The PAD offices at three AM felt like a mausoleum built from brass and broken dreams. Sean Covington slouched in his desk chair, watching Estela Montenegro's fingers work across her keyboard with the kind of surgical precision that made his chest tight for reasons he refused to examine.
From the radio in the corner, Carlos Gardel's voice drifted through static, singing "Por una Cabeza" between crackling news reports about President Justo's latest economic reforms. Even the dead tango singer seemed to be mocking him tonight.
"You know, normal people are home sleeping right about now," he said, crushing his third energy drink can. The metallic taste lingered on his tongue like a bad decision.
"Normal people don't have government paychecks that depend on keeping monsters in check." Estela didn't look up from her screen, but he caught the ghost of a smile. The blue glow from her monitors painted sharp angles across her face, highlighting the small scar above her left eyebrow. "Besides, someone has to clean up after you and the Void Killer paint the town red."
Sean's jaw clenched. Kasper's return had knocked him down every priority list that mattered, and here he sat playing tech support while the real hunter got to dance with monsters. If he could crack this case himself, prove he was more than backup...
"I should be out there tracking this cyberlitch instead of babysitting computer screens."
"Instead of what? Getting your pretty face melted off?" Her fingers paused over the keys. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, San Isidro's art deco skyline glittered like a jewelry box, all brass eagles and geometric shadows. Street lamps cast long shadows between the buildings, and somewhere in that maze of light and darkness, people were dying. "The tracking data's been poisoned, Sean. Someone with our own access codes has been feeding us fairy tales."
That made Sean straighten like he'd been slapped. "What kind of fairy tales?"
"The Brothers Grimm variety." She gestured at a holographic display that materialized above her desk, lines of code cascading like digital rain. "Look at these timestamps. Our cyberlitch appears in three locations simultaneously. Either this thing learned to teleport, or someone's been pulling our strings like marionettes."
Sean moved behind her chair, close enough to catch the scent of her perfume cutting through the office's perpetual fog of coffee and testosterone. Something warm and floral that belonged in gardens, not government buildings. "Strings how?"
"They're bouncing our own signals back at us." Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "Using PAD encryption protocols. The kind that requires clearance levels higher than God's credit rating."
The implications hit Sean like a freight train loaded with bad news. He could solve this case himself, prove he was more than Kasper's backup dancer, but only if he could trust his own organization. Which apparently, he couldn't.
"Internal job?"
"Worse than that." Estela pulled up a street map of San Isidro, red dots scattered across the city like measles. "Three coordinated strikes tonight. The antique shop was just foreplay. Professional teams, American credentials, equipment that shouldn't exist outside of fever dreams."
Sean studied the pattern, his mind racing through tactical possibilities. Combat scenarios were simple. Clean. This felt like trying to solve a puzzle while someone kept changing the pieces. "You're holding something back."
Estela's shoulders tensed beneath her silk blouse. The silence stretched between them like a tripwire, all potential energy and consequences. When she finally spoke, her voice carried the weight of classified nightmares.
"Sean." She turned in her chair to face him directly. "Those weapons the hunters were carrying? The enhancement signatures?"
Sean's face went white. His hands started trembling before he could stop them. He'd seen enough classified reports to recognize that tone. "Those aren't standard hunter equipment."
"No," Estela said quietly. "They're something much worse."
The words hit Sean like ice water in his veins. His coffee cup slipped from numb fingers, shattering against the floor in a spray of ceramic and cold caffeine. Project Lazarus existed in whispers and redacted files, but everyone in PAD knew the rumors. Human experimentation disguised as medical research. Cybernetic enhancement programs that violated every treaty the civilized world had signed. Things that made the cyberlitch attacks look like children's tantrums.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered, staring at the broken cup like it might hold answers. "How long?"
"Signal analysis suggests coordination from someone who knows our playbook inside and out." Estela stood up, and suddenly Sean found himself staring down at her face, close enough to see the gold flecks in her dark eyes. Close enough to make stupid decisions. "Someone who's been watching us hunt for weeks. Months, maybe."
The proximity made his pulse spike like he'd been mainlining adrenaline. He forced himself to focus on the tactical situation instead of the way her lips moved when she spoke. "How long has this been going on?"
"Based on the data corruption patterns? Long enough for them to know exactly how we think." She was close enough now that he could feel the warmth radiating from her skin. "Sean, what if we're not hunting the cyberlitch? What if it's hunting us?"
Before he could formulate an answer that didn't involve grabbing her face and kissing her until the world made sense again, every screen in the office died.
Emergency lighting painted everything in shades of hell as alarms began their electronic wailing. The tango music cut out with an electronic shriek, replaced by the urgent voice of a radio announcer: "Attention citizens of San Isidro. Emergency services are responding to multiple incidents across the financial district..."
Sean's hand moved toward his sidearm, muscle memory from too many nights that had started normal and ended in body bags.
"Grid failure," Estela said, but her voice lacked conviction. She was already moving toward the backup terminals, training overriding everything else. "Or someone just cut our leash."
Sean's earpiece crackled with Douglas's voice, distorted by static and distance: "All units, multiple cyberllich signatures across the financial district. Confirmed civilian casualties. This is not a drill."
The backup systems hummed to life with the sound of expensive machinery refusing to die quietly. Estela's fingers danced across the emergency console, pulling up surveillance feeds from across the city. The images that flickered to life made Sean's stomach drop into his boots.
Fires burned in perfect geometric patterns across three districts. Emergency vehicles scattered like disturbed ants. And there, captured for exactly two seconds on a traffic camera before the feed went dark, something that moved wrong. Too fast. Too fluid. Leaving trails of sparks and screaming metal in its wake.
"Multiple simultaneous attacks," Estela whispered. "Just like the pattern predicted."
Sean grabbed his gear bag, adrenaline burning away hours of caffeine fatigue. Finally, honest violence in a night full of lies and technical mysteries. This was his chance. Solve the case. Prove himself. Show everyone he was more than Kasper's understudy.
"Send me coordinates."
"Sean, wait." Her hand caught his arm, and the contact sent electricity through his nervous system like he'd grabbed a live wire. "This feels orchestrated. Everything about tonight screams trap."
He looked down at her fingers on his jacket sleeve. Small and strong and trembling just enough to betray nerves she'd never admit to having. For a moment he wanted to stay. To figure out what was happening between them in this emergency-lit bubble of honesty. To tell her she was right about everything. That he was tired of being second choice. That maybe together they could solve puzzles that neither could crack alone.
But that would mean admitting he needed help. And Sean Covington didn't need anyone.
"Then I guess we're about to find out who's been pulling our strings." He headed for the door, then stopped without turning around. "Estela?"
"Yeah?"
"When I get back... we finish this conversation."
He was gone before she could respond, leaving her alone with sirens and the growing certainty that they were all dancing to music they couldn't hear.
The elevator descended toward the garage, and Sean's reflection stared back from polished brass doors adorned with geometric patterns that caught the emergency lighting. Behind his own face, he could see the truth Estela had uncovered written in lines of corrupted code: they weren't hunting the cyberlitch.
It was hunting them.
And someone inside PAD was spotting targets.
His earpiece crackled again: "Covington, report to financial district. Backup requested for Void Killer engagement."
Sean's smile held no warmth, only the promise of violence. Finally, something he understood in a night full of mysteries and technical double-talk. He'd show them all what Sean Covington could do when the gloves came off.
The elevator doors opened onto controlled chaos, and he stepped forward into the storm, carrying questions that could only be answered in blood and brass.
Behind him, emergency lights painted the empty office in shades of warning, and somewhere in the electronic darkness, signals continued their deadly dance across the city's nervous system.
In the distance, church bells chimed three-thirty, their bronze voices echoing off art deco facades like a funeral march for the night that San Isidro would never forget.
The radio crackled back to life, abandoning Gardel for urgent news bulletins that would dominate tomorrow's headlines in La Prensa and La Nación, assuming there was a tomorrow left to write about.