PART 1: Madrid Safehouse
The Madrid flat was tucked between a closed bookstore and a vape shop pretending to be legitimate. Third floor, no elevator, four locks on the door and a fifth wired to a pressure sensor that only Izzy could disarm.
The front window faced west.
The only light came late.
Inside, the walls were bare and the furniture minimal — a fold-out couch, a battered desk, and a coat rack still tagged with an NSA burn code in black ink: 3F-ALPHA-112 // SHELL ID DORMANT
Evelyn dropped her bag at the foot of the couch without ceremony.
Jack peeled off his jacket, scanned the ceiling corners. "This place actually safe?"
Izzy knelt at the desk, flipping a concealed switch beneath the drawer. The air conditioner hummed once, then stopped.
"Signal kill's live," she said. "If anyone's looking, it'll just look like another dead terminal."
Evelyn already had her laptop open.
Jack walked to the back room — really just a pantry with a curtain, where a single cot and a broken mirror served as both bedroom and fallback escape route.
He stared at his phone.
No messages.
No pings.
He tapped in Leah's burner number. Waited.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Dad?"
"Hey, sunshine."
She sounded half-asleep. "Where are you?"
"Still on that job I told you about."
"The weird one?"
He smiled faintly. "Yeah. Just checking in."
"Are you in trouble?"
Jack hesitated.
Then: "Not the kind I can't handle. But listen — if anything weird happens, anything at all, don't go home. Use the cabin code and head north. You remember it?"
"I'm not stupid."
"No, you're not."
Silence.
Then: "I miss you."
Jack swallowed hard. "I know."
He hung up before he said something he'd regret.
Back in the main room, Evelyn was already running a secure relay chain across six countries. A list of names scrolled across her screen — journalists, cryptographers, off-book allies from Brussels and Zurich.
"I'm starting the leak," she said.
"Not the full drive," Izzy warned.
"Just the outer shell. Enough to stir the water."
Jack pulled a chair up beside the window.
"Stir gently," he muttered. "They already smell blood."
PART 2: Carl's Silence
Carl was never late.
Izzy stared at her laptop, blank screen reflecting in her eyes. The ping was scheduled for 07:40 GMT. It was now 09:12.
She sent the first echo signal.
Waited.
No bounce.
She tried a second.
Still nothing.
Across the room, Evelyn was re-encrypting packet fragments onto a portable key. Jack stood by the curtain window, chain-smoking the last of their filtered cigarettes.
"Still dark?" he asked.
Izzy didn't look up. "He's offline."
Jack swore under his breath.
Evelyn said nothing — just kept typing, lips tight, jaw locked.
At 09:51, the first message dropped.
Not from Carl.
From a civilian satellite tracking channel — an open-source leak reposted by a Lisbon surveillance group. Izzy clicked the link without thinking.
Aerial footage.
Timestamped 03:13 GMT.
A single structure — a farmhouse outside Coimbra — lit up in thermal. Heat bloom, then overexposure. An explosion.
Just before the ignition, in the frame's lower corner: a figure.
Male. Average build.
Wearing Carl's jacket.
Walking inside.
Then light, color, static.
Gone.
Jack stepped forward.
"Replay it."
She did.
They all watched again — the exact moment the door opened. The coat. The build. The way he moved.
Izzy's jaw clenched. "That's him."
"No," Evelyn said flatly. "That's meant to be him."
Izzy turned.
"It's staged," Evelyn continued. "You really think Carl would walk in like that with no precautions? With satellites overhead?"
"He may not have had a choice."
"No," Evelyn said again, quieter this time. "He knew this would happen. That's why he made sure you weren't with him."
Jack crossed to the desk, leaned in close.
"If they staged it, they want us to believe he's gone."
Izzy didn't respond right away.
Then, softly: "Or they want us to hesitate."
She closed the laptop.
"Either way, we don't have the luxury of grief."
PART 3: The Wrong Leak
At 14:03 Madrid time, Evelyn's system beeped — a short, piercing tone that wasn't supposed to sound unless someone accessed a monitored node on the ledger's shadow path.
Izzy looked up. "Talk to me."
Evelyn didn't answer. Just stared at the terminal, her pupils twitching like she couldn't quite believe what she saw.
Jack came over.
"What is it?"
"Berlin," she muttered. "Drop 4C. Arthur's second echo vault."
"That's not one of ours," Izzy said.
"No," Evelyn agreed. "It's not."
She pulled up the drop status.
File: V.A.T. OBSERVED // REDACTED
Download Count: 317
Time Active: 4m 26s
Status: PULLED
The file was gone. The link scrubbed. Only the access metadata remained — IP shadow traces, spoof logs, a single encryption fingerprint.
Evelyn zoomed in on it.
"Looks like Arthur's," she said. "Same cipher rhythm. Same compression footprint."
"But?"
"But it's off. Subtle. Half a key displaced. Whoever did this was trained by him… or had access to his personal routines."
Jack frowned. "Could it be Brandt?"
"No," she said flatly. "Brandt's signature is brute force. Fast, ugly, surgical. This one's… graceful."
Izzy stepped beside her.
"What was in the file?"
Evelyn hesitated.
Then: "A summary. About the V.A.T. sweeps in Eastern Europe. Surveillance contracts. Civilian harvesting. Stuff even Arthur was afraid to put in the official copy."
Izzy went still.
"Whoever leaked this," Evelyn said, "either wants to burn everything… or signal someone."
Jack looked between them. "So what now?"
Izzy didn't blink.
"Now we assume the ledger's been duplicated."
Evelyn's voice dropped. "And the rules just changed."
PART 4: Kill Order
The alert came at 2:17 a.m.
Evelyn sat bolt upright on the cot in the pantry room, breathing hard before her eyes even opened. The phone wasn't hers. It was the one sewn into the lining of her coat — an old satellite handset, battery half-dead, screen cracked.
It shouldn't have rung.
It never rang.
She thumbed the alert.
One code.
Four letters.
All uppercase.
SEV-1
She stared at it for a long time. Then stood, dressed, and walked into the kitchen like nothing had happened.
Izzy was already awake.
She looked up from the window ledge. "Bad dream?"
Evelyn held up the phone.
Izzy read the screen.
Said nothing.
Just nodded once.
SEV-1 meant Standing Elimination Vector — Class One.
A legacy designation from when Arthur still worked off the books with NATO shadow units.
It was only used for one kind of target: unrecoverable liabilities.
"Brandt signed it?" Izzy asked.
"No." Evelyn's voice was hoarse. "But it came through one of his old pipelines. Military-bounced. Low orbit."
Jack entered through the service door two minutes later.
"We had a tail," he said.
Izzy snapped to attention. "Where?"
"South end of the street. Red jacket. New phone. Trying not to be obvious."
"Armed?"
Jack nodded. "Barely. Probably meant to follow, not shoot."
Evelyn sat down at the desk.
"They're not chasing us," she said. "They're caging us in."
Izzy pulled open the weapons kit.
"We're moving in four hours. Light gear only."
Jack went to check the escape tunnel.
Evelyn whispered, more to herself than anyone else:
"He's not waiting anymore. He's planning past us."
PART 5: Ghost Exit
At 03:42, Izzy made the call.
"We move now."
No debate.
The Madrid flat had gone quiet in the wrong way — not peaceful, just watched. The silence of cameras, pressure sensors, deadphones waiting for breath.
She unlatched the false pantry panel. Jack pulled back the shelf, revealing a stairwell carved from damp concrete, descending into pitch-dark utility space built beneath the metro decades ago and never updated.
Evelyn was already packed.
"I take it this is the ratline?"
Izzy handed her a thermal torch.
"Straight out to the east line. Abandoned junction. From there, we ghost."
They moved fast. No light except the torch. Jack went first, sweeping corners. Izzy brought up the rear.
Ten minutes later, they were below street level — passing forgotten signage, red-stamped vault doors, rusted tracklines.
Above them, the city didn't stir.
Back upstairs, in the now-empty flat, Izzy left behind a single message.
She printed it on cheap receipt paper, slid it under the front door, and weighted it with a thumb drive containing nothing but a decoy file labeled "Accounts Payable."
The note read:
You're not playing cleanup. You're playing catch-up.
— N.B.