The Silent Trace

CHAPTER THREE~ THE LOCKSMITHS CODE

The rain hadn’t stopped.

It fell in sheets across London’s backstreets, erasing footprints, washing away blood.

Ethan Vale stood beside the ruins of what had once been a man he called friend. Marcus Keene. The hacker, the cynic ,the one person who still believed Ethan’s paranoia might be justified.

Now there was nothing left but smoke and silence.

Detective Inspector Isla Hart paced nearby, her soaked uniform streaked with dirt and soot. “We can’t stay here,” she said, glancing around. “They’ll trace the explosion. Fire crews, patrol drones”

Ethan’s voice was distant. “They already know. They planned it.”

Hart stopped, anger flashing in her eyes. “Planned it? That was your contact, Vale. Your mess.”

He turned, the lines of exhaustion deep across his face. “You think I wanted this?” His voice dropped lower. “Division 9 doesn’t make mistakes, Inspector. It erases them.”

The words hung heavy between them.

Ethan crouched beside the wreckage, searching through debris with gloved hands. A flicker of light caught his eye , Marcus’s phone, cracked but still functioning, the last message glowing faintly through the smoke.

“You’re late, Vale.”

Hart frowned. “What does that mean?”

Ethan didn’t answer right away. He scrolled through Marcus’s last files. Most were fried , blacked-out code and encrypted logs , but one remained intact, titled simply: “Keymaker.”

He tapped it open. Inside were coordinates. North Docklands. A warehouse with no registry.

And one more thing , a voice note, timestamped three hours before Marcus died.

“If you’re hearing this, they’re already coming for me. Division 9’s ghost file ,the one Roth tried to burn , it wasn’t deleted. It was locked. Vale, remember what you told me once: every lock has a twin. Find the mirror, and you’ll find the truth.”

The message ended with static.

Hart’s brow furrowed. “Locked? What does that even mean?”

Ethan stood, slipping the phone into his pocket. “It means he left me a code only I can open.”

They ditched the alley, walking fast through empty streets. The city was waking, unaware of the ghosts moving through its veins. Ethan led her into a closed repair shop on a side street , one of his safe houses, long unused.

He shut the metal door, locking it from inside.

Hart scanned the room , a clutter of tools, wires, and old computers. “You keep all this… for what? Nostalgia?”

“For when the past refuses to stay buried,” Ethan muttered.

He plugged Marcus’s phone into a terminal. A progress bar crawled across the screen. “His data’s encrypted, layered through a double-key algorithm.”

Hart crossed her arms. “English, please?”

“It means there’s a password and a pattern. He built it around me , my old lock designs.”

“You’re saying he hid government secrets inside your locksmith patterns?”

Ethan half-smiled. “He always had a sense of irony.”

He reached for a small box under the desk , inside were metal discs engraved with intricate cuts and notches. Each was a unique lock design, prototypes from his MI5 days. He placed one against the scanner. The computer beeped.

ACCESS LEVEL ONE — UNLOCKED.

Hart leaned closer. “What are we looking for?”

“Coordinates. Names. Proof Division 9’s still running.”

The screen flickered, then displayed a partial document.

PROJECT: TRACE.

OBJECTIVE: MEMORY RETENTION VIA NEURAL GHOSTING.

Hart frowned. “Neural… what?”

Ethan’s jaw tightened. “A program we started years ago. To store fragments of agents’ memories in digital form. Supposed to be a failsafe , in case we lost operatives or needed to reconstruct intelligence from the dead.”

Hart stared. “You’re telling me MI5 kept people’s minds in a computer?”

He met her eyes. “Not just minds. Personalities. Reactions. Voice signatures. But the project was shut down after Roth’s death.”

Hart’s voice dropped. “And you think it wasn’t?”

Ethan nodded. “Marcus called it the ghost file. If they kept it alive, Division 9’s agents might not just be people. They might be… copies.”

The silence was sharp.

Then the computer beeped again.

SECONDARY LOCK REQUIRED , PHYSICAL PATTERN MISSING.

Ethan cursed under his breath. “It’s not enough. The mirror design. Marcus said every lock has a twin.”

Hart pointed to the screen. “So where’s the other one?”

He stared at the map overlay , the coordinates blinking near the Docklands.

“Right there,” he said. “And we’re going to get it.”

Docklands District , 2:14 A.M.

The warehouse was dead quiet, sitting at the edge of the Thames. Rusted cranes loomed above like skeletons. Hart followed Ethan through a side door, her flashlight cutting narrow beams through dust.

“Remind me again why we’re breaking into an abandoned building?” she whispered.

“Because it’s not abandoned,” he replied softly.

Inside, the air buzzed faintly , electricity humming behind walls. He motioned for her to kill the light. The faint blue glow of digital panels shimmered from deeper within.

Hart’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Someone’s still running power here.”

They moved silently through the shadows until they reached a steel door marked:

DIVISION 9 , RESTRICTED ACCESS.

Ethan’s pulse quickened. He knelt, examining the lock. It was his design.

Modified , cleaner, sharper, upgraded.

“Can you open it?” Hart asked.

He almost smiled. “I built it.”

He pulled tools from his coat , microdrivers, optic wires. The lock clicked once, twice…

Then the door slid open with a hiss of hydraulics.

What they found inside made Hart step back.

The room was filled with servers. Hundreds. Each marked with a name, a date, and a code number.

Faces flickered across monitors , static images, incomplete but human. Ghostly.

Ethan stepped forward, his throat dry. “These are agents. Reconstructed memory profiles. Division 9’s archive.”

Hart stared at one of the screens. “God. They’re alive in there?”

Ethan swallowed. “Simulated consciousness , copies trained from neural patterns. The Trace Project was meant to store intelligence. But this…” He trailed off, hands shaking slightly. “This is resurrection.”

Suddenly, one of the screens changed. The image stabilized , a man’s face appeared. Grey hair, cold eyes.

Gabriel Roth.

Hart gasped. “That’s him?”

Ethan froze. “Yes.”

The figure on the screen looked directly at them.

“Ethan Vale,” said the digital voice. “If you’ve come this far, you already know what we’ve become.”

Hart took a step back. “Is that… real?”

Ethan stared at the screen, unable to look away.

“You failed your final mission,” the digital Roth continued. “You chose conscience over command. Division 9 cannot afford conscience. So we rebuilt it , without you.”

The screen flickered. New text appeared:

TRACE SEQUENCE ACTIVATED. TARGET: VALE, ETHAN.

A blaring alarm filled the room.

“Move!” Ethan shouted.

Red lights flared as metal shutters dropped over exits. Hart drew her sidearm, firing at a sensor. Sparks flew ,one door jammed halfway open.

“Go!” she yelled.

They sprinted through, Ethan grabbing a hard drive from the nearest terminal as they escaped into the rain. Behind them, the entire building began to pulse , white light throbbing through its walls.

Hart turned. “What’s happening?”

“They’re wiping it,” Ethan said. “Self-destruct protocol.”

“Then that drive better be worth it.”

Ethan nodded grimly. “It’s all that’s left.”

Later , Safe House, West End

They collapsed into silence. Hart patched a cut on her arm while Ethan connected the stolen drive to a different terminal. The screen filled with fragmented data. Half corrupted, half intact.

And then , a single video file loaded.

A man stood in a dim office, back to the camera. When he turned, Hart’s stomach twisted.

It was Marcus. Alive. Or at least… a version of him.

“If you’re watching this, you made it out,” the recording said. “Roth’s not dead, Ethan. Not entirely. Division 9’s running both sides of the game , the living and the digital. You were part of it once, even if you don’t remember. They erased parts of your memory before extraction.”

Hart looked at him sharply. “You knew?”

Ethan shook his head. “I… I don’t remember.”

Marcus’s recorded voice continued:

“There’s a master key hidden inside your own neural pattern. They used your brain as the encryption model. You are the lock, Vale. And only you can open it.”

The video cut to static.

Hart whispered, “You’re saying the code to stop them is inside you?”

Ethan looked down at his trembling hands. “No… not the code.”

He looked up, eyes cold and hollow.

“The ghost file. They put it in me.”