The Geneva night was deceptive.
Charming on the surface. Clinical beneath.
Neon lights swept across the cobblestone alleys and sterile glass facades, where diplomacy wore suits and secrets bled beneath silk ties. Every street corner buzzed with controlled elegance—too pristine, too composed.
But Audrey felt it.
The undercurrent.
The air was thinner here. Too many agencies, too many ghosts.
The car pulled up in front of a secured parking deck in the diplomatic quarter. Sebastian killed the engine, his jaw locked in that familiar way that meant his mind was fifty moves ahead of the moment.
Audrey stepped out into the chill, her trench coat billowing like smoke behind her. The cold didn't faze her. What she feared was already beneath her skin.
He joined her, adjusting the cuff of his tailored coat. "We've got forty-eight hours before the Swan protocol reaches full activation."
"That's optimistic," she replied, eyes scanning the upper levels of the building. "If Lucien intercepted the signal, he could trigger it himself."
"Can he?"
She didn't answer.
They moved quickly. The elevator required biometric access—Audrey bypassed it in under ten seconds. The private suite belonged to a shell company under Donovan Systems, posing as a Swiss research liaison. But behind the mirrored walls was a far more classified reality.
Room 9C housed what most assumed was a secure archive.
Inside was a different truth.
As the door sealed behind them, biometric locks clicked into place. The room was stark—glass panels, reinforced metal drawers, and a single cold-white monitor at the center.
Audrey crossed to the terminal and typed a sequence—eight keystrokes that hadn't touched a live system in years.
The screen came alive.
AUTHENTICATING: SWAN PROTOCOL
STATUS: SEMI-ACTIVE
LAST ACCESS: 13 HRS AGO
USER ID: H3R3T1C
Sebastian swore under his breath. "He's already in."
Audrey's hands hovered over the controls. "This isn't just surveillance. The Swan protocol was meant to erase me—everything I was before Project Heretic. Every trace, every connection, every fail-safe."
"Why would Lucien activate that now?"
"To isolate me," she whispered. "To cut my ties before the final move. This isn't about death. It's about dismantling identity."
The screen flickered again.
NEW INSTRUCTION UPLOADED:
TARGET: A. DELACOUR
EXECUTION: PHASE 1 – IDENTITY NULLIFICATION
EXECUTION: PHASE 2 – ASSET NEUTRALIZATION
Sebastian read the words slowly. "He's not bluffing."
"No," she said. "This is personal."
She exited the terminal, fingers trembling despite her iron focus. "We need to sever access—pull the plug on the entire Geneva node."
"You do that," Sebastian said. "I'm going to find out who let him in."
"Be careful," she added. "Lucien never walks through the front door."
He smirked. "Neither do I."
They split without ceremony—trained to function like this. With calculated urgency and trust forged in war zones, not dinner tables.
Audrey worked fast, rerouting the terminal through a secure air-gap drive. She accessed sub-layered protocols, forcing a reboot that would lock out external remote commands. The system fought back, fragments of Lucien's code crawling like serpents across the interface.
Then:
INTRUSION BLOCKED
USER DISCONNECTED
She exhaled sharply. A temporary win. But the feeling didn't last.
Behind her, a panel clicked.
She turned instinctively, hand brushing the concealed holster beneath her coat—
Only to freeze.
A familiar voice drifted from the shadows.
"You always were the clever one, Aud."
Lucien.
He stepped out, gloved hands raised in mock surrender. Same cold blue eyes, same scar near his temple. But this Lucien was sharper. Slicker. Hollow in ways that hadn't existed before Belarus.
She didn't lower her weapon.
"You're not supposed to be here," she said quietly.
His smile was all teeth. "Neither were you."
Silence stretched. Their past screamed behind it.
"How did you get access?" she asked, gun steady.
"You left the door open," he said. "Emotionally, I mean."
"Bullshit."
"Call it what you want. I called it unfinished business."
Sebastian's voice suddenly crackled through her comm. "Audrey. He's in the building. Don't engage alone."
Too late.
Lucien grinned. "Still got someone whispering in your ear. Cute."
"What do you want?" she demanded.
"You."
The word sliced through the sterile air.
Audrey's finger curled tighter on the trigger.
Lucien took a step closer.
"Not like that. Not anymore. I want the version of you they buried. The one who never doubted the mission. You were a weapon once. Sharp. Deadly. Purposeful. Then you fell into his arms like some lost damsel."
She laughed, bitter. "You don't miss me. You miss control."
"I miss clarity," he said, tone turning. "Before the noise. Before we became myths of our own making."
"You murdered people for clarity."
"And you didn't?"
That stopped her.
Lucien's voice dropped, smooth and venomous. "We were gods, Audrey. Now you're pretending to be human. Don't lie to yourself. You were never built for tenderness."
"I wasn't," she admitted. "But I bled for it anyway."
His expression flickered. But only for a second.
Then he lunged.
She fired—once, a clean shot. But he was fast. The bullet grazed his side, and he rolled behind the data console.
The room lit up in warning red. Security lockdown initiated.
Sebastian's voice shouted through the comms again—"Audrey, talk to me. I'm two floors down."
Lucien popped back up, blood staining his side, but his grin didn't fade. "Let me leave, Aud. Or I take this whole building down with me."
"I'm not negotiating with a ghost."
"I'm not a ghost. I'm what comes after."
She moved quickly, ducking low, flanking left. He anticipated it—threw a stun flash to blind her. But she was already through the protocol—kicking the backup power node offline, disabling his access route.
Lucien staggered back, forced into retreat.
Before disappearing through the emergency exit, he turned with one last line:
"This isn't the end. Geneva was the warm-up. The next city bleeds."
Then he was gone.
Sebastian arrived seconds later, gun drawn. His eyes scanned the damage, then landed on her—breathing hard, scraped but standing.
"You alright?"
She nodded, barely. "He's bleeding. But he's not done."
Sebastian's jaw clenched. "Then we won't be either."
She walked over to the flickering terminal, still smoldering with traces of Lucien's digital incursion.
"What now?" he asked.
Audrey touched the edge of the screen, eyes sharp. "We go where it started."
"Where?"
"Marseille," she said. "Where the Project was born—and where I died the first time."