The emergency strategy session began at 3 AM in a reinforced basement three levels below the medical facility. Adrian had insisted on the location—deep underground, electromagnetically shielded, with exactly one entrance that could be sealed in seconds. They were done taking chances.The six remaining loyal Titans sat around a salvaged conference table. Lyra's holographic form occupied the seventh seat, running on backup batteries that gave her maybe six more hours of operational time before she went dark permanently."Let's start with what we know," Adrian said, pulling up a holographic display. "The Syndicate has twelve deepfake facilities. We destroyed one in Romania. That leaves eleven still operational.""We can't raid all of them," Zane objected. "We barely survived Romania, and that was with surprise on our side.""We don't need to raid them," Maya said, her fingers dancing across her laptop. "We need to make them irrelevant. The evidence we captured proves the videos are fabri

Maya's fingers hovered over the enter key, trembling slightly. One keystroke would unleash the Chimera virus across twelve facilities simultaneously. One keystroke would cross the line from defense to offense, from victim to aggressor."Thirty seconds," she announced to the war room.Adrian watched the countdown on the central display. Around him, the loyal Titans had assembled—Zane monitoring defensive systems, Aisha coordinating communication channels, Dr. Chen reviewing facility status reports. Even Lyra's flickering hologram was present, her diminished processing power still sufficient to oversee the attack."Twenty seconds."The satellite feeds showed all twelve facilities in their mundane evening routines. Lights in windows. Vehicles in parking lots. People working late shifts, unaware that their digital infrastructure was about to be annihilated."Are we sure about this?" Dr. Chen asked one last time."No," Adrian replied honestly. "But we're doing it anyway.""Ten seconds."Ma

The pre-dawn darkness over Geneva was absolute. Adrian crouched in the back of an unmarked van three hundred meters from the Syndicate compound, running final equipment checks. Around him, the other Titans made their own preparations with the grim focus of soldiers heading into battle they might not survive.Zane tested the prototype energy drones he'd been developing—sleek devices the size of dinner plates that could generate defensive shields or electromagnetic pulses. "I've got six functional units," he announced. "Enough to give us a fighting chance if things go loud.""When things go loud," Maya corrected, her fingers flying across multiple tablets as she mapped the compound's digital infrastructure. "There's no way we can get in and out of there quietly. The best we can hope for is controlled chaos."Dr. Chen checked the medical supplies he'd insisted on bringing despite the mission's offensive nature. "Someone's going to get hurt. Probably multiple people. I'd prefer we don't b

The secure location Elena had promised turned out to be a decommissioned monastery in the French Alps, its stone walls three feet thick and its only connection to the outside world a single satellite uplink that could be severed in seconds. Adrian stood in what had once been the chapel, now converted into a makeshift command center, surrounded by equipment hastily salvaged from their abandoned safe houses.Through a video link on the main screen, nine hundred thousand faces stared back at him.The Haven survivors had been scattered across seventeen different refugee camps in international waters, aboard rescue ships, and on the shores of sympathetic nations. Dr. Ibrahim had spent twelve hours coordinating this broadcast, linking every camp, every ship, every temporary shelter into a single network.Nine hundred thousand people who'd lost everything. Again.Most had been refugees before the Scholars found them—displaced by war, famine, climate disasters. The Haven had been their second

The first news alert came three hours and forty-seven minutes after Lyra's deployment. BBC World Service, interrupting their regular programming with a bulletin delivered by a visibly shaken anchor:"We're receiving what appears to be authenticated documentation of a coordinated conspiracy involving major corporate and government entities. The files are being attributed to the Scholars organization, currently wanted on terrorism charges, but independent verification suggests the documents may be genuine..."Adrian watched from the monastery's command center as the dominoes began to fall.CNN picked it up twelve minutes later. Then Al Jazeera. Reuters. The Guardian published a 10,000-word investigation that their team must have been preparing for days, waiting for confirmation. The New York Times broke the Project Titanfall story with photos of the hit list, Omar's assassination records, and the planned timeline for eliminating the Scholar leadership."It's working," Maya breathed, tra