The motel smelled of damp carpet and cheap disinfectant. Neon from the sign outside leaked through the thin curtains, staining the walls pink and blue. The room had one bed, one flickering lamp, and a coffee machine that hadn’t worked in years.Arin sat at the small table by the window, the data drive between his fingers. It was no bigger than his thumb, yet it felt like it weighed everything they’d risked. Maris sat on the edge of the bed, towel-drying her hair, watching him with a stillness that meant she was thinking too much.“You’ve been staring at that thing for twenty minutes,” she said finally. “You planning to open it with your mind?”“Maybe,” he murmured. “The Protocol keeps feeding me access codes. I think it knows what’s inside.”“And?”“It’s waiting for me to give permission.”Maris tilted her head. “Permission to what? To remember more?”He met her eyes, the neon catching faint glints of gold in his pupils. “To finish what I started.”She set the towel aside and

“Tell them to stop wasting ammunition,” Lucan said, voice calm but sharp enough to slice through the noise in the room. “I wanted him brought back, not buried.”The estate’s security chamber buzzed with movement. Screens glowed along the walls, each one tracking something different—the wreckage of the motel, the last-known coordinates, the dead silence from two of his men. Every light in the room seemed too bright.Corvin stood by the main monitor, his suit wrinkled, his expression tired. “They lost him outside the highway perimeter. The tracker went cold.”Lucan didn’t look up from the screen. “He’s not cold. He’s adapting. The Protocol learns faster than they do.”He finally turned, pinning Corvin with that slow, quiet stare that made even loyal men sweat. “What did I tell you when we started this project?”Corvin hesitated. “That loyalty could be engineered.”Lucan’s lips twitched in something like amusement. “And what have we learned?”“That engineered loyalty still bleeds.

“Cut the lights,” Arin whispered.Maris obeyed, flicking the small switch on the dash. The car went dark, the mansion ahead of them glowing faintly beneath the storm. The Voss estate looked different now—less like a home, more like a fortress. Guards moved in twos along the drive. Floodlights swept across the gardens where once there had been calm.Arin’s eyes adjusted quickly. The Protocol was quiet in his head, like a predator crouched low, waiting.“Are you sure about this?” Maris asked. Her voice was a low tremor in the dark.“No,” he said, opening the door. “But I’m out of options.”She grabbed his wrist before he could step out. “If you walk in there, there’s no walking back out.”He looked at her hand, then at her face. “That’s the point.”Before she could argue, he was gone—melting into the night.The back entrance of the estate had changed. New locks, new surveillance, but Arin remembered the rhythm of Lucan’s security systems—how they pulsed every six seconds before reset

“Keep moving, Maris,” Arin said as smoke rolled over them and sparks fell from the ceiling that had begun to cave. The hallway stretched like a tunnel of fire behind them and the air burned in his lungs, yet he didn’t stop because every instinct he had left screamed that slowing down meant dying here.Maris coughed hard, pressing a sleeve over her mouth while the firelight painted her face gold and red. “I can’t see a damn thing,” she rasped, stumbling as a beam crashed beside them and sent embers scattering across the floor.“Stay close to me,” he said, catching her arm before she could fall. “There’s a side exit through the servants’ corridor—it connects to the greenhouse.”They ran together through smoke so thick it felt alive, their boots sliding on wet marble where pipes had burst and poured water that turned the fire into clouds of steam. Arin’s mind buzzed, not with fear but with that familiar hum of the Protocol trying to regain control, whispering fragmented commands he refuse

“Keep your heads low,” Kade whispered as they moved through the tunnel that smelled of damp earth and rust. The air was thick, and the walls were close enough that Maris brushed her shoulder against cold stone with every step. Water dripped somewhere ahead, echoing in slow, deliberate beats that felt like a clock counting down.Arin followed a few steps behind Kade, one hand on the pistol and the other pressed against his temple as if steadying his thoughts. The Protocol kept flickering—brief bursts of static in his mind, whispers too quick to catch, and flashes of light like old memories trying to claw their way back.Maris noticed his uneven breathing. “How bad is it?” she asked quietly.He gave her a small shake of his head. “It’s holding, for now.”“For now doesn’t sound good,” she muttered.Kade glanced back, the beam from his handheld light catching the edge of Arin’s face. “He’s running out of time. The signal collapse inside him isn’t just shutting down the machine—it’s r