Rooftop Hideout, 2:14 AM
The silence was no longer empty — it was thick. Like the moments after a storm. Like breathing after near-drowning.
Brendon paced the edge of the rooftop, his boots scraping broken concrete. Wind tossed loose ash and dust against the low barrier. The French skyline was half-dead in this part of the city — streetlights flickering, buildings hollowed, silence loud.
He stopped to glance back.
Matt sat beside Isla, their silhouettes framed against the glow of a small fire they'd built from snapped furniture. Christopher knelt across from them, reviewing the contents of the stolen drive with a surgical calm. And between them all — a limp body, cuffed and gagged. Zuekh.
Still breathing. Still alive.
A part of Brendon loathed that.
> "You good?"
Christopher asked, barely looking up.
Brendon nodded. "Yeah."
A beat passed.
"You don't look it."
Brendon shrugged. "That's just my British charm."
He turned back to the horizon. His eyes reflected distant fire.
"This whole damn mess," he muttered, "started with fear."
---
Christopher plugged the drive into a battered terminal. Code scrolled across the cracked screen.
> "Encrypted. Not a surprise. Council-grade ciphers. But we'll get through."
Isla pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders, watching the screen reflect in her eyes.
Matt finally broke the quiet.
"How far does it go, you think?"
Christopher didn't answer right away.
Then: "If the council sanctioned experimentation, stasis chambers, and covert erasure squads… then we're not talking about rogue operations anymore. This is infrastructural corruption."
Isla whispered, "And I was one of the blueprints."
Matt flinched. He hated the sound of that. "You're my sister. And that's all you are."
She smiled faintly, grateful, but said nothing.
---
Suddenly Zuekh stirred.
Even gagged and bruised, he wore his ego like armor. He laughed — soft, mocking.
Christopher looked down at him.
> "Want to talk?"
Zuekh shrugged.
Christopher removed the gag.
Zuekh licked his lips.
> "You're wasting time. That data's coded to be failed after extraction attempts."
Matt growled. "You're lying."
"I'm many things. Liar. Killer. Genius. But I'm not a fool. You think they'd store live secrets without a failsafe? That drive's got thirty-six hours. After that, it wipes clean."
Christopher frowned. "He's not bluffing. I've seen that format. Standard for covert ops."
Brendon spoke up. "Then we find someone who can crack it. Fast."
---
Cut To – Renneté's Farmhouse, Southern Paris
Annie Renneté wasn't asleep. She never really slept anymore.
The call came just as she lit her third cigarette of the hour.
She answered.
"Go on."
Brendon's voice crackled on the other end. "It's done. We've got the drive. And I have everything to prove."
Renneté straightened. "Zuekh, our best of detective is involved?"
"Yes."
There was a pause.
Then she said: "You're not safe there. Council surveillance will pick up your heat soon. I have an old station — retired tech division. Fifteen miles north. Sending coordinates."
"Copy. And Mrs. Renneté?"
"Yeah?"
> "This case… has two killers. And some government bodies are connected too."
She didn't respond to that. Just hung up, lit another cigarette, and walked toward a cabinet filled with files labeled CLOSED.
One, dusty and red-stamped, read:
BLEEDING EYE CASE
(CLASSIFIED – LEVEL 5 CLEARANCE)
---
Next Day – Abandoned Tech Division, Northern France
The building looked like it had died in 1996. Satellite dishes rusted like forgotten hats. Vines choked windows. But the core was intact.
Brendon kicked the door in. Christopher followed, scanning the walls.
"Still got power. Barely."
Inside, old servers whirred like ghosts. Terminals blinked back to life. The team moved quickly — Isla resting under blankets near a heater, Matt watching the hall, Christopher plugging in the drive.
Zuekh sat chained to a radiator.
He smirked at their scrambling.
"Still think the world cares what you uncover?"
Matt snapped, "Still think you have a say?"
"Oh, I already said what I had to. This system — it doesn't fall from inside. You're just trying to burn steel with a candle."
Brendon ignored him. He turned to Christopher. "How long?"
"Eight hours. With luck."
---
Flashback (Matt's First Kill)
A dark alley. A years ago.
Rain fell in sheets. A man in a suit begged on his knees. He recognized Matt too late.
"You were one of the kids. The extraction site — we didn't know—"
Matt didn't listen. He only saw the cage where Isla once cried.
The knife flashed.
It was the same technique the Bleeding-Eye killer used — the one from the headlines. He copied it, then vanished into the shadows.
That was when Matt ceased being a brother.
And became something worse.
---
Present – Back in the Station
Isla opened her eyes slowly.
She sat up, breathing shallow.
"I can feel them again."
Brendon turned. "Who?"
"The others. The ones like me. It's… faint but I can feel them. That serum created some kind of imprint. A resonance. I think I can locate the next site."
Christopher looked up from the code. "If that's true, we'll have location and... data both."
Brendon nodded. "Then we will go there before the Council buries it all."
Matt approached Isla gently. "Are you feeling okay, Isla?"
Isla shook her head. "This is beyond me now. Like me they were imprisoned too. The only difference between us is they were killed to get their organs but these people... kept alive for their experiments. I have to help so that they can get their justice."
---
That Night – Outside the Safehouse
Brendon lit a flare.
A signal.
Renneté's people arrived at 1:00 AM. Black vans. Low lights. Unmarked.
She stepped out, dressed in a long coat, eyes scanning sharp.
Brendon met her halfway.
"We've got less than six hours before the drive wipes. You brought someone who can decode it?"
She motioned to a girl in a hoodie, maybe twenty-two. Sharp eyes. Nose ring. Grease-stained fingers.
"This is Réa. She's a rogue decryption prodigy. Bounced between Paris blacknets. She cracked an Interpol node at 17."
Réa rolled her eyes. "Yeah yeah. Where's the toy?"
Christopher stepped aside.
She cracked her knuckles, grinned, and got to work.
---
Inside the Station – Tension Builds
Every hour felt like a war.
Réa typed like a possessed machine. "It's quite tricky than I expected," she muttered. "Some of this code is… organic. These are not metaphor. They used neurolattice patterns. I'm rerouting through neural emulators."
Matt stared. "English please."
"They wrote this encryption like a brain. And I'm trying to out-think it."
Zuekh laughed from the corner.
"You think you're clever. But you can't decode evolution."
Brendon walked up and kicked Zuekh in the ribs. Hard.
"That's for case one."
"Mr. Wolf please restrain yourself." Mrs. Renneté glares at Brendon.
Zuekh now Laughs out. "Hey pup! It doesn't matter how much you hit me. At the end, you will get only disappointment. I assure you that."
Brendon was already really angry because of the betrayal and what Zuekh has been doing. He calmly answers. "Just wait... and see."