Rain tapped against the cracked glass windows of the safehouse on 79th, a grim lullaby echoing over the silence inside. Von sat in the dark, a handgun resting on the table before him, his eyes locked on the small screen of his burner phone. The leaked files from Project Oracle had triggered something. Not just media chaos but the CIA's full wrath. Protocol V had been activated. He was now their number one priority.
Shanice paced behind him, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. "They're going to come here. You know that, right?"
"I'm counting on it," Von replied calmly. "But not before I find out what the hell Project Oracle really did to my father… and me."
Across the city, in the heart of Langley's subterranean wing, the lights in the Operations Center glared off glass screens, digital maps, and surveillance feeds. Special Agent Carter Mays, Shanice's father, stood at the center of it all. His angular jaw was clenched, his eyes bloodshot from three sleepless nights. Behind him, Oracle's servers, now decoupled from their network, sat dead, drained of predictive power after Von's breach.
"Update," Carter barked.
"Still no trace of Royner's physical location, but we tracked one of his data packet pings from the East Side," the technician responded. "We believe he's working off a modified router. Masking every outbound signal with four layers of dark-web proxies."
"And the files he leaked?" Carter asked.
The technician hesitated. "Sir… they were complete. The public's only seen a fraction. But internally, they exposed every predictive target Oracle ever selected… including foreign diplomats and U.S. civilians."
Carter's hands balled into fists. The deeper truth was this: Project Oracle had evolved far beyond predictive behavioral tracking. It had become an assassination matrix, a kill list based on probability modeling. Von's father, Dr. Alton Royner, had objected. He had created the early models to prevent violence, not predict who deserved death. His moral stand cost him his life.
And now, his son was undoing all of it. Blood for blood.
"We need to initiate Chimera Protocol," Carter said.
The room went silent. Chimera was the CIA's failsafe. A blacksite ops initiative that authorized ghost agents, men and women wiped from existence, to hunt and terminate high-risk leaks without oversight.
"Sir, that's a serious overstep. Chimera was banned after the Munich incident."
"I'll take responsibility," Carter growled. "Royner's not just a rogue operative. He's an evolved asset. His genetic profile… his neural architecture… they were all part of Oracle's testing."
A younger agent whispered under his breath. "You're saying Von Royner was the Oracle?"
"No. I'm saying he's the outcome."
Back in the safehouse, Von scrolled through the decrypted files again. He'd just hit on a video file buried under layers of code. A lab recording, timestamped five years ago. He hesitated before playing it.
The screen came alive.
Dr. Alton Royner stood in front of a large glass chamber. Inside, a young boy, Von, aged around 15, sat strapped to a chair, electrodes taped to his temples, eyes darting wildly.
"I told you this would break him," Alton hissed at the offscreen observers.
A synthetic female voice replied, "This is beyond observation, Doctor. It's evolution."
The feed glitched. A burst of static, then a flash of Von's eyes glowing red, just before the video abruptly ended.
Von threw the phone across the room.
Shanice rushed over. "What did you see?"
"My father didn't just know what they were doing. He fought them. He tried to stop them from turning me into this, this freak show of predictive algorithms and controlled emotions. But they killed him to keep the experiment going."
He turned to her, his voice trembling with a fury held back by grief. "And now they want to erase me before the world learns what Project Oracle really was."
Shanice stepped forward and cupped his face. "Then let's make sure they don't."
Inside a hidden command center two blocks from Langley, Agent Carter Mays walked into the private quarters reserved for black-level operatives. A white-haired man in a military uniform turned slowly in his chair.
"You really want to pull Chimera out of retirement?" he asked.
"I'm not asking permission. I'm giving notice."
The man raised an eyebrow. "Because of your daughter's connection?"
Carter's jaw twitched.
"Don't make this personal, Carter."
"It became personal the day Oracle put my kid's life on a probability chart. You think this is about Von? Oracle selected my own daughter for future termination. She's been on the watch list since she was eleven."
The silence was immediate and cold.
"Get me Chimera," Carter said again.
The next night, Von and Shanice snuck into a shadowed train depot near the outskirts of South Side, following a lead from the leaked files. A man named Milo Raines, one of the original test engineers was rumored to be hiding there. They found him drunk and half-crazy, living in a steel cargo container lined with radios and conspiracy books.
"You shouldn't be here," Milo whispered after recognizing Von. "They've marked you. You and anyone you touch."
"I already know. That's why I need answers. Why was I picked?"
Milo looked away, then sighed. "You weren't picked. You were designed."
Von stiffened. "What do you mean?"
"Project Oracle needed a control variable, someone genetically predisposed to empathy, aggression, and leadership. Your father offered your DNA to map it. He thought it would be used for peacekeeping analytics. But the project evolved. You became their prototype."
Von's fists clenched. "So I'm not human to them. I'm a goddamn test subject."
Milo nodded grimly. "They're calling in Chimera. I suggest you disappear forever."
Von didn't say a word. He simply turned and walked into the dark, Shanice trailing silently behind him.
Back at the CIA's covert facility in D.C., Carter Mays stood over a digital map flickering with heat signatures.
"Sir," the analyst called out, "We got something from Chicago PD. Local precinct tapped into old CCTVs near 79th. One of them caught Royner."
The footage loaded.
There, grainy and in black and white, was Von. Walking with Shanice. They were laughing. Holding hands.
The room went still.
Carter's expression hardened.
"Enhance. Track their direction. I want ground units prepped and Chimera airlifted to Chicago within the hour."
"Sir," one agent asked hesitantly, "if we corner him… what are our orders?"
Carter didn't blink.
"Terminate."
Inside the safehouse, Von reloaded his weapons and tucked a new burner phone into his jacket. He stood by the window, watching the fog roll across the street.
"They're coming," he said quietly.
Shanice walked up and kissed his shoulder. "Then let's give them hell.