Location: Tavara – En Route to Nora's Facility
The black SUV sped through the rain-soaked streets, escorted by two decoy vehicles to divert attention. Damien sat in silence, his gaze fixed ahead, but his mind was moving faster than the engine beneath them. Beside him, Nora double-checked the biometric keys stored on three separate encrypted drives. Each one was hidden in a different piece of tech she carried—a locket, a medical tablet, and her biometric ring.
"I can't help but feel like we're about to open something we can't close," she muttered.
Damien responded without turning. "That's why we don't let it fall into enemy hands."
Behind them, Zina monitored signals on a custom tablet, her fingers moving at a blistering pace. "No drone surveillance, but Kael's people are smart. They're probably embedded already. We'll go dark two clicks from the site."
Logan, seated across from her, loaded a specialized tranquilizer rifle and set his comms to silent mode. "And if we find Dorian's code alive inside the system?"
Zina looked up. "Then we'll be dealing with more than just a traitor. We'll be dealing with a ghost we thought we buried."
---
Location: Nora's Research Facility – Level -3 Vault Access
Steel doors groaned as they opened after scanning all three biometric signatures. Nora stepped in first, followed by Damien and the strike team. The chamber was ice-cold, built into bedrock, and lit by sterile white lights. At its center sat a vertical containment unit, humming faintly, surrounded by coils of dormant surveillance bots.
"Still intact," Nora said, approaching it.
Damien tapped a command into his wristband. "Zina, scramble the surrounding grid. We're on internal sensors only now."
Zina's voice crackled through. "Scrambled. But Damien, I'm picking up faint bio-electric signatures. Non-human."
Logan tensed, sweeping the chamber with his rifle. "What do you mean non-human?"
Before Zina could explain, a shrill alarm blared through their comms—a silent intrusion breach.
"They're already inside," Damien snapped. "Lock down everything."
Suddenly, a section of the floor exploded outward. Smoke and sparks filled the air, and two dark figures surged through the opening—combat-modified assassins, likely bio-enhanced. They moved with inhuman speed.
Damien tackled Nora behind the containment unit. "Stay down!"
Logan fired a stun round directly into one of the intruders' necks—it barely slowed the attacker down. Zina rerouted her signal through the internal defense system, manually activating the dormant bots.
The facility came alive with blinking red lights.
---
Location: Serpent Directive HQ – Surveillance Feed Room
Kael Morran watched the encounter in real-time through a hijacked camera system. But his smile slowly faded as he saw one of the assassins freeze mid-motion, twitch, and then collapse.
The operator beside him frowned. "Override failed. Something interfered."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "It's Dorian, isn't it?"
The operator gulped. "It has to be. He embedded a failsafe code inside the vault's AI defense mechanism. We never deleted it... just suppressed it."
Kael's knuckles whitened. "Then Dorian's ghost just saved them. Again."
---
Location: Nora's Vault – Moments Later
The air was thick with smoke and static. The two attackers lay motionless, subdued by both firepower and Zina's surprise override.
Damien helped Nora up as Logan checked the perimeter. "That wasn't just a breach," Damien said. "That was a test. Kael wanted to see how far we'd go to protect this."
Nora stared at the containment pod, its hum steady and silent. "Then he knows now that we'll go to the ends of the earth."
Zina tapped a final sequence into her system, locking down the AI with a new firewall code.
Logan shook his head. "We're dancing with shadows, and the old ghosts are waking up."
Damien nodded grimly. "Then let's remind them—we're not afraid of ghosts."