The night had fallen over Chicago like a thick curtain, cloaking the streets in a silence that felt unnatural ominous. In the heart of the South Side, Von Royner stood on the rooftop of the safe house on 79th, watching the skyline burn with the city's fractured soul. His eyes scanned the horizon, glowing faintly red beneath his hood.
He knew they were close now.
He could feel it in the stillness.
The CIA wasn't just tracking him anymore, they were preparing to make a move.
Inside the safe house, papers were scattered across the floor. The contents of the "Project Oracle – Final Phase" box had consumed Von's every waking hour. He had read it all, government experiments, brain scans, transcripts of psychic interviews, predictions of warfare, espionage tactics, and footage of his father undergoing brutal testing. It wasn't just research.
It was torture.
And the man behind it all, Carter Mays.
Shanice's father.
The betrayal bled deeper now.
A BD lookout tapped twice on the basement door, interrupting his train of thought. Von moved downstairs. The gang member, no older than 18, looked uneasy.
"Boss," he said, "we got eyes on feds in the alley. Black SUVs. Low profile. Same plates that were spotted on 61st last week."
Von clenched his jaw. "How many?"
"Three, maybe four agents outside. Probably more watching from across the street."
Von turned to the closet, pulled out a duffel bag. Inside: weapons, burner phones, cash, and a fresh hoodie. "We move in twenty. Prep the underground exit."
The kid nodded and vanished up the stairs.
Von looked around the basement one last time. The walls carried bullet scars from a time his father once survived a raid here. Now it was Von's turn to rewrite history.
Meanwhile, in the surveillance van two blocks away, Agent Carter Mays stared at a monitor that flickered with live drone footage. His team had been tracking Von's movements for days ever since he resurfaced.
"We've got thermal imaging. Four hostiles in the house. One matches Von Royner's size and gait," an analyst said.
Carter's fingers tapped the armrest impatiently.
"I want him alive," he ordered. "No gunfire unless he draws first. He's more valuable breathing."
"Sir," another agent chimed in, "why are we keeping this off the books? Why no local support?"
Carter's eyes narrowed. "Because this isn't just an arrest. It's containment."
He stood, straightening his black field coat. "And if Royner's anything like his father…he already knows we're coming."
Von descended the basement stairs and entered a hidden corridor beneath the safe house, a tunnel built during Prohibition. The walls were damp, lined with rusted pipes and graffiti from decades past.
Behind him, two BD soldiers followed silently. Von's mind was racing, not just with escape routes but with possibilities.
He had read everything in the Project Oracle files. He finally understood why his father died, and why the government wanted him.
It wasn't just about prediction. It was about control.
Temporal cognition, his father's gift wasn't limited to glimpses of the future.
It could shape it.
Von had seen it himself. When his emotions peaked, time slowed. Possibilities unfolded like cards on a table. He had dodged bullets, anticipated betrayals, even escaped death. And now, he could feel it again.
The tingling behind his eyes.
The burning in his chest.
He was on the verge of full awakening.
As Von's team exited the tunnel into a sewer drain half a block away, gunshots rang out above them.
One of the BD lookouts had been made.
Von cursed. "They're breaching early."
He climbed a rusted ladder, emerged into the alleyway, and spotted two agents moving fast toward the back door of the safe house.
Von reached for the Glock at his waist, aimed, and fired once, clean shot to the thigh.
The agent dropped, screaming.
The second agent took cover behind a dumpster.
Von didn't chase.
He disappeared into the shadow of the alley, his movement fluid, almost supernatural. He motioned for his crew to split. "Regroup at Ashland and 83rd."
"But what about you?" one of them asked.
Von pulled up his hood. "I've got somewhere else to be."
Across town, Shanice sat in her bedroom, staring at the message Von had sent her thirty minutes ago.
"Don't come outside. It's not safe."
She gripped the edge of her dresser, conflicted. Her heart wanted to call him. To see him. But something deep inside warned her, Von was spiraling into something bigger than revenge.
Then, a knock at the door.
She opened it and froze.
"Dad?"
Agent Carter Mays stood there, exhausted, eyes bloodshot. "We need to talk."
"About what?" she asked coldly.
"About Von. And what he really is."
She narrowed her eyes. "You're the reason he's being hunted. You're the reason his father's dead."
"I'm trying to save him," Carter snapped.
"No," she replied, stepping back. "You're trying to own him."
Carter's shoulders sagged. "He has abilities we don't understand. Abilities that could change the world or destroy it. We can't let that power run loose."
Shanice held her ground. "He's not a weapon."
"You think I don't know that?" Carter snapped. "Do you think I like this? I'm the one who warned his father not to join Project Oracle. I tried to shut it down."
Shanice's breath caught. "What?"
Carter sighed. "But I was too late. The others, they didn't want to study James Royner. They wanted to turn him into a prototype."
"And now they want Von," she said.
"Worse," Carter whispered. "They want what's inside him."
Von made his way to an abandoned warehouse near 47th Street, using old freight lines to avoid surveillance. Inside, he met with his last resort: a former NSA hacker named Lucien, now exiled and paranoid.
"You've got five minutes," Lucien grunted, typing away on a janky laptop covered in skull stickers.
Von tossed the Project Oracle flash drive onto the desk.
"I want every copy of this leaked untraceable. Forums, servers, torrents, the dark web. Everything."
Lucien's eyes widened. "This is CIA blacksite data. They'll crucify me."
Von leaned in. "They'll kill me. Upload it now."
Lucien hesitated, then connected the drive.
Within minutes, the contents of Project Oracle were flooding encrypted channels worldwide. The world would know the truth. That the U.S. government experimented on humans to weaponize time.
Von stepped away, lit a cigarette, and stared out the shattered window.
He could feel the change coming. Not just in the city.
In him.
His father's abilities weren't a curse.
They were a legacy.
Back at the CIA field office, chaos erupted as monitors began flashing warnings. Thousands of downloads. Data leaks.
"Sir," an agent gasped. "The Oracle files are out. It's gone viral. Reddit, Telegram, whistleblower platforms, everywhere."
Carter's face turned white.
"He played us," he whispered.
He ran to the command center, eyes scanning for footage, locations—anything.
"Where's Von Royner?"
No one answered.
Then a tech analyst pulled up a live drone feed from 83rd and Ashland.
Carter watched as a black SUV passed under a streetlight and the driver looked directly at the drone.
It was Von.
Staring through the camera, eyes glowing red.
"He knows we're watching," Carter said.
In the SUV, Von leaned back in the seat. His hands rested calmly on his lap.
Shanice had texted him.
"My father came. He knows. He's scared."
Von typed back: "He should be."
His vision flickered.
He saw Carter in a government hearing, exposed. He saw agents running. A country in denial. Protests. Headlines.
Then another image, one that froze his breath.
A coffin.
Shanice, crying.
"No," he whispered.
He slammed his fist into the dashboard, snapping out of the vision.
He had altered fate once.
He could do it again.
At a hidden military base outside Quantico, a private meeting was underway.
A general held a copy of the leaked Oracle files. "This is a disaster."
Beside him, a CIA deputy director stood silent. Then, calmly: "Then initiate Protocol V."
"What's Protocol V?"
"The Von Contingency," the director replied. "We find him. We kill him. And we bury this program permanently."
Back in Chicago, Agent Carter stared out over the city.
He felt it in his bones.
The real war hadn't even started.
And Von Royner was the fuse.