer. The desert sun baked the metal above him, and sweat dripped into his eyes."Remind me again why we're living in a tin can that's actively trying to return to the earth?" Joseph's voice came from the shade of a skeletal juniper tree, where he was hunched over a laptop, its screen dimmed against the glare."

The drone of the cargo plane’s engines was the only sound for a long moment, a monotonous hum that underscored the chilling revelation. Sterling was there. Waiting.Joseph was the first to break the silence, his voice cracking. "He's what? How? How could he possibly know?"Thorne’s face was a mask of grim calculation. "He doesn't know we're coming. Not specifically. But he knows I'm in the wind. He knows I'm the only one with the knowledge to threaten that facility. He's baiting a trap, and I walked us right into it." She slammed a fist against a metal crate. "I was arrogant. I thought we had the advantage of surprise.""We still do," Alexander said, his voice calm, cutting through their rising panic. He was staring at the tablet, his mind absorbing the new data, the new battlefield. "He's expecting Aris. A scientist on the run. He's expecting a desperate, direct assault on the mountain or a clumsy attempt to sabotage the power. He's not expecting us.""He's expecting a mouse," Sasha

The Italian safe house was a small, dusty apartment above a bakery, the air thick with the scent of old yeast and fresh betrayal. For three days, they didn't move. They watched the news cycle churn, monitored encrypted chat rooms, and waited for the world's reaction to the "Prometheus" data bomb. Joseph, buzzing with a manic energy, was their window to the digital fallout."It's a feeding frenzy!" he announced, his eyes glued to his laptop screen. "The CIA is issuing statements. Russia is accusing the Swiss of harboring illegal weapons programs. Every tech blog on the planet is dissecting the fragments of the data we leaked. It's chaos! Beautiful, beautiful chaos!"Sasha was quieter, her focus on Thorne. The scientist was a ghost of her former self, moving through the apartment like a sleepwalker, her grief a palpable fog. She had traded her daughter for a strategic victory, and the weight of that choice was crushing her.Alexander stood by the window, watching the quiet street below.

The butcher shop safe house in Marseille stank of blood and despair. For two days, they were statues in the gloom, the only movement the flicker of news reports on Joseph’s laptop detailing the global unraveling of the Consortium. It was a hollow victory, soundtracked by Aris Thorne’s silent, shattering grief.On the third day, Alexander stood up. The motion was so sudden it made Joseph jump. The listlessness was gone, burned away, leaving behind a core of cold, hardened purpose.“We’re leaving,” Alexander announced, his voice rough from disuse.Joseph looked up from his screen, his face pale. “Leaving? To where? The entire world is looking for the faces connected to the Nice shooting! We’re ghosts with a price on our heads!”“We’re not ghosts,” Alexander corrected, his gaze sweeping over them. Sasha watched him, her artist’s eyes seeing the new, terrifying lines etched into his soul. “Ghosts haunt. We hunt.”He walked to the single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and turned it on,

The world on the Devil’s Dancefloor had shrunk to the two of them, the wind a silent witness. Sterling’s throat was a fragile thing in Alexander’s hands, his pulse a frantic, birdlike flutter against Alexander’s thumbs. The man’s eyes were wide, bulging with the primal terror of imminent death. There was no grand speech, no final curse. Just the raw, ugly struggle for one more breath.Alexander could feel it. The end. A slight increase of pressure, the crunch of cartilage, and the debt would be paid. The ledger balanced in blood. Lena Thorne avenged. The monster slain.He saw it all in Sterling’s eyes—the panicked calculations, the desperate offers that couldn’t be spoken, the final, humiliating realization that he was going to die on this cold rock, defeated by the boy he had tried to break.Squeeze.The order screamed in Alexander’s mind, a red-hot brand of vengeance.But another image superimposed itself over Sterling’s purpling face. It was Lorenzo Benedetti, in his study, the wei