"Yes," Mei Ling said.Lin's hand went to her weapon. The Jade Fragment pulsing. "Can the fragment detect it? Can it sense Council presence?""Maybe," Mei Ling said. "If the Whisperer is close. Active. Using power. But if it's dormant. Hiding. Pretending. Then no. The fragment would sense nothing.""Fantastic. Great. Love that for us." Harrison looked around the table. At faces he'd worked with for a few days, weeks months, years. Faces he trusted. Sora. Jake. Elijah. "This is going to make teamwork difficult.""This is insane," Sora said. Standing up. Needing to move. Needing to do something. "We can't function like this. We can't work together if we're all suspecting each other. If we're all waiting for someone to turn traitor. To sprout tentacles. To reveal they're actually an ancient evil.""We don't have time for paranoia," Harrison added. Trying to sound reasonable. Professional. "Mr. Vale and Elena have twenty-eight hours left. We focus on the rescue. We deal with the Council po

Somewhere in France. A different location. Miles from Paris.Victor Kozlov's hidden facility. Underground. Cold. Concrete walls. Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. The kind of place governments denied existed. The kind of place people disappeared into and never came out.Elena sat chained to a chair. Metal. Bolted to the floor. Her wrists raw from struggling. Her face bruised. Her lip split.But her eyes were still alert. Still watching. Still calculating escape routes that didn't exist.In another room. Separated by thick walls and a locked door. Her mother. Maria. Also chained. Also captive. Elena could hear her sometimes. Crying. Praying. Begging.That was the worst part. Hearing her mother break. Hearing her suffer. Knowing there was nothing Elena could do about it.Victor paced. Back and forth. Phone in his hand. Checking it. Checking it again. No messages. No calls. Nothing from Marguerite. Nothing from Derek. Nothing from anyone.He'd been trying to reach Derek for hours. His

"Guard rotations. They change shifts at 6 AM and 6 PM. But there's overlap. Ten minutes where both shifts are present. More guards. More eyes. Harder to infiltrate during those windows."True. Standard security protocol. Nothing special. Nothing Victor couldn't figure out himself."But between 2 and 4 AM. Minimal staff. Just night security. Maybe eight guards total for the whole building. Jake. He mentioned it once. Said something about budget cuts. Said they were spread thin during those hours."Lie. Complete lie. Titan had full security twenty-four seven. But it sounded plausible. Sounded like something a company with hidden secrets might do. Sounded real."Morrison's patterns," Victor said. "What about him specifically? Where does he go? What does he do? What are his weaknesses?"Elena felt her throat tighten. Talking about Jake. Making up lies about Jake. The man she'd fallen for. The man who'd shown her kindness even after learning s

"If necessary," Lin said. Voice flat. No hesitation. "Victor has committed kidnapping. Torture. Attempted murder. By any code. Any honor system. Any law. He's earned a death sentence. If he surrenders and faces justice. Fine. If he fights. We end him." Elijah swallowed hard. "Right. Okay. End him. Sure. I can. I can probably do that. Maybe. If I have to." "You won't have to," Harrison said. Reassuring. Professional. "I'll handle that part if it comes to it. You focus on the Hearts. On getting Elena and Maria out. I'll handle Victor." "We all handle Victor," Lin corrected. "This isn't about individual glory. This is about the mission. About saving innocents. About stopping a threat. We work as a team. We succeed as a team. Or we fail as a team." "Agreed," Harrison said. Respecting her stance. "As a team." Jake looked at the clock on the wall. Old. Broken. But still tracking time. Still counting down.

He remembered Marcus's face when he'd seen the ring. The shock. The hope. The desperate need for it to be true. The way Marcus had looked at him differently after. Not as an employee. Not as a recruit. As his son. As the child he'd lost. As the person he'd been searching for all these years. 'He just found me,' Jake thought. The realization crushing him. 'We've only had a few months. A few months of knowing. Of being father and son. Of trying to make up for all the time we lost. And now I'm going to take that away from him. I'm going to make him lose me all over again. Except this time it's permanent. This time there's no finding me. No getting me back. Just. Gone.' He thought about Sora. About her kiss before Iceland. About feelings he'd barely started to acknowledge. About a future that might have happened if things were different. If the world wasn't ending. If he wasn't about to die. 'She'd tell me to live,' he knew. Ce