PART 1: Decoy Path
The wind on São Jorge smelled like salt and crushed moss.
Sharp. Cold. Fresh in a way Izzy hadn't felt in years.
She stepped off the ferry just past 9 a.m., her boots hitting the dock with a soft thud that echoed against damp wood. The town of Velas rose ahead in staggered stone, all cracked pastel buildings and laundry lines dancing like surrender flags.
She didn't waste time.
She went straight to the market.
It was quiet, almost too quiet — the kind of place that pretended it wasn't watching. One man ran the counter. Mid-sixties. Weather-creased. Sweeping the floor with more patience than purpose.
He looked up once, saw her coat, and gave the faintest nod.
Then, without a word, he reached beneath the register and handed her a torn grocery receipt folded into quarters.
Izzy unfolded it.
On the back, written in pencil:
If you're reading this, I'm not dead yet. — E.
F. Dourado. 37°44′N 25°44′W
"Follow the hill until the sea feels taller than the sky."
No signature. No flair.
Classic Evelyn.
Izzy looked up. "He still there?"
The grocer shrugged. "He's always there. Just not always open."
She left the market without buying anything, the note tucked inside her inner coat pocket.
Fifteen minutes later, she was walking uphill past a row of empty houses and broken satellite dishes. The sun hadn't fully cleared the clouds, and everything looked like it had been left out too long — faded, windbitten, but still standing.
Near the crest of the hill, just before the road curved east toward the cliffs, she found it.
A bookshop barely pretending to be open.
Frosted glass. Chipped blue paint. A crooked sign that read:
DOURADO LIVROS / CLOSED UNLESS I'M AWAKE
She knocked twice.
No answer.
She knocked again.
Then the door opened — not fast, not slow. Just a man-shaped silence pressing back against the world.
"Isabella Diaz," the man said flatly.
His voice was dry as driftwood.
She gave a single nod. "Frederico Dourado."
"You're early."
"She told you I'd come?"
"No. She told me not to help you."
Izzy raised an eyebrow. "That sounds familiar."
He stepped aside, holding the door.
"That's why I opened it."
PART 2: Fail-Safe Network
The inside of the bookstore smelled like old paper and older coffee.
Dust floated in slow spirals under slanted light from a single skylight overhead. Most of the shelves were half-empty, the spines faded and cracked, the sections unlabeled.
Frederico Dourado moved without sound — no limp, no hurry, no wasted steps. He disappeared behind a curtain near the register, then returned with a manila envelope. He dropped it on the counter between them.
"I shouldn't give you this," he said.
Izzy didn't reach for it. "Then don't."
He studied her for a moment. "You were in the file."
"Which one?"
"The one Arthur left. Evelyn updated it twice. Only six names stayed. You were always one of them."
Izzy said nothing.
Frederico sighed and slid the envelope toward her.
She opened it.
Inside:
• A ferry manifest with two names blacked out.
• A topographical map of the island, printed with thin red lines.
• A GPS tag written by hand: N: 37.7625 / W: 25.6932
• A second note: "Do not send anyone until the 12-hour mark."
Izzy folded the note last.
"She expected to be followed."
"She expects to die," Frederico said.
Izzy tucked the map into her coat.
"Do you know what's out there?"
He nodded once. "A vineyard. Broken. Left behind after the fires five years ago. No cell service. No road unless you count gravel."
"She's there?"
"She said it would be the last place she waited for anyone."
He stepped around the counter, reached beneath the floorboards near the back shelf, and pulled up a canvas satchel. It made a sound like steel.
"She said I wasn't supposed to give you this either," he added.
Izzy took the bag. Unzipped it. Inside: a survival radio, one satellite beacon, and a flare gun.
"She thought you might need to be found," he said.
Izzy zipped it shut. "She's probably right."
As she stepped toward the door, he called after her.
"Why now?" he asked. "After all this time?"
Izzy paused, hand on the door.
"Because someone's started crossing off names," she said. "And I'd rather find her before they do."
PART 3: Geneva Breach
The call came in just as Izzy reached the edge of the vineyard road — a cracked, overgrown stretch of gravel that sloped west into fog and silence.
She picked up on the third ring.
"Jack," she said.
"You didn't tell me you were leaving the country."
"I didn't think I had to."
He grunted — not angry, just tired.
"I used the key," he said. "Storage unit had a burned-out laptop and a list of VPN nodes. One of them just went hot. Geneva."
Izzy stopped walking.
"GENVA-DX03?"
"Yeah. That mean something?"
"It means someone accessed Arthur's off-site vault. That node was the final digital fallback — it only transmits one way. Whoever touched it now has access to anything Arthur dumped there."
Jack let that hang a beat.
"Wasn't me," he said.
"I know."
"I didn't tell Carl either. Wanted to see if it triggered a shadow ping."
"Did it?"
"Yeah. Less than six minutes later."
Jack paused. His voice came back lower.
"The credential used to hit the node had a name tied to it. Encrypted key, public-facing."
Izzy already knew what he was about to say.
"N. Brandt," Jack said.
A thin wind moved through the trees above her, rustling the dead leaves like breath on glass.
Carl's voice came through a second line — text, not audio:
[CONFIRMED. Brandt accessed DX03 at 04:12 GMT. Military clearance. POST-RET.]
Izzy's hands curled slowly at her sides.
"He's back online," she muttered.
Jack didn't answer.
"You need to move," she said finally.
"Already packing."
"Tell Carl to do the same."
"I'll try."
"Try harder."
She hung up without saying goodbye.
Some calls didn't need them.
Some ends didn't either.
PART 4: The Vineyard
The road ended long before the map said it would.
Izzy walked the last half-mile on foot, boots crunching gravel and broken glass, the wind humming through old vines that hadn't produced fruit in years. The air was sharp with salt and dried thyme.
The gravel gave out half a mile in. From there it was grass — thick, knee-high, shot through with sharp yellow vines that clawed at her boots. The path, if it had ever been one, was long overgrown.
Izzy moved slowly, not because she was cautious, but because everything in her body told her this was the last quiet moment she'd get.
The vineyard appeared as a shape before it became a place.
The vineyard had once been a proper estate — stone walls, barrel sheds, even an old gravity-fed cistern perched at the top of the hill.
Now it was rotten and ruined.
Stone terraces collapsed inward, walls cracked from weather and time. Rusted wine tanks leaned like drunk men against the wind. The only thing left intact was the main house — a shell with windows boarded shut and ivy swallowing its edges.
Rust bled from old iron fencing. Two fermentation tanks sat like abandoned hulls from a wrecked ship, one tipped on its side and half-swallowed by earth.
She saw no movement.
No smoke.
No birds.
Just wind.
But Evelyn had always been good at stillness.
Izzy stepped carefully down into what had once been the main processing level — now just a moss-slick stone basin surrounded by ivy and broken clay pipes.
Izzy didn't knock.
She passed the structure entirely, instinct pulling her uphill, following a line of stones that had once been a fence, then a footpath, then nothing.
At the top, someone stood waiting.
And there she was.
Evelyn
She stood beside an old cistern, cracked wide down one side, a cigarette balanced between her fingers like it had always been there. She wore a canvas jacket with frayed sleeves and boots caked in red dust. Her hood was down. Hair longer now. A streak of gray she hadn't bothered to dye. Face thinner but sharp as ever.
She didn't speak.
She didn't flinch.
Didn't startle.
Just watched Izzy approach.
She looked up at Izzy and gave a small, weary nod.
"Little early," she said.
Izzy stopped a few feet away.
"Little late," she answered.
They stared at each other for a long moment.
No weapons. No demands.
Just history between them, cracked open like the walls around them.
Evelyn took a slow drag, exhaled smoke sideways into the wind.
"Did you bring the ledger?"
Izzy shook her head. "Didn't trust the bag."
Evelyn flicked ash toward the earth. "Smart."
Then she looked past Izzy toward the treeline, toward nothing.
"I figured they'd send someone to finish the list," she said. "Didn't think it'd be you."
"They didn't," Izzy said.
That made Evelyn pause.
She turned back, eyes sharper now.
"You're not just visiting, then."
"No," Izzy said. "I'm here to end it."
PART 5: Terms of Survival
Evelyn dropped the cigarette, crushed it under her heel, and sat on a low stone wall like it had been built just for this conversation.
Izzy stayed standing.
"You look worse," Evelyn said.
"You look bored."
"I was starting to be."
They didn't smile. That wasn't what they did.
"Carl's alive," Izzy said.
"For now."
"And Jack found the Geneva node."
Evelyn looked out at the horizon.
"That means Brandt did too."
Izzy nodded.
"You know what he's doing," Evelyn said. "He's not cleaning it up. He's deleting himself from the ledger. From history."
"You still have it."
Evelyn reached into her coat, pulled out a black waterproof pouch.
She unzipped it slowly, deliberately, like it was part of a ritual.
Inside: a slim, hand-bound book — pages yellowed at the edges, thick with taped-on documents, cross-referenced with handwriting Izzy recognized instantly.
Arthur's.
But not the public ledger. Not the one turned over to authorities.
This was earlier. Raw.
Before the formatting.
Before the redactions.
Evelyn tapped a page near the front.
"He left things out," she said. "For your safety. For Jack's. For Leah's."
She turned another page.
"This copy shows where the funds really came from. Where the shell networks began. Which countries signed off. Which names were never meant to be spoken aloud."
Izzy crouched beside the wall, eyes scanning the entries.
Most were encrypted in shorthand — Arthur's private cipher, scribbled in the margins with red and blue ink.
"Does Carl know this exists?"
Evelyn shook her head.
"He wasn't built for this part."
Izzy looked up. "And I was?"
Evelyn stared back, not unkindly.
"You were built to survive it."
She flipped the ledger shut and tucked it back into the pouch.
"The question isn't whether you stop Brandt," she said. "It's whether you outlive him."