Present – Outskirts of Cairo, Egypt
Heat. Blistering, suffocating heat.
The type that sank into your bones and whispered old curses under your skin. The type that didn't care about money or strategy or blood. Cairo did not suffer fools. It devoured them.
Sebastian wiped a layer of grit from his neck as they pulled into a crumbling compound on the edge of the desert. The safehouse was unlisted. Formerly MI6-controlled. Now scrubbed from every known archive.
They were here for Node Thirteen.
Audrey stepped out first, scanning the horizon through polarized lenses. She wore black — tactical and tight — but her gait had changed. Less hesitation. More instinct. She was reverting, and it terrified him.
"Lucien's not here yet," she said.
Sebastian followed her gaze. "How do you know?"
"Because the air still breathes," she said darkly. "When he comes, things die before sound."
Inside the facility, dust coated everything. Old files. Racks of expired medkits. A rusted gurney stained with something that wasn't quite red anymore.
This wasn't just a Heretic hub.
It was the origin.
Audrey moved slowly, pausing at every wall, tracing old insignias that had been scorched out with acid.
"This is where they took us as children," she murmured.
Sebastian stiffened. "You remember?"
"I remember screams through stone walls. And the taste of copper every time they called my name."
She knelt, fingers brushing over a faded marking: a triangle encased in a serpent.
Heretic's first sigil. Before the rebranding. Before the lies.
Then the lights flickered.
A motion sensor—old, half-dead—picked up movement in the lower level.
"He's here," Audrey whispered.
Flashback – 12 Years Ago, Heretic Node Thirteen
(Lucien POV)
Blood dripped from his nose as he knelt in the concrete chamber.
Lucien's hands trembled, fingers raw and cracked. His ribs throbbed — three were fractured, maybe four. But he didn't flinch when the door opened.
He never flinched.
Dr. Aldric stepped inside, clipboard in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other.
"Still awake, Lucien?"
He didn't respond.
"You know why we keep hurting you?"
Lucien stayed silent, jaw clenched.
"Because pain is an honest thing," Aldric continued, circling him. "And honesty is the final frontier. When everything else breaks — pride, memory, speech — the only thing that remains is truth. And we're trying to find yours."
Lucien looked up at him slowly, hatred boiling behind his eyes.
"You won't find it in me," he said.
The doctor smiled. "Oh, we already have. We just need to strip the rest away."
But they couldn't.
No matter how many sessions. No matter how many deaths he was forced to witness — Lucien never screamed. He never begged.
He watched. He remembered.
And he burned.
Until the day they brought her in.
Small. Bloody. Eyes like storms trapped in glass.
She didn't cry either.
But unlike him, she still believed in something.
She fought for people. For meaning.
And Lucien — already half-mad — watched her hold onto her humanity through it all.
That's when the obsession started.
Not love.
Not yet.
But purpose.
She would be the fire that burned the lab. Or the angel that tried to save them both.
Either way, he wouldn't let her leave him behind.
Present – Node Thirteen, Lower Level
Sebastian crouched behind the control panel, eyes on Audrey as she descended into the cryo-vault. The glass tubes were broken now, filled with sand and rot. One still held the outline of a child's body, long since mummified by time.
Audrey stopped in front of it.
"This was mine."
She said it like a confession. Her breath fogged the glass.
"I didn't remember before. But now... the dreams, the pain — it was always here."
Sebastian came beside her, slow and careful.
"You were a child. No one blames you for surviving."
"I do," she whispered.
He looked at her, truly looked.
"Audrey—"
Then the lights cut out.
Not flickered.
Died.
A voice echoed through the chamber like silk and smoke.
"You always did prefer the dark, didn't you?"
Lucien.
His boots clicked against the stone, calm and arrogant, like this was his home. And maybe it was.
Audrey turned to face him.
She didn't lift her gun.
"Why Cairo?" she asked. "Why bring us here?"
Lucien moved into the half-light, his shoulder still bandaged from Geneva. He looked thinner now. Haunted.
"Because this is the end of the maze," he said. "We started here. We end here."
Sebastian raised his weapon. "You're not walking out again, Lucien."
Lucien didn't even blink. "I've already walked out once. That's more than either of you ever did."
Audrey stepped forward. "You killed them. The others in Project Sigma. Why?"
"They were weak," Lucien replied. "And weakness spreads like infection. I tried to save you from that, Adelle. But you chose him. The billionaire's son."
His eyes landed on Sebastian with a searing hatred.
"You left me," Lucien said, voice low now, wounded. "In Geneva. In blood. After everything I did for you."
"You did it for yourself," Audrey snapped. "And maybe you always did."
Lucien smiled sadly. "I did it for both of us. Because if we weren't monsters, then we were victims. And I refused to die a victim."
His hand went to his side.
Sebastian fired.
Lucien vanished into smoke—flash escape.
Not this time.
Audrey moved like a blade, cutting through corridors, chasing the sound of boots on steel.
Lucien was bleeding. She could smell it.
They followed him to the old furnace chamber, where Project Sigma incinerated failures. The stench still lingered, like ghosts.
Lucien stood in the center.
No weapon. Just fire behind his eyes.
"You want the files?" he said. "Take them. But know this—Aegis was just the beginning. Geneva was a distraction."
Audrey froze.
"What?"
"I leaked it," he said. "Everything. The Matrix. The Geneva node. While you were running around burning shadows—I was lighting new ones."
Sebastian looked at him like he'd gone mad. "Why would you do that?"
Lucien turned to Audrey.
"To force your hand. To show you there's no going back. Because when the world finds out what we are… you'll come running back to me."
He dropped a data shard onto the ground.
Then threw himself backward into the furnace chute—vanishing into the shaft as a small timed explosive blew the chamber doors inward.
Smoke. Fire. Dust.
Gone again.
Hours Later – Outside Cairo
They stood by the truck as dawn broke behind broken minarets and ancient silence.
Audrey held the data shard in her hand.
It hummed.
She hadn't spoken since the blast.
Sebastian finally asked, "You okay?"
She looked up at him, eyes colder than before.
"No."
He waited.
"But I'm awake now."
And for the first time since Marseille — Sebastian wasn't sure who she meant when she said I.