The helicopter flew through the night. Below them, the city lights faded away. They were replaced by the dark, silent shapes of the Northern Zenith mountain range. Ethan was riding in the passenger seat as Linda flew the helicopter. She was indeed a woman of many skills. "He will run," Linda said, her eyes focused on the dark peaks ahead. "Alexander. He knows it is over." "Let him run," Ethan replied, his voice low. "There is no place he can hide that I will not find him. But first, we stop the Ares Project." The Syndicate's files were now in the hands of the authorities, and police would at this very moment be raiding the Grey Corporation tower. Yet Ethan knew that the real danger was here, in this mountain. An army of angry, unstable super-soldiers could not be allowed to exist. Using the codes of Valerius, they found the secret entrance: a hidden tunnel behind a waterfall that led deep into the heart of the mountain. Inside, the air was cold, unpleasantly smelling of some ruste

Three weeks later, Ethan was in a new space, standing on his feet. It was a large, empty warehouse on the city's industrial waterfront. It smelled of old oil and dust.Kael walked in, followed by six men and two women. They all had the same look, alert and professional."Sir," Kael said. "The first team."Ethan faced them. He recognized a few faces from the raid on the chemical plant. "You already know why you're here."A woman with short-cropped hair, Mara, spoke. "Cleanup duty. You're building a unit.""More than a unit," Ethan said. "An independent agency. No other ties and no oversight. Our only mission is to find and dismantle organizations like the Syndicate before they can become a threat.""How do we operate?" one of the men, Jaxon, asked."We have resources… I mean the funds seized from Syndicate accounts. We have equipment from their facilities. We will start with the data we captured, and then we can follow every lead. A scientist who escaped. A bank account we missed. A s