ZARA — SAFEHOUSE LAB, PRE-DAWN.
The makeshift lab smelled like antiseptic and anxiety. Dr. Hassan moved with the careful steadiness of someone who'd spent his life trusting scalpel and microscope — not the sort of steady you'd usually see in our line of work, but the kind we needed.
"Everything here is legal — the tools, not the mission," he said, and gave me a tiny, wry smile that tried to be comforting. "What you want is experimental. I can try to reverse a reconsolidation protocol. I can't promise outcomes. I can promise I'll try."
I watched him file printouts into a folder that would become our surgical Bible, and I felt the familiar double-edged thing in my chest. This wasn't fieldwork with guns and chase scenes. This was science and prayer and terrible hope wrapped together.
Rina stood over the table like a woman who'd learned how to mask fear with logistics. "We have the list of reagents and a lab clean room booked under a shell name," she said. "We've got a surgical team who can move off-grid. But the key is the firmware — the source code that the lab pushed into the implants. Without that, we can't target the reconsolidation properly."
"No tradecraft on that?" I asked.
She shook her head, tired. "We can piece it from fragments, but it will take time. Time we don't have if Aria is running the timetable."
Kai set down a plastic box of equipment like he was settling a child into bed. He tried to joke, tried to be light. "So I make coffee and watch the wizardry?"
"You make coffee and you don't faint," Hassan said without looking up. "I'll need steady hands for one of the extractions. Not yours, Kai. But your mouth — keep it busy."
I let out a breath that became a laugh and then a cough. This was as human as a spy-mission got: coffee, bad jokes, pre-surgery prayers. We went through the dry run as if it were choreography. Dress, scrub, sterilize, move, count. Rina walked us through the timeline: extraction window, sedation parameters, safe transport routes. I listened the way someone listens to a lifeline — with every nerve tuned.
"Remember," Rina said at the end, voice flat and certain, "this is a medical op, not a military raid. If we crash this with violence, we lose any legitimacy the world will accept. We'll have to work in the gray without burning everyone who looks at us the wrong way."
I said the words out loud: "No fireworks. Surgical. Clean."
It felt like promising to breathe underwater.
At the van, Leo found my hands and squeezed. "We'll do this right," he said. "We will get her back."
I wanted to lean into him, to trust the promise that trembled in his voice. The Marrakesh revelation still hung between us — a raw, ugly thing — but right now our focus was precise and new: Selina.
"I need you to be honest with me," I told him. "All of it. No more shields."
He looked at me like he'd been given a relic to guard. "No more shields," he promised. We sealed it with a look that was maybe more confession than kiss.
We slept for an hour and then the world moved.
<<<<<
LEO — BRIEFING & THE SUDDEN REROUTE.
The message came in like a slap: Lab accelerated. Moving now. Coordinates: mobile, southeast vector. Aria has moved it to a fast freighter convoy. ETA — 90 minutes.
"Shit," Rina said, like the word was a gear shift.
No amount of planning had made a place for rush like this. The lab had moved earlier than anyone expected. Aria had accelerated the timeline — probably to get the firmware out of reach. The ocean is a good hiding place; it's also fast.
We pivoted from the clinic timeline to a blue-chase. Kai threw the van keys at me and the safehouse turned into a sprint — gear, radios, live updates. Dr. Hassan grabbed the most critical items he could carry without expertise in fugitive living: reagents in secured cases, a microprocessor reader, the sketches of what might help decode the firmware fragments.
"We split the team," Rina said. "Zara, you're with me for the medical containment run if we can pull a lab ashore. Leo and Kai — you chase the convoy. Rina will act as coordinator and cut off points. If you catch the lab we extract firmware. If the lab jettisons the main crate, we need to be ready to intercept couriers and the manifest. Time's a blade."
"Which boat?" I snapped, keeping it businesslike as the van turned for the quay. "We need speed and range."
"You get the fastest available," she said, handing Leo a map with probable convoy routes circled in angry red. "But you'll be outgunned. It won't be a fair fight. You rely on speed, not firepower."
That line — rely on speed — is the thing adrenaline loves to hear. It is also the thing that reminds you how fragile you are.
At the port, the night ate our footsteps. Kai took the throttle like a man who learned to count joy in RPMs. Leo checked the rifle and then shoved it back into the securing strap. We didn't want to start a war on the water, but if Aria meant to bring a lab into the blue, we had no choice.
Ten miles out the freighter sat like an island of iron. Spotlights cut the dark like hungry eyes. Fast skiffs ran support patterns. Our boat plowed a narrow wake, and I felt the old, primal exhilaration — fear sharpened into purpose.
"Target ahead," Leo said. He'd been watching the AIS and the manual pings. "Convoy splitting. Two skiffs moving left."
We accelerated. The sea rose and fell beneath us like a live thing. The freighter tucked heavy containers and the night smelled of diesel and salt. Aria's handwriting was everywhere — bold moves, collateral signals, flexing a muscle.
A flash came from the freighter: a smoke canister hissed and a dark plume unfurled. Aria was masking movement. That plume would buy them seconds we could not afford.
"Now," Kai rasped, hands white on the wheel. He veered hard, and the world tilted. We were an animal on a line between two worlds — the safe shore and the wild blue.
My phone vibrated in my jacket. Rina's voice: They jettisoned a crate. Last seen churning to stern at 12 o'clock. Extraction boat is pulling out. Move east and box the skiff. Kaiju's not alone — support speedboats on the other flank. Be careful.
Aria had played her hand again. The lab was shedding pieces like a creature shedding skin.
We kept pace. The skiff — a small, grey thing with men hunched in combat positions — had the crate. We could see it bobbing like a hunk of fate between two men. Then a problem: the support boats shifted toward us — a pincer. We were still small; they were many.
"Split," Leo barked. "We take the inside run. Kai — you follow my wake. Zara, be ready to board if I can slow them."
This is where training meets morality — when you're about to do something that might get people hurt, deliberate whether the risk is worth the prize. I had Selina's face in my head. I clutched the rolled manifest in my pocket like a vow.
We hit the wake and the skiff was a narrow battleground. Men reached for weapons. I saw Aria on the freighter bridge — small, a silhouette with a red scarf, the conductor of the chaos. She raised a hand like a queen.
The sea broke into a white orchestra. Our world shrank to the sound of spray and the reek of petrol. The skiff tried to turn for the lee. I braced. Kai's elbow took a hit. The crate slid, caught, nearly went overboard.
Leo lunged. I lunged. The world was action and sound and every second the kind that feels like a lifetime.
We did not know then if the skiff would sink with the crate, or if Noor's runner would turn traitor, or if Aria had one last surprise. But I knew this with a clarity that cut: we had committed. We would not stop until Selina's name was no longer a file.
We were in the sea now, our small boat a dark speck under a metal monster, chasing a life that could be closer than ever or slipping underwater forever. The chase screamed forward, and the night was a living thing that had decided we were the kind of people who walked through fire.
We were tired, dangerous, and utterly alive. We moved for the crate. We moved for Selina. We moved for the thin line between saving and killing. And Aria — red scarf or not — smiled from the freighter like a woman who loved the sound of things breaking.