The rain had stopped, but the storm was far from over.
A blacksite extraction chopper hovered above the Helix Dynamics compound, rotors cutting through the smoky dawn. Grimm and the team stood on the rooftop, surrounding a handcuffed Adrian Kessler. His suit was damp from sweat and rain, but his eyes burned with unsettling calm.
"Secure him in transport," Grimm ordered. "Eyes on him the whole way."
Tanya shoved Kessler forward, guiding him toward the waiting bird. "Try anything clever and I ventilate your knees."
Reyes tapped into his handheld terminal. "Still no trace of the backup Phantom servers. The scrub went global. Kessler wasn't bluffing—he torched the whole archive."
"But he didn't torch himself," Grimm said. "He's still the key."
Bull glared as he watched the horizon. "Helix ain't gonna let their golden boy rot in a hole. We just stepped on a nest."
The team boarded the chopper, Kessler seated and strapped in across from them. The moment they lifted off, Reyes began patching into encrypted CIA channels using stolen Helix access codes.
"I've got chatter," he said. "Something's wrong. There's a burn notice out on us."
Tanya looked up sharply. "From Helix?"
"No… from Langley."
Grimm leaned forward. "Clarify."
Reyes hesitated. "We're being disavowed."
The words hung in the cabin like a death sentence.
Reyes continued, eyes wide as he read the stream. "We're listed as rogue agents responsible for the Helix assault. Charges include espionage, assassination, and theft of classified technology. Kessler's been reclassified as a protected intelligence asset under deep-cover immunity."
Bull exploded. "They're protecting him?! After what he did?"
Tanya narrowed her eyes. "This isn't damage control. This is a cover-up."
Kessler smiled faintly through his restraints. "Told you. You're obsolete. The machine always protects itself."
Grimm stood slowly, his expression unreadable. "Pilot, change course. We're not going to Langley."
The pilot glanced back. "Sir? I have direct orders—"
"New orders," Grimm snapped. "Take us to the fallback site in Greenland. Reyes, feed him the coordinates."
Reyes nodded, fingers flying across his terminal. "Sending now."
The chopper banked hard, angling north.
Kessler watched Grimm with faint curiosity. "What's the plan, Captain? Take me off-grid? Torture me for intel? You think I didn't plan for that?"
"I don't care about your plan," Grimm said. "I care about the people you burned. The men and women who died because you played god. This time, there's no clean extraction. No shadow report. You disappear—permanently."
Kessler tilted his head. "Then you'll become the thing you claim to fight."
Grimm said nothing.
The chopper cut through dawn light. Clouds drifted beneath them. Reyes worked in silence, sifting through whatever scraps he could salvage from the fragmented Phantom system.
"Hold up…" Reyes muttered. "There's something. A low-tier data node. Not part of the main Phantom net, but still active. It's broadcasting on a loop… a failsafe subroutine."
Grimm looked over. "Location?"
"Alaska. Deep in the Yukon–Koyukuk territory. Remote as hell. No known facility, but this thing is humming like it's alive. I think it's the real Phantom hub. Everything else was a distraction."
Kessler looked… amused.
"You're not supposed to find that," he said.
Tanya cocked her rifle. "Then I'm glad we did."
Reyes's face darkened. "I'm getting something else—encrypted drone swarm signatures near that location. Someone else is already mobilizing."
"Helix?" Grimm asked.
"More likely CIA black-hats. Kessler's people, cleaning house."
Grimm nodded. "Then we go. Get to it before they can."
Bull frowned. "And do what? Smash the last server and go into hiding?"
Grimm stared out the window, his voice quiet but firm. "We expose it. All of it. Live. Global. No deniability. We find the Phantom core, rip the mask off, and force the world to see what's been done in its name."
Kessler gave a dry chuckle. "You'll be hunted for the rest of your lives."
"We already are," Tanya said flatly.
Reyes looked up, nervous but resolute. "I'll need time to crack the node. It's not just encrypted—it's predictive. It's trying to counter-hack me before I get in."
"Then we move fast," Grimm said. "No more shadows. No more secrets."
He turned to Kessler, stepping close.
"You built a machine to kill the future. Now we use it to save what's left of it."
Kessler didn't reply. But the smile faded.
The team buckled in as the chopper streaked through the sky, course locked to Alaska's last wilderness—where the final truth waited, cold and buried.
Whatever came next, they knew one thing for certain:
There would be no turning back.