Rain streaked the cracked windows of the safehouse, the city’s neon bleeding through like open wounds.Paige sat hunched over her laptop, screens flickering, code, surveillance feeds, encrypted networks, all slipping through her grasp.“Frank,” she said quietly, “he’s countering faster than I can patch. Roth’s systems are eating through my firewalls. He’s not just attacking our servers, he’s rewriting access protocols across public grids. He’s hijacking our footprint.”Frank’s gaze was hard, jaw locked. “He’s turning our exposure against us.”Lisa paced behind them, voice tight with anger. “Meaning?”“He’s flipping the narrative,” Paige said. “Media feeds, hospital reports, even the police scanners, all showing us as fugitives responsible for the blackout. He’s got fake footage, doctored interviews, eyewitness accounts. We’re ghosts painted as terrorists.”Lisa slammed her hand against the wall. “He’s destroying everything we’ve built!”Frank’s voice cut through the tension. “Not ever

The storm had thinned to mist, but the city still trembled with the aftershocks of Roth’s hunt. Deep in the abandoned rail hub, the team’s makeshift command post flickered with half-alive power.The air buzzed faintly, old circuits, static, nerves. Frank crouched over the lead capsule that had once pulsed red. Now it sat quiet, almost innocent.Paige hovered beside him. “Signal’s dead for the last two hours. Either he bought the decoy… or he’s pretending to.”Lisa checked her sidearm. “Roth doesn’t pretend. If it’s quiet, it’s because he’s watching from somewhere louder.”Evelyn sat apart, pale beneath the lamp’s tremor. She hadn’t spoken since the extraction. Every time the capsule clicked with cooling metal, she flinched.Frank looked up from the console. “We use the silence. Movement, mapping, recon. Paige, scrape all the chatter you can find on the dark net. If Roth’s mobilizing again, he’ll leave footprints.”Paige typed fast. “Already on it. Routing through six mirrors.”Lisa mu

The tunnel pulsed with red emergency light, each flicker cutting shadows across the concrete. Two silhouettes faced each other, same height, same build, same stillness.Lisa stood frozen behind the real Frank, her gun trembling between them. “Frank… which one?”“Don’t.” His hand rose slowly. “He’s waiting for you to pull the trigger.”The replica smiled, Frank’s smile, refined, practiced. “She always shakes when the stakes are real,” it said softly.Its tone was perfect; calm, analytical. The voice of a man who had studied fear until it became data.Frank swallowed. “You copied my instincts.”“I optimized them,” the double replied. “Roth wanted a surgeon who never hesitated. You still feel things. That’s your flaw.”Lisa whispered, “He’s stalling. Frank, move.”The replica’s eyes shifted toward her. “Lisa Carter. Twenty-nine. Expelled from medical residency for insubordination. Six months with Mercer before you realized you loved his chaos. He never told you he filed the appeal that s

Rain swept in sheets across the roof of the data-hub. From inside, the city looked like a heartbeat monitor, flashes of light, sudden darkness, then more flashes.Paige leaned over the holographic table, her eyes locked on two red dots pulsing across the Chicago map. “Tell me that’s a glitch,” she said.Evelyn shook her head, fingers flying across the console. “Not a glitch. Two neural signatures. Identical frequency, identical brainwave rhythm. Both broadcasting within a five-mile radius.”Paige cursed under her breath. “Frank can’t be in two places at once.”“Unless one of them isn’t him.”They stared at the screen. The dots pulsed again, one along the river docks, the other near the old transit tunnels under the West Loop.Paige’s voice dropped. “He told me once that if anyone ever cloned his neural net, it would mirror every emotion he had at the time of the scan.”Evelyn looked up. “And when was that?”“The day Lisa left him.”A grim silence filled the room. Evelyn exhaled sharpl

Rain streaked down the warehouse windows, turning the city lights into smeared ghosts. The storm hadn’t moved on; it just circled above them like it knew something they didn’t.Lisa didn’t breathe for several seconds. Her eyes stayed locked on the window where two Franks stood reflected, one real, one impossible. “Frank,” she whispered, “tell me that’s just the glass.”Frank didn’t answer. He took one cautious step closer, his own breath fogging the pane. The reflection didn’t mimic it. It stood still, too still, then tilted its head in a slow, deliberate motion that didn’t belong to him.Lisa’s hand slid toward her holster. “Don’t move.”“I’m not.”“I wasn’t talking to you.”The reflection raised its hand and pressed it flat against the inside of the glass, or the illusion of inside. The surface shimmered faintly, as if static crawled beneath it.Paige’s voice burst through the comm, sharp and panicked. “Lisa! Don’t look directly at it! There’s feedback coming from a neural loop, it’