PART 1: Carl's Last Move
The phone rang once, then again, then cut off.
Izzy glanced down. Burner number. Lisbon area code.
It rang again.
She answered.
"Talk," she said.
Carl's voice came in ragged. Close and too loud, like he was using a hotel phone with a towel wrapped around the receiver.
"They found the safehouse."
"When?"
"Six hours after the Geneva node lit up. They weren't quiet about it."
"You got out?"
"Through the roof. Lost the relay bag but kept the drive. Moved twice. Can't stay again."
Izzy didn't ask how he'd routed the call. If he was still talking, it meant he'd already scattered three decoys and used two burner lines to reach her.
"Evelyn?" he asked.
"With me."
"Then you need to go to fallback."
There was a pause.
Izzy frowned. "We used the Azores already."
"Not that fallback," Carl said. "The villa. Outside Sintra. It's still dark. Still off the grid. Arthur never linked it to anything."
Izzy remembered it — barely. A diplomatic estate once leased to an oil consortium. One of Arthur's last private meetings had happened there, long before the trial, long before the mess.
"You sure it's untouched?" she asked.
"No one but you, me, and Evelyn even knew it existed. And Jack's going to need a place to land."
Another pause.
Then Carl added, quietly:
"They're not coming to clean up anymore, Izzy. They're coming to collect."
Izzy looked out over the field where Evelyn slept now, wrapped in a blanket under an awning, the fire beside her down to its last embers.
She spoke without turning back to the phone.
"Send coordinates. We'll leave within the hour."
"Be careful," Carl said.
Izzy smiled bitterly.
"That window's been closed a long time."
PART 2: The Villa
The road to the villa curved uphill through brush and forgotten vineyards, choked with dust and pine needles. The sky was soft gray when they arrived — not yet morning, not quite night.
Jack parked the car half off the gravel path.
No one spoke as they approached the gate.
The place looked like it had been carved into the rock, a mid-century ruin of sun-bleached walls, faded tile, and an iron fence that hadn't been locked in years. Vines had overtaken the left wing. Cracks spread through the foundation like hairline fractures in an old bone.
Izzy stepped through first.
She didn't hesitate.
Inside, the villa still smelled faintly of cigars and varnish.
Nothing had been touched.
Papers were still stacked on a table in the front hall.
A decanter of liquor — half full — sat beside two dusty tumblers.
It felt like someone had stepped out mid-sentence and never came back.
Jack ran a hand along the wall as they passed the study. "Arthur used to come here?"
Evelyn answered. "Only when he had to meet someone in person and wanted to be absolutely sure they wouldn't talk about it afterward."
She crossed the foyer, unzipped her coat, and stopped at the cold fireplace in the main parlor.
Izzy stood across from her.
"He trusted this place?"
Evelyn gave a small shrug. "No. But he trusted the silence."
Jack wandered the room, quiet, eyes scanning each corner like a man half-waiting for ghosts. Then he crouched near the hearth.
"There's something here."
He pressed along the inner edge of the stone, then tapped twice. A hollow sound.
Izzy knelt beside him. Together they pulled back a flat steel panel.
Behind it, nestled deep inside the masonry, was a compact safe. Burnished brass. No keypad.
Just a rotary dial and a stamped plate:
ROURKE / ES-019-C
Izzy looked at Evelyn.
"That yours?"
Evelyn nodded once. "That's where we copy the ledger."
PART 3: Two Truths, One Kill Switch
The villa's parlor hadn't seen heat in years.
They sat near the hearth, wrapped in coats, the safe now open between them. Jack had disappeared upstairs to check the perimeter. Evelyn knelt beside the opened safe, connecting her portable drive to the exposed rig Arthur had embedded inside decades ago.
Wires were frayed. The internal clock blinked 00:00.
Izzy stood with arms crossed, her eyes fixed on the small black rectangle of the drive as Evelyn tapped a boot menu into the screen.
"Just extract the name chains," Izzy said.
Evelyn didn't look up. "That's not how it works."
"Then do it manually. Leave the ops details. Leave the triggers. Just give the world the infrastructure."
Evelyn exhaled slowly through her nose.
She stopped typing.
"You ever tried explaining a war to someone who only wants to know who fired the last bullet?"
Izzy said nothing.
Evelyn continued, more measured now. "These aren't just names. They're contexts. Codes. They're the network. If you release one thread, you better make damn sure it's the right one."
Izzy stepped forward. "And if you don't release anything? What then?"
Evelyn turned.
Finally looked her full in the face.
"I'm not afraid of Brandt finding me. I'm afraid of what people do with the truth once they have it."
She reached into her bag and pulled out a slip of paper.
Placed it beside the drive.
It read:
FAILSAFE: 74Y3-CEASE-DUST
Izzy stared at it.
"What is it?"
L
"If anyone tries to decrypt the drive without that key, it hard-wipes. No second chance. No backups. Arthur coded it himself."
Izzy's mouth tightened.
Evelyn leaned back, exhaustion showing now.
"You don't get to leak half the story. You get one shot. One truth. Not two."
Outside, the wind picked up — a low howl threading through cracked windowpanes.
Izzy looked at the failsafe code again.
Folded it once. Slid it into her coat.
And said:
"Then let's make sure it's the right one."
PART 4: Jack Watches the Door
Jack stood in the foyer, back to the door, arms crossed loosely, watching the hallway with the kind of stillness that didn't come from training — just exhaustion practiced into habit.
The villa creaked in intervals.
It was a quiet place, but not a peaceful one.
Down the hall, in the parlor, Evelyn's keys tapped slow and precise as she input the encryption parameters into the drive. Every few seconds, the transfer beeped — one progress bar, one fragile lifeline.
He checked the deadbolt again, then stepped to the window, peeled back the corner of the curtain.
Still no headlights.
Still no one coming.
For now.
Behind him, Evelyn's voice drifted in.
"You remember the trust number?"
Jack didn't turn. "Yeah."
"And Leah's birthday?"
He smiled without humor. "Couldn't forget if I tried."
There was a pause.
Then: "That's the cipher key. Arthur set it that way."
Jack looked down at his hands.
"She was his final move," he said.
"No," Evelyn said. "She was his line in the sand. This ledger isn't about guilt. It's about proof. Proof he wasn't going to let people like Brandt write the ending."
Jack turned finally. Leaned against the wall just enough to see her face, bathed in low light from the laptop screen.
"You think that matters now?"
Evelyn didn't answer right away.
Then she looked up — and her voice was different. Lower. Like she'd been waiting to say this part.
"If Izzy doesn't make it out, the drive goes to a contact in Bern. Name's etched inside the spare barrel of the pistol she carries. You give it to him. You don't argue. You walk away."
Jack blinked. "Why tell me?"
"Because you're not the backup," she said.
She clicked the ENTER key.
Drive began encrypting.
"You're the contingency."
PART 5: Brandt Closes In
It was just past 5 a.m. when Jack heard the sound.
A whisper above the roofline.
Not wind. Not birds.
Something more deliberate.
He stepped onto the balcony with his sidearm half-drawn.
There — fast and silent — a black drone zipped through the gray light, banking hard above the chimney, barely visible against the sky. No logos. No flashing lights. Just matte casing and a forward-facing lens.
It passed once. Then vanished into the trees.
Jack moved.
"Eyes up!" he shouted.
Izzy was already halfway down the stairs.
"Drone?" she asked.
Jack nodded. "Too clean to be civilian."
"Which direction?"
"Southwest. Same as the Geneva node's backtrace."
Izzy hit the floor running, crossed to the study.
Evelyn didn't flinch. She was already burning the ledger.
Pages curled in the fireplace, blue-orange flames licking at Arthur's handwriting. No hesitation. No pause.
"You sure?" Izzy asked.
"There's no version of this where we keep both."
Evelyn dropped the last sheet in.
Outside, Jack threw the duffel into the car's back seat.
The drone hadn't come back — yet.
His phone buzzed once.
CARL
They know. MOVE NOW. No contact from Bern. Assume Brandt is already deployed.
Izzy pocketed the encrypted drive, checked her firearm, and nodded once.
"Car's gas?" she asked.
"Full tank," Jack said. "No tracker."
"Good."
She turned back to Evelyn.
"Three hours to the fallback relay. After that, we go dark."
Evelyn zipped her coat.
"Dark is fine."
Jack started the engine.
The first rays of sun touched the edge of the vineyard wall — long shadows slicing through the valley.
And then they were gone.