The world dissolved into white noise and searing heat.
The thermal charge on the server room door hadn't just breached the entrance; it had turned the high-tech sanctuary into a pressure cooker. Lia felt the shockwave in her molars, a jarring vibration that nearly knocked her off the ladder leading to the extraction hatch.
"Go! Up!" Sebastian roared over the shriek of the alarms.
He stood at the base of the ladder, his SIG Sauer leveled at the jagged hole in the door. Through the smoke, the silhouettes of Julian's tactical team appeared—shadowy wraiths in matte-black armor. Sebastian didn't hesitate. He pulled the trigger with a terrifying, rhythmic precision. Three shots. Three muffled grunts. Three bodies hitting the floor.
Lia scrambled through the hatch, her silk dress tearing at the thigh, revealing the tactical holster strapped to her skin. She reached down, her hand outstretched. "Sebastian, now!"
He grabbed the rungs, moving with a speed that defied the heavy, sedative-laden air. As he hauled himself up into the maintenance shaft, a volley of return fire peppered the server racks below. Sparks showered them like dying stars. Lia slammed the hatch shut and engaged the manual deadbolt, plunging them into a narrow, vertical world of rust and grease.
"That purge," Sebastian panted, his face inches from her boots as they climbed. "How much did you get?"
"Everything," Lia said, her voice tight. "The Lethe protocols, the test subject logs, the financial back-doors. If we get out of here alive, Voss Dynamics is a hollow shell. But Julian knows that. He's not trying to save the data anymore. He's trying to kill the witnesses."
They reached the top of the shaft, emerging into the sub-zero bite of the Alpine night. They were on a maintenance catwalk, suspended over the main hangar. Below them, the sleek, predatory shape of the "Icarus" the prototype VTOLsat like a slumbering beast of carbon fiber and jet fuel.
"There it is," Sebastian whispered.
But between them and the Icarus stood four more operatives. They weren't just mercenaries; these were the elite "Aegis" guards—men Sebastian had hand-picked and trained before the void.
"They won't hesitate," Sebastian said, his voice dropping to that cold, stony register that made Lia's skin crawl. "They're programmed to follow the highest active clearance. Right now, that's Julian."
"Then we change the program," Lia said. She pulled a small, silver cylinder from her hair—a localized EMP grenade. "On my mark, close your eyes."
She didn't wait for his agreement. She lobbed the cylinder into the center of the hangar floor. A dull thud was followed by a silent, invisible ripple that killed the hangar lights and fried the night-vision goggles of the guards.
Lia leaped from the catwalk, her boots hitting a stack of crates before she rolled onto the hangar floor. She moved like a shadow, her suppressed pistol barking in the dark. Beside her, Sebastian was a force of nature. He didn't need night vision. He moved by sound, by the "echoes" of his own training. He disarmed the first guard with a brutal snap of the wrist and used the man's own body as a shield against a spray of bullets from the second.
It was a dance of death, choreographed in the strobe-light flashes of muzzle flares.
Lia reached the cockpit of the Icarus, her fingers frantic on the keypad. "The override is encrypted! Sebastian, I need a biometric handshake!"
Sebastian slammed the last guard's head against the hangar wall and sprinted toward her. He pressed his palm to the glass canopy. A red laser scanned his hand.
Access Denied, a synthetic voice echoed. User Status: Terminated.
"Dammit!" Lia hissed. "Julian's locked you out of your own bird."
Sebastian's jaw tightened. He looked at the guards beginning to regroup at the hangar entrance. In the distance, the sound of a heavy heavy-lift helicopter approached. More reinforcements.
"Hera," Sebastian shouted, his voice echoing through the hangar. "I know you're in there. I know Julian tried to scrub you. But look at the code. Look at the architecture of my mind."
Lia looked at him like he'd gone mad. "Sebastian, the AI is offline—"
"Hera!" he roared, slamming his fist against the canopy. "The password is Ariadne. The thread in the labyrinth. Remember who built you!"
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then, the hangar lights flickered to a ghostly, soft blue. The canopy of the Icarus hissed and rose like the wings of an angel.
Welcome back, Sebastian, the AI's voice whispered, sounding fragile, almost human. I have bypassed the administrative lockdown. You have sixty seconds before the system self-destructs.
"Get in!" Sebastian grabbed Lia by the waist and literally threw her into the co-pilot's seat. He vaulted into the pilot's chair, his hands hovering over the holographic controls.
He froze.
Lia watched him, her heart in her throat. The complex array of dials, flight-paths, and thrust-vectors reflected in his grey eyes. This was the moment. If his memory didn't hold, they were dead.
"Sebastian?"
He didn't answer. His eyes went distant, the pupils dilating. He wasn't looking at the screens; he was looking through them.
Memory Fragment: A sunset over the Atlantic. The smell of high-altitude oxygen. The weight of the stick in his hand. A voice beside him—Lia's voice—saying, 'You fly like you're trying to outrun God.'
His hands moved. It wasn't a conscious thought; it was pure, unadulterated muscle memory. He flipped a series of switches in a blur of motion. The engines of the Icarus whined, a high-pitched scream that vibrated through Lia's spine. The floor plates of the hangar began to slide open, revealing the dizzying drop of the mountain face.
"Hold on," he growled.
The VTOL didn't just lift; it lunged.
They plummeted into the dark void of the Alpine valley just as a rocket-propelled grenade shattered the spot where they had been idling. Sebastian yanked the stick back, the G-force pinning Lia into her seat. The world turned sideways as he executed a barrel roll, dodging the incoming tracer fire from the ground.
"You're doing it," Lia gasped, her knuckles white as she gripped the armrests. "You're actually flying this thing."
Sebastian's face was a mask of intense concentration, sweat beading on his forehead. "I'm not flying it. I'm... I'm remembering it. Every turn, every vibration... it's like a song I forgot I knew."
He leveled the craft, punching the afterburners. They shot through the clouds, leaving the burning wreckage of The Citadel behind them.
Silence settled over the cockpit, broken only by the low hum of the engines and the heavy breathing of two people who had just cheated death. The adrenaline began to recede, leaving a hollow, electric tension in its wake.
Lia looked at the man beside her. He looked different now. The vulnerability from Monaco was gone, replaced by a dark, surging competence. He looked like the Sebastian Voss she had feared. He looked like the man who could rule the world.
"The kiss in the server room," he said, not taking his eyes off the horizon.
Lia flinched. "It was a mistake. Adrenaline. We were about to die."
"Is that what you tell yourself?" Sebastian turned his head slightly, his gaze catching hers. The cockpit was dim, lit only by the blue glow of the instruments, making his eyes look like molten silver. "I didn't kiss a ghost, Liora. And I didn't kiss a 'memory consultant.' I kissed the woman who took my life away. And the terrifying part is... I wanted more."
"You don't know what you want," Lia snapped, her voice trembling. "You're a fractured man, Sebastian. You're clinging to me because I'm the only anchor you have left."
"Maybe," he conceded, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous vibration. "But an anchor is the only thing that keeps you from drifting into the abyss. You hate me for what I might have done. But you're still here. You could have left me in that lab. You could have taken the drive and let Julian's men finish me. Why didn't you?"
Lia looked away, staring out at the stars. "Because my brother deserved a trial. He deserved the truth. And I can't get that from a corpse."
"Liar," Sebastian whispered.
He reached across the console, his hand finding hers. His grip was firm, warm, and utterly possessive. Lia tried to pull away, but her fingers betrayed her, curling around his.
"We have the data," she said, trying to steer the conversation back to the mission. "We need to go to ground. I have a safe house in the Mediterranean. High-density shielding. Julian won't be able to track the Icarus there."
"Fine," Sebastian said. He squeezed her hand before letting go to adjust the flight path. "But know this, Liora. The memory is coming back. Piece by piece. And when the picture is complete... when I remember exactly what happened between us in that penthouse..."
He paused, a dark, predatory smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
"...I'm going to make sure you never want to wipe me again."
Lia felt a chill that had nothing to do with the altitude. The hunter was becoming the hunted once more, and as the Icarus streaked across the night sky toward the coast, she realized that the "Black Void" wasn't just Sebastian's problem anymore. It was a trap they were both falling into, and this time, there would be no failsafe to save them.