The safehouse burned before sunrise.
Not from outside — from inside. Someone had walked through its layered defenses like they were paper.
Juno stood in the smoldering rubble, coughing. She'd been out getting supplies. If she hadn't—
"They knew where we were," Maya growled, dragging a half-scorched terminal out of the wreckage. "That means either a trace or…"
She didn't finish.
Evan stepped forward. "A mole."
Signal said nothing. She was staring at the ashes. Her old spiral drawing had been pinned to the wall. Now it was gone.
Not burned.
Taken.
Lyra found the lead three hours later, pinged from a ghosted server in Lisbon. A location. No message. No threat. Just coordinates.
They landed in Lisbon at night.
Rain again.
Evan hated that the rain had started feeling like pattern.
They tracked the signal to an underground parking garage. Floor -3. Lights flickering. Oil on the concrete.
Maya and Lyra took point.
Signal stayed back, headset tuned to any neural disturbance.
Then it came.
Not sound.
A feeling.
She's here.
The first body dropped ten meters from them — throat opened with surgical precision. No sound.
The second came faster.
Lyra shouted: "She's using blind zones!"
A flicker passed the corner.
Juno fired.
The shot hit nothing.
Maya scanned with heat vision. "She's cold. Masked. Biothermal dampener."
Then a voice echoed through the garage.
Smooth. Female. Calm.
"You found Cain's purge. But Cain was a prototype. I'm the field model."
Signal stiffened.
"I know that voice."
Evan: "Who is she?"
Signal whispered, "Her name is Nova. We trained together. But she never broke conditioning."
Nova emerged from the shadows like smoke.
Tight black gear. Twin blades. No emotion. Just precision.
"You don't understand what Asher built," she said. "Cain failed because he hesitated. I won't."
She lunged.
Maya caught her midair. Grapple. Spin. Metal clanged.
Nova twisted, drove a blade into Maya's side.
Juno fired again — shoulder hit. Nova staggered.
Lyra threw a flash.
Nova vanished.
They dragged Maya out.
Blood loss — bad but not fatal.
Signal stared at the knife left behind.
"It's not about us," she said. "Nova isn't here to kill. She's mapping our reactions. She's testing me."
Evan gritted his teeth. "Then we flip it. We follow her."
Lyra pulled a trace from the knife's hilt. Embedded microcode. Location tag.
"Port of Tangier," she said. "She's heading to the next node."
Evan turned to Signal.
"You ready?"
Signal nodded, but her eyes told a different story.
"She's not like Cain. She's not logical. She enjoys the hunt."
Meanwhile
Far beneath a banking center in Geneva, a tall man in a white coat sipped tea while watching five screens.
Each showed a different child.
Each child was tagged.
Frost. Pulse. Orion. Halo. Cipher.
The man turned to his assistant.
"Send Nova her next directive. We'll see if our friends understand that this isn't chess. It's recursion."
The assistant nodded.
"Yes, Director Asher."