ZARA — Dubai Airport, 03:20 AM.
Airports always smell like the future—metal, stale coffee, other people's plans. Tonight it smelled like a bad decision I was already committed to.
Leo moved like he owned the carpet. He had on one of those suit-jacket-and-jeans combos that said "dangerous" and "I don't care what you think." There was a smear of old blood at his collar I still hadn't managed to scrub from my mind. He carried the leather folder we'd fought for like it was a sleeping child.
"We fly economy or pretend-poor-blessed?" he whispered, eyes scanning the throng. "I vote grace-under-fire, not 'please, I'm important'."
"Shut up." I adjusted the scarf over my hair—cheap silk, perfect for a fake tourist—and checked my forged passport one more time. The photo looked nothing like me at a bad angle, but the hologram's animation winked real. That was the point: the details that mattered looked real enough.
"You okay?" he asked, soft and dangerous.
"I was fine until you looked at me like that." I pocketed the passport. "We get through customs. We land in London. We find the plane manifest on that corrupted drive. We stop Project Origin."
"Cool, save the world, then honeymoon later." He wiggled his eyebrows. The absurdity of flirting at an airport should have been illegal.
The line at immigration felt like a gauntlet. The officer in front of us had the soul of a man who graded papers for a living. He flicked through our documents like a bored god. My stomach did a backflip.
"Purpose of visit?" he asked, and the tone told us he'd wondered that before.
"Business," Leo said. He slid a smile across the counter—practiced, warm, and precisely the wrong thing a spy wants to use when they're carrying a folder stamped PROJECT ORIGIN. The smile (and the tiny micro-transfer of his passport chip with a covert hack) distracted the man long enough for an OCR error to read a wrong expiration as "Recently renewed."
The officer's eyes narrowed.
"You'll be staying in London with—?"
"An old associate," I said.
"Medical research. Conferences." I flashed the accent-laced name of a fake sponsor. The man typed, sighed, and stamped.
We exhaled like people who had avoided a cliff edge. I wanted to laugh and cry in the same breath.
"Next stop—decoding," I said, nudging the folder into my bag where my laptop slept like a viper.
Leo's hand brushed mine. It was idle contact in a place that suddenly felt like the only honest place on Earth. Electricity—annoying, perfect—zipped through me. "We decode on the plane. Less chance of someone listening."
"Or someone on the plane is part of the listening," I said.
He cocked a brow. "Then we listen to them first."
We boarded. The plane hummed like a contained animal.
<<<<<
LEO — Midflight, Somewhere Above Turkey.
Economy felt more like theater when you were prepared to die for a data set. I put on the face of a tired businessman, but my fingers never stopped working. The corrupted drive wasn't cooperating; the file structure had been mangled on purpose—encrypted and salted like a safe deposit box with an attitude problem.
Zara across the aisle moved in a way raw and quiet—she unlatched, unfolded, a spy's folding of shadow into light. She'd hustled a coffee and an aisle seat, all of it casual, but I could see the way she watched the cabin, cataloging exits, cabin crew microexpressions, the man with the cheap watch.
The man with the cheap watch was the one who didn't fit. Too polished for economy, too bored for first class. He smiled at nothing; he checked his shoes like a man who spent days thinking about leather. He made one phone call and then tucked the handset into his jacket like a pet.
Zara nudged me with her knee. "Do you know the boring man?"
"Nope," I said. "But his shoe shine looked professional." I knew enough about criminals to know the small, precise signs: the wrong cuff, the absence of a tie knot, a shoe shine that had been done halfway.
She turned back to the drive. "I'm getting a breadcrumb." Her fingers flew. My chest tightened. We'd taken a corrupted chunk and masticated it—pulled out a manifest line that smelled like a promise: TRANSFER CODE—LON-TRN-07; AIRCRAFT: GOLIATH-11; CARGO HOLD B3.
"London… cargo hold B3," I repeated. "That's our hour."
Her screen flicked. A thumbnail image blinked then locked our stomachs: a grainy CCTV still of a woman in an El-Khalid lounge—a rendezvous with a masked figure. Zara's eyes went cold. The woman's profile… my brain slammed into the picture's jawline like a memory that refused to die.
"Rina," she breathed.
I felt it then—a pinch of cold. Not just because Rina was on screen, but because the next frame showed the woman handing a sealed folder to a man we'd seen in Dubai: Mr. Noor.
Rina. The voice that'd been my lifeline in a thousand ops. The woman who'd been only burner messages and airdrops. The woman who had told Zara to trust no one but the mission.
"I didn't believe it," I said, low. "Not her."
"Belief doesn't matter," Zara said. "Proof does." She shook her head like she was clearing a wound. "And she knew I'd be here."
The man with the cheap watch shifted in his seat. He reached for the armrest and I saw the flash of metal at his waist. I felt my training snap like a rubber band.
"Now," I whispered.
We moved—calm, professional, invisible. The man tried to intercept the aisle. Zara slipped, a human ghost. I blocked, intercepted, and in the same motion handed her the laptop and let my body handle the interruption.
He was stronger than he looked. He had the smell of aftershave that costs more than a month's rent—the smell of men who believe they are legally uncatchable. He shoved. I shoved back. For five heartbeats we were two animals who'd both chosen wrong families.
"Help!" he barked to no one and everyone.
The cabin looked up because that's what cabins do when any math deviates. A flight attendant—young, earnest—came to the aisle, eyes wide.
Aria's voice in my head, rehearsed and cruel: Make them dance. I pinned the man's wrist to the armrest and whispered, "You move, you die." He whimpered like an oversized child and then stopped moving.
Zara slid into the seat beside me, skin close enough to read the tiny scar behind her ear.
"Who was he?" she asked.
"No idea," I said. "But he was trying to take the drive."
"Then maybe someone on this plane wants us to have it gone." Her mouth was thin. "Or maybe someone on this plane is the someone who would like to see us dead."
I looked down the rows, trying to assign guilt by economy seat. It's not that easy. People travel for a thousand reasons. Budgets lie; motives don't. A woman in the galley tied her hair back and adjusted a tray like clockwork. She smiled at the crew—easy, practiced. She moved with a cat's grace.
Aria. I saw the way she curved, small and deliberate. Not the Aria we'd chased on rooftops—no, she'd been a ghost in silk back there. Here she was a flight attendant, making tea and watching. The smile that was hers when she'd parachuted into Leo's past flashed like a warning sign.
"What are you thinking?" Zara murmured.
"Thinking we're on the same road people get drawn into and don't come back from," I said. "Thinking our plane is a box of secrets with someone sleeping on a coal of their own fire."
She reached and found my fingers. Her hand was a small, hot anchor. "If she's on this flight, she's either dumb or cruel."
"Or brilliant," I answered. "Aria's not about dumb. She's all angles."
She raised a brow. "Then we're in trouble."
"Not if trouble has a plan." I squeezed her hand. "We land, we move fast, we don't split."
"And if she's waiting for us at London?"
"Then we bring the fireworks."
<<<<<
ARIA — Interlude: The Things You Burn.
(Brief, flashback-tinged inside Aria's head while she skirts cabin duty)
You keep your enemies close and the one you loved closer. I used to believe there was a line you didn't cross for love. It's a naïve sort of cruelty, thinking love is a door you simply open. I learned better.
Leo chose survival then—he chose life over me in a room that smelled like diesel and promises. He fixed his face and walked away. The agency called it a casualty, but it was a betrayal. The lie was a small thing that dried into a stone.
When I came back, I'd made myself bronze. Hard. Useful. I learned to place a list of little torments between him and the life he wanted. Zara was a mirror. A pretty, dangerous mirror. If Leo wouldn't return to me freely, I'd make him remember. If he came willingly, even better.
Tonight, I timed the pier, the courier, the plane. The theater of it all delighted me. They are flames. I stoke them.
<<<<<
ZARA — Descent into Heathrow.
We did not relax. That was the rule. We landed with cabin applause that sounded like distant mortar fire. Airports are dangerous; city-of-god facades hide men with loyalties you can't buy off with smiles.
The London arrival felt colder than the flight. The folder weighted my lap like a pulse. We slid off the plane like practiced thieves, passports tucked. The immigration line at Heathrow moved like molasses. A man in a sharp coat glanced at our faces and then away. He had eyes like an accountant who'd seen suspicious ledgers.
We watched the carousel like you watch a bomb. Noor's name wasn't on any manifest, but we'd seen him in Dubai. If he'd somehow got on our plane—no, that's a wild hypothesis. However, the man with the cheap watch who'd tried to take the drive had disappeared into the crowd.
"Customs," Leo whispered, and the word felt like a challenge. We needed a narrow escape.
The corridor was cordoned. The queue snaked. An officer ran a passport photo through a database. A red flag might as well have been a flare.
"Okay," I said. "When we hit the door, we split. You go left, I go right, meet at the cab rank."
"No," Leo said, voice steel. "We walk side-by-side. Heads up, eyes open. If they split us, they find something they don't like."
His jaw looked like a fist. He was being reckless in a different way. I liked that about him and hated it. "Fine. Side-by-side then. But don't try anything stupid—"
He winked. "That was the plan."
A uniform stopped us. She had a small scanner. She scanned passports. The tone on her device switched to a faint beep-beep that we both felt like a shudder.
"Sir, Ms. Thompson," she said, and then she smiled the smile of someone who'd been told the same joke too many times. "We need to ask you a few questions."
Two officers flanked us, polite and abrupt. Noor's courier had been tracked. Someone had flagged our names; someone wanted to make sure the folder never left Britain.
Leo's hand brushed mine under the scanner. The contact ID on my phone blinked: NOORWATCH. I tapped the screen and fed a simulated feed into the agent's peripheral camera—an old hotel receipt, a friendly handshake with a 'diplomatic' note. Leo's earlier hack had paid off in sleight-of-hand.
The officers frowned and conferred. For a breath, we stood on a knife's edge.
"Everything in order," the senior one said, and the corner of his mouth twitched. He handed back our passports.
We walked out into London's indifferent drizzle. The city glinted like an expectant thing.
But a text lit my phone: Meet: Old Kings Wharf, 02:15. Bring drivers. Watch the man with the cheap watch.
Leo read it over my shoulder and didn't flinch. He should have. He did not.
<<<<<
LEO — On the Taxi, London Night.
We rode in silence while the city slid by. Rain pantomimed the headlights like a slow applause. I thumbed the folder again—half-hopeful, half-afraid. We had the sliver of proof: a manifest, a corrupted drive, a timestamp. It was enough to get us a meeting. But enough isn't the same as safe.
"Why would someone put Noor on our flight?" I finally asked.
"Because he wanted to see if we'd take the bait," Zara said. "Because Noor prefers his secrets close and his enemies closer."
Aria was a chess player. Noor was a loan shark of secrets. Rina—those pictures on Zara's laptop—Rina in Dubai with Noor. That knot in my chest tightened. Either the agency had been compromised or Rina had been turned. I thought of the file, of the lab, of Project Origin. I thought of Selina and the promises we made in smoky rooms.
"Whatever it is," I said, "we do not walk into a trap."
Zara looked at me with a humorless little smile. "We always walk into a trap, Leo. We're just better at setting the traps back on the trapper."
I laughed then—a small, ragged thing—and it felt like throwing a stone into the dark. She squeezed my knee. "Let's go burn some paperwork."
We did not know yet that the man with the cheap watch followed us out of the terminal and melted into the river of night. We did not know that Aria had already spoken to him through a secure line and told him where we would be.
What we did know: London was colder than we remembered, Project Origin's clock ticked nearer, and someone on our side—someone we'd trusted—may already have sewn the first seeds of our ruin. We were awake. And the inferno had only grown larger.