Lena Voss had hacked into more systems than she could count—government databases, black-market auctions, encrypted relic registries, even Jack's old case files once, just to see what he was hiding.
But nothing had ever pushed back like this.
The drive Jack brought her two nights ago was supposed to be a dead file dump. A leftover from his forced exit from the department. Just storage. A last relic of a life he'd buried.
But when she opened it, the data inside had teeth.
Encrypted folders nested within encrypted folders. Names she hadn't seen in years. Redacted testimonies. Internal memos with metadata linking back to addresses that no longer existed. And buried at the center—something that made her skin crawl.
A file simply labeled: RAVEN_LEDGER.7Z
It had three levels of biometric locks.
She cracked the first two in six hours.
The third required Jack's fingerprint.
Now, he sat beside her in her studio—walls covered in monitors, windows blacked out, wires crawling across the floor like digital vines. She handed him a stylus.
"Last lock," she said.
He didn't ask what was inside.
He just pressed his finger to the screen.
The folder opened.
Lena leaned forward, muttering, "Please don't be a bomb…"
But it wasn't.
It was worse.
The screen lit up with a spreadsheet—not digital, but a scanned ledger of old paper. Handwritten notes. Department IDs. Case file numbers. Artifacts. Names. Coordinates.
At the top, stamped in red ink:
RAVEN CIRCLE | EMBEDDED PERSONNEL – ZONE 03: METROPOLITAN ENFORCEMENT
Jack stared.
Lena whispered, "They had plants in the precinct."
Not just plants.
Jack scrolled down.
There were four names circled.
Three were officers, Jack barely remembered.
But the fourth…
His jaw locked.
Dray, Kael.
Date of recruitment: Unknown.Clearance level: Strategic asset.Assignment: Information suppression.Status: Compromised asset – Watchlist.
"Son of a—"
"No," Lena cut in. "Look again."
Jack blinked. She was pointing to a footnote.
Kael's name had a second code beside it—one used only in outdated classification protocols.
"It means he was flagged," Lena said. "Not as a member… but as a threat."
Jack swallowed hard. "They turned on him."
"Or tried to," Lena said. "That surveillance footage he gave you? He probably got it the same way I would—off the books, backchannel. Which means…"
"He's not dirty," Jack said. "He's hunted."
Lena nodded. "And someone tried to bury him before he could bury them."
Jack leaned back. His head spun.
Kael wasn't the betrayer.
He was a warning.
The ledger didn't just list personnel. It tracked artifact movements, case interference, and manipulation points. Multiple thefts were cross-referenced with cases Jack had worked—and ones he'd failed to close because evidence vanished, witnesses recanted, or entire scenes were scrubbed clean.
"I didn't miss the clues," he said quietly. "They were removed."
Lena didn't answer. Her eyes were scanning ahead.
She tapped a line halfway down.
"Look at this," she whispered.
The entry read:
Asset: Vane, ElaraStatus: InitiatedProject: Parallax Memory ReconstructionObjective: Phase 2 Personality Host IntegrationResult: Unstable – Terminated (Code Z-27)Note: Prototype memory architecture transferred to 'Mira.'
Jack didn't breathe.
The words blurred in front of him.
They hadn't just faked Elara's death.
They'd used her.
She was never meant to survive.
She was a vessel.
They'd implanted memories—altered identity—bent her into something they could control.
Mira wasn't an alias.
It was a programmed state.
Lena's voice was shaky now. "She wasn't just running. She was trying to undo what they did."
Jack leaned forward.
"There's more," he said. "Scroll down."
Lena obeyed.
The bottom of the document had one last name, underlined, with no department affiliation.
Just a code.
CROW_01 – Field Architect
Location: UNKNOWNLast contact: CRANE ESTATEObjective: Rebuild Elara Vane from surviving data + artifact patterningStatus: ACTIVE
Jack's voice dropped. "This is the one pulling strings."
"They're not collecting relics," Lena said, eyes wide. "They're rebuilding her. From scratch."
Piece by piece.
Case by case.
They were stealing traits, memories, behaviors.
Testing them.
Discarding failures.
Jack rose to his feet, pacing now. "The Janari effigy. The healer pendant. They weren't just weapons—they were storage. Psychological vaults. The victims weren't random—they were experiments."
"And the endgame?" Lena asked.
He looked at her.
"They want her back."
"But she's already alive," Lena said.
Jack shook his head.
"Not Elara. Not who she really was. They want the version they can control. A perfected Elara. A weapon in human form."
Lena sat back, stunned.
"Then Rhea—"
"She's not a survivor," Jack said. "She's a blueprint."
They sat in silence.
Then Lena looked at the screen again.
"There's one more thing," she said.
She pulled up a cross-linked image buried in the metadata. A map.
At first glance, it looked like a standard metro grid overlay.
But the symbols told a different story.
Raven symbols. Placed across the city like markers. One at the Crane Estate. Another at the clinic. A third blinking at the corner of two intersecting lines.
Jack leaned closer.
"I know that place."
"Where is it?"
"An archive," Jack said. "Burned down years ago. Never rebuilt."
He tapped the blinking point.
"There's something left. Something they want."
Lena was already downloading the location data. "I'll prep gear. Meet you at the old tram line in an hour?"
He nodded.
Before he turned to go, Lena stopped him.
"Jack…"
He looked back.
"If we find her—really find her—what are you going to do?"
Jack's voice was steady.
"I'm going to ask her who she is now."
Then he was gone.
And Lena sat staring at the screen, the ledger blinking like a heartbeat.
Some truths couldn't be buried.
And some ghosts refused to stay dead.