ZARA — OUTSIDE OLD GOLD PIER.
The Old Gold Pier smelled like rust, old money, and gulls with upset stomachs. Streetlamps blinked like tired eyes over broken boards. Midnight had a taste like metal—good for spies, bad for hearts.
Leo stood at the bow of the fishing skiff, silhouette in the lamplight, jacket zipped to hide the drying blood. He looked ridiculous and dangerous and exactly like the kind of man who made bad choices you'd follow into hell.
"We agreed: talk, check the file, leave," I said, saying it as much to steady my hands as to remind him that we had a plan. We were improvising because that's what we did, but even improvising needs rules.
His grin was half-sinister, half-terrified. "Yes. We talk. We accept bribes. We decline murder-for-hire offers. We live happily ever after."
"Or we die trying." I stepped from the skiff on to the pier, heels soft on wet wood. My dress was still torn where the rooftop had been rough; my hair smelled of smoke. My smile was a practiced thing—pyrotechnic, useful—and it helped until it didn't.
At exactly midnight, a shadow detached from a crate beneath a lamp. He moved like a man who had rehearsed the perfect limp: deliberate, controlled, and desperate.
He carried a battered leather envelope—thin, bulging. The sort of envelope villains hide in coat linings or couriers hand off with shaking hands. He was older than I'd expected, eyes too bright for his face.
"You Zara Thompson?" he asked. His accent was thick, Eastern European, the kind that belongs to men who carry secrets like teeth.
"Yes." My voice was level. I watched Leo—he lifted his chin to the man as if to say Who are you, and the man's gaze went to him like an animal scenting familiarity.
"I have proof." The man swallowed. "Project Origin files—movement in three days. London transfer. El-Khalid's signature. I want out. I want to give it to you." He put the envelope on the box. "Meet me. Alone. Bring cash. Leave with this. Or let me burn it."
He blinked like a man who'd rehearsed his death speech.
Leo's fingers twitched where they rested on the boat's railing. Old habit: always read the hands. He didn't move.
"Why should we trust you?" I asked.
"Because I want to live." The man's voice was small.
A long pause. The salt trembled the planks. The pier creaked like a secret.
"Show me," I said.
He unfolded a sheet—an industrial printout, clipped to a folder. The header read EL-KHALID ENTERPRISES. A line of encoded numbers. A stamped designation: PROJECT ORIGIN. The courier pointed to a line: transfer manifest, London, three days.
It felt like sun hitting skin.
"Where did you get this?" Leo asked.
"Someone in his inner circle—second-guard level. He hates what they do. He hates the lab. Wanted to leave before they moved the tech." The man trembled. "He couldn't get out. He asked me to hand this to someone who could stop them."
A wind gusted. The word "stop" sounded heavy in my mouth.
"Okay," I said. "We'll take it."
He nodded and—before I could say more—someone fired. The night detonated.
Bullets punched the boards, gouging the wood. The courier dropped the envelope. He tried to curl, and a black silhouette filled the light above us. Masks. Rifles. The whole pier erupted into motion.
"Move!" Leo shoved me behind a crate and drew. His voice was the only clear thing in my head.
I rolled, found the leather folder with my palm, clutching the damned thing like proof could be held in my fist. The courier made a noise—something like a prayer—and then another figure collided with him. A masked man on top of him, quick hands like a surgeon. He reached for the envelope.
"Get the skiff!" I shouted. Leo didn't hesitate. He hopped down, boots slapping the boards. We were ten seconds from being men on a list.
The gunfire stopped as suddenly as it began. Not because the shooting ended—but because a woman's voice filled the space like perfume: "Good evening."
Aria stepped into the lamp light as if she'd never been chased across rooftops, as if bullets were for other people. She was immaculate. Her coat was unmarked; her hair sat perfectly; her smile was a razor. Behind her, two silhouettes melted into the night.
She moved with a slow, poisonous grace. I hated how easy my pulse accelerated at the sight of her.
"Aria," Leo breathed, and something in his face when he said her name frayed a cord inside me I didn't want to be responsible for.
She laughed softly. "Of course you'd bring company."
<<<<<
ARIA — A MOMENT.
They always chose the romantic option. Men in love are easy to bait. The courier was a loose tooth—worth pulling. I'd told him to run. He did what he could. Perfect.
I'd set the trap to be elegant. The pier was thin enough for chaos and thick enough for secrets. I'd thought of everything—rifles on the ridge, a two-man team to herd them, a soft spot for Leo to prove his allegiance. I wanted the file. I wanted to see which of them would burn first.
The thing about Leo is you can stab him and he'll smile. I hated that boyishly brave thing about him. It made him soft. Made him mine. Made everything I'd sworn to keep tidy ugly.
Tonight, either he chose me—or he chose the woman with the bleeding heart. And I would be patient if I had to watch them both burn.
<<<<<
LEO — MID-FIGHT.
Aria's arrival didn't make the bullets stop, but it reordered them. Her presence was a punctuation mark: you were supposed to feel something here.
Men surged from the dark. Someone lunged for the envelope. I dove, palm first, and it hit my fingers. I gripped the leather folder and felt the weight of it—real and mortal.
They tried to take the skiff. They tried to box us in. We fought like two things who had nothing left to prove to the world but everything left to prove to each other.
"Zara—water!" I snapped. "Now!"
She pushed the skiff, legs pumping. The engine started with a lurch, the little boat skittering away from the pier like a frightened animal. Bullets slashed the water around us, spitting spray into our faces like cold confetti.
We were away. For a handful of heartbeats, the dark swallowed us like a safe mouth. I sat in the boat, the folder on my lap, hands slick, breathing hard. The pier receded, and there was Aria—silhouette framed by light—standing like a figure on a stage we'd walked away from.
The folder felt like a promise in my hands. A dangerous one.
"Did you get it?" Zara asked, voice small and fierce all at once.
I opened the envelope just enough to see: a thumb drive, stamped with a logo, and printouts with transshipment coordinates. London. Midnight transfer. Aircraft code. The sort of thing that made your spine go cold.
"Yeah," I said. "We have it."
Her hand found mine. For a second I wanted tenderness to finish the sentence. Instead, she pressed her forehead to my shoulder. "We need to decode this. Kai said—"
"Kai's off-grid," I reminded her. "Not an option."
She smacked my arm. "You and your friends have unofficial friends, remember? Use them." She didn't sound like she was joking.
Then my phone vibrated. A text from a number I didn't recognize: Nice try. We expected you. Meet—Old Al-Majid warehouse. 01:00. Come alone. Bring file.
Someone wanted to play chess. Someone had moved the queen right under our hands.
"Who sent it?" Zara asked.
I didn't have a good answer. Not the truth, not the kind of truth that would help. But I had the folder and I had the woman who'd made a sport of tearing us apart.
Aria's silhouette had retreated into the pier's shadows. She looked… pleased. Dangerous. Like she'd set a new rule without telling us the penalty.
We could run. We could hide. We could hand the drive to someone official—and probably watch it disappear into bureaucracy or cozy pockets. Or we could go.
I checked my watch. 00:40. Fifty minutes till the warehouse. We had time to breathe, to prepare, to hurt each other with small, careful words.
Zara cracked her knuckles like she was loading a gun for the second round. "We go together," she said. "And if it's a trap—"
"It will be," I answered. "Aria doesn't do charity."
She laughed—a harsh little sound that could have been a sob. "Then at least we'll have good company."
<<<<<
ZARA — ON THE WAY TO OLD AL-MAJID.
We rented a van that smelled of old oil and cheap air freshener. The driver played a radio station quietly and pretended not to notice the military-grade gear we slid under the seats. We kept the folder between us in the middle—like a third person breathing.
On the way, we argued about decoding strategies. She wanted to brute-force it; I wanted to get the right key. We bickered like an old married couple who'd once been properly engaged with disaster. It was stupid and needed.
"Tell me something honest," she said suddenly, voice soft.
"What?" I was concentrating on the map. There was a tiny thrill in the danger that made conversations blunt and honest.
"Do you ever regret not telling me? Before all this?" Her hand found mine under the folder, fingers curling.
I should have said a dozen things: I regret the lies; I regret the secrecy; I regret the time I didn't tell her the truth because I thought truth would get us both killed. Instead, I said, "Every day. But regret doesn't defuse bombs."
She smirked. "You're sentimental."
"Shut up," I said, and then we were both laughing—short, sharp, because the bleakness around us needed the mercy.
<<<<<
LEO — ARRIVAL, OLD AL-MAJID WAREHOUSE.
The warehouse smelled like old fish and new danger. A single bulb swung in the center like an accusing eye. The door was already open. Someone wanted us to come inside. Maybe that's what they wanted most of all.
We stepped into the belly of the place—concrete cold, crates stacked like teeth. A man met us under the swinging light: a neutral face, thin suit, no accent we could place.
"You're early," he said.
"You called us," I said. My hands rested on the folder in my jacket. I could feel the drive through the leather like a live thing.
He smiled. "Good. Do you want tea? Or do you want business?"
"Business," Zara snapped.
He lifted gloved hands and—like a bad movie—three masked men dropped from the rafters. Our reflexes tuned itself to fury. We hit them as if we'd been trained since childhood to be violence. They were competent. So were we. Fists met bone. Feet met ribs. The warehouse turned into a ballet of sound.
When the dust settled, the thin man remained. He held a pistol at arm's length. "Do you know who I work for?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. I shouldn't have known. "Bratva money don't play in this theater."
He blinked. "Close. But not exactly. I work for someone who pays to keep the world neat. He pays handsomely to make sure certain projects move on schedule. He doesn't like leaks. He didn't like your little intervention."
Aria stepped out from the shadow, pistol raised, a slow smile like a guillotine. "Meet Mr. Noor," she cooed. "He sells truth to the highest bidder."
Noor's hand didn't shake. "The folder is corrupted," he said, soft and fatal. "You have what looks like truth. But I promise you: if it's incomplete, you go after the wrong tail and the head laughs."
I wanted to crush him where he stood. "Give it to us. Now."
He shrugged. "I gave you what you wanted at midnight. For the rest, you earn. Fight, die, bargain. Take your pick."
Aria raised an eyebrow. "Or we can offer them a choice." Her gaze sliced to Leo. "Zara, you get the truth signed and stamped. Leo, you hand over your loyalty."
His face went still—like a man being carved. "Don't," I warned him. This was the moment Aria lived for: the knife with the velvet handle.
She laughed, soft and terrible. "Two minutes, lovers. Make your deals. Or make your funerals."
The warehouse clock ticked like a time-bomb. We had to move, fast, sharp, true.
<<<<<
ZARA — DECISION.
We could have handed the drive over and watched men move to London, watched Project Origin board planes while we ate stale coffee and regret. We could have tried to bargain with a man whose pockets were financed by people's suffering.
Instead, we chose to run. Because we were not negotiators trained to trust people who bought secrets. We were agents who burned bridges.
Leo gave Noor a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "You don't get to choose for me," he said. Then he moved before Noor could think.
He tackled Noor, cheap pistol clattering. The warehouse dissolved into chaos: fists, gun flashes, people rolling, dust in our teeth. Aria landed a hard blow to my ribs, breath leaving me in a thin scream, and yet I scrambled up and found the drive—flashed in the dying lamplight.
We ran. We fought. We escaped through a side door into rain-slick alleys. Noor's men cursed behind us. Aria's laugh followed like a nightmare echo.
We didn't have the whole file. We had a sliver—a corrupted drive and a manifest. Enough to know London was next. Enough to know El-Khalid was moving and Project Origin was real. Not enough to stop it cleanly.
Leo and I collapsed against a dumpster, breathing like two wrecked animals. My legs shook. His side throbbed like a bell. The city hummed like a living thing—gold towers indifferent to the blood and the file that might change everything.
He looked at me, the kind of look that was both apology and promise.
"We go to London," he said. "We stop them."
I nodded. "We burn it to the ground."
He opened his mouth, then closed it. Instead, he took my hand and squeezed it hard enough to hurt.
"Whatever it takes," he whispered.
Aria watched from the corner of the block—her silhouette a dark punctuation—then lit a cigarette and watched our vanishing backs with something that could have been regret, or hunger, or both.
Whatever she felt, it didn't matter.
We had a corrupted drive and a plan that barely held.
We had the fire, and the inferno waiting in London.
And as we drove away into a city that refused to believe we had just danced with death, I understood what the line meant: not everyone who asks to meet you at midnight wants to make a deal. Some want to teach you the cost of standing up. We were learning, and we were not nearly finished.