The gray, pre-dawn light of Chicago was just beginning to filter through the clouds, painting the city in muted shades of concrete and steel. For most of its inhabitants, the day was just beginning. For us, it was the start of the endgame. We left the sanctuary of Kevin's apartment and stepped back into the world, the heavy door clicking shut behind us like the start of a stopwatch. This time, the oppressive feeling of being watched was gone, but it was replaced by a different kind of tension—the sharp, focused anxiety of a predator on the hunt.
We didn't speak during the 'L' train ride to the Gold Coast. We were two anonymous faces in a car full of them, but our silence was different. It wasn't the tired silence of commuters; it was the charged silence of soldiers before a breach. I could feel Jessica's energy, a cold, coiled spring of anticipation inside me. She had been waiting for this moment, for this chance to step into the heart of her enemy's lair. I practiced the shielding exercises Kevin had taught me, building my mental walls, observing her rage from a distance, trying to keep my own frantic heartbeat from overwhelming the fragile calm I had constructed.
We disembarked a few blocks from Harold Finch's luxury condominium building, melting into the morning foot traffic of dog-walkers and early-morning joggers. The building itself was a monument to wealth and power—a gleaming tower of glass and dark steel that stabbed at the sky. It looked impenetrable.
We found a secluded spot in a small, manicured park across the street, shielded from view by a row of dense hedges. This was our staging ground. Kevin took a final look around, his eyes scanning for any sign of surveillance, either mundane or magical. He gave me a sharp, definitive nod. It was time.
"Remember," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the distant traffic. "One hour from the moment you say the words. Don't waste a second. Stay calm. Stay quiet. Let me handle the physical obstacles. You are just a ghost. Got it?"
I nodded, my mouth too dry to speak.
"Okay," he said. "Do it."
I closed my eyes. I focused on the power that lay dormant in my "neural inventory," a concept still so bizarre I could barely comprehend it. I pictured the talisman, a glowing icon of pure, scrambling energy. I established my intent: invisibility. Become unseen, unheard, unfelt. Then, I opened my eyes and spoke the verbal command, my voice a low, steady whisper.
"Go dark."
The world did not shimmer or fade. There was no flash of light. The change was far more intimate, far more profound. It was a feeling, a sudden and total decoupling from my surroundings. One moment, I felt the cool breeze on my skin, heard the rustle of leaves, felt the solid ground beneath my feet. The next, it was all… gone. It was like being encased in a perfect sphere of sensory deprivation gel. I could see the world, I could hear it, but I no longer felt a part of it. I was a spectator watching a movie of my own life. I looked down at my hands. They were still there, solid and real to my eyes, but when I touched them together, the sensation was dull, muted, as if through a thick layer of felt.
I had become a ghost.
A small, amber-colored timer appeared in the corner of my vision, visible only to me. 01:00:00. The countdown had begun.
I looked at Kevin. He was staring at the spot where I was standing, his eyes wide with a professional, scientific curiosity.
"Incredible," he breathed. "You're just… gone. I can't feel your aura at all. It's like you were never here." He tapped the earpiece he was wearing. "Can you hear me?"
"Loud and clear," I said. The sound of my own voice was strange, seeming to come from inside my head rather than my mouth.
"Good," he said. "Stay close. Let's go."
We walked out of the park and across the street, directly towards the front entrance of the towering condominium. A doorman in a crisp, formal uniform stood by the glass doors, his gaze sweeping over the street. He looked right through me. A woman walking a small, yapping poodle passed by, and the dog didn't even glance in my direction. The invisibility was absolute.
Kevin, however, was completely visible. He approached the building not through the front door, but around the side, towards a discreet service entrance used by staff and for deliveries. The door was controlled by an electronic key card reader. This was our first test.
"Okay," Kevin's voice crackled in my ear. "This is a standard RFID system. I can clone a card, but I need a source. I need to get within a few inches of an employee's key card. A maintenance worker, a cleaner…"
As if on cue, a man in gray work overalls exited the service door, pulling a large trash receptacle. A key card was clipped to his belt.
"Perfect," Kevin whispered. He pulled a slim, black device from his pocket, no bigger than a smartphone. "Get ready to open the door. I'm going to walk past him. The moment you hear the beep, you have about three seconds to pull the door open before it locks again."
Kevin walked towards the maintenance worker with a confident stride, looking down at his own phone as if lost in a text message. As he brushed past the man, I heard a faint, high-pitched beep in my earpiece. The cloning was successful. Kevin kept walking, not looking back. A moment later, I heard a quiet click as the lock on the service door disengaged.
I didn't hesitate. I lunged forward, grabbed the heavy steel door, and pulled it open just enough to slip inside, holding it so it wouldn't slam shut. The hallway was empty. A few seconds later, Kevin rounded the corner and slipped in behind me, letting the door click shut. We were in.
The timer in my vision now read 00:52:14.
We moved through the sterile, white service hallways and stairwells, bypassing the main lobby and its security personnel entirely. Kevin navigated the building with an unerring sense of direction, relying on the floor plans he had memorized. We climbed to the 34th floor, the penthouse level. There was only one apartment on this floor. Finch's apartment.
A single, high-tech security camera was mounted on the ceiling, its lens sweeping slowly across the hallway.
"This is the tricky part," Kevin whispered into his wrist communicator. "The invisibility will fool the camera's optical sensors, but it might not fool its motion detectors. We need to move slow and steady."
We crept down the hallway, our movements slow and deliberate, like sharks gliding through water. We stayed close to the wall, out of the camera's direct line of sight as much as possible. We reached the heavy, imposing oak door of the penthouse suite. Next to it was a state-of-the-art electronic lock with a keypad and a fingerprint scanner.
This was a barrier Kevin's card cloner couldn't bypass. But he had come prepared. He knelt down and pulled two small items from a hidden pocket in his bag: a set of intricate, delicate lockpicks.
"You've got to be kidding me," I breathed. "You're going to pick a lock like that?"
"Fingerprint scanner is probably deactivated when he's not home," Kevin whispered back, his voice focused. "But the deadbolt is old-fashioned. All security has a weak point. And people like Finch get lazy. They trust their expensive toys."
His hands moved with a surgeon's precision, the tiny metal picks probing the lock. I stood guard, my eyes scanning the empty hallway, the timer in my vision a constant, nagging pressure. 00:41:03.
After what felt like an eternity, but was probably only two minutes, there was a soft, satisfying click. The lock was open.
We slipped inside Finch's apartment. The door closed silently behind us.
The apartment was exactly as I'd imagined: huge, minimalist, and soul-crushingly sterile. It looked less like a home and more like a high-end furniture showroom. White leather couches, chrome and glass tables, abstract art on the walls that looked expensive but conveyed zero emotion. The only sign of life was a pristine, empty dog bed in the corner. Duke, I presumed, was with a dog-walker.
"His office has to be this way," Kevin whispered, pointing down a long hallway.
We found it at the end of the hall. It was a large room with a floor-to-ceiling window offering a breathtaking, panoramic view of the city and the lake. A massive, polished mahogany desk sat in the center of the room, and on it was a sleek, powerful-looking desktop computer. The target.
The timer read 00:34:50. We were making good time.
"Okay," I said, pulling the encrypted USB drive from my pocket. "Let's do this."
Kevin moved to the computer and tapped the keyboard. The screen flared to life, revealing a simple login screen asking for a password.
"His stupidly simple password," Kevin smirked. He typed: Duke.
Access Denied.
We both froze. A cold dread washed over me.
"What?" I whispered. "But Jessica said… it was always Duke."
"He must have changed it," Kevin said, his voice tight. "After he got our emails. He got paranoid and finally changed his password. Damn it!"
The timer kept ticking. 00:33:12. Our ghost key had gotten us into the fortress, but the treasure chest was locked, and we didn't have the key. We were so close, yet completely stuck.
I frantically looked around the desk for any clue, any sticky note with a new password written on it. Nothing. The desk was immaculate.
My gaze fell upon a framed photo sitting on the corner of the desk. It was a picture of Finch, smiling, with his arm around his golden retriever. But it wasn't just the dog. There was something else. A small, brass plate was attached to the dog's collar. I squinted, trying to make out the engraved text.
It wasn't a name. It was a phrase.
My blood ran cold.
"Kevin," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "Try again. The password… it's not the dog's name."
I pointed to the tag on the dog's collar in the photo.
"It's My Boy Duke."
Kevin's eyes widened. He quickly typed in the new password.
Access Granted.
We were in. The computer's desktop appeared on the screen.
A wave of triumphant relief surged through me. But it was cut short by a sound from the main living area.
It was the distinct, electronic beep of the front door's security system being deactivated from the outside.
Followed by the sound of a key turning in the lock.
Our hour wasn't up. Not even close. But our luck had just run out.
Harold Finch was home.