Ms. Vos sat alone.
The screen in front of her was black now, lifeless, reflecting only her own face back at her. No playback icon. No timestamp. Just a dark rectangle that felt heavier than any weapon she had ever carried.
She didn't move.
Didn't breathe properly.
The LCO operations room around her hummed quietly—servers running, distant voices muffled behind reinforced glass—but it all felt unreal, like sound carried through water.
Eight years.
She had built an entire life of controlled distance around that number.
Her fingers rested on the edge of the desk, knuckles pale, nails trimmed short the way they always had been. The way they had to be.
She closed her eyes.
And the past answered.
⸻
Eight Years Ago -
The city had smelled like rain and metal that night.
President Elijah Raktomb hated convoys. Hated unnecessary security. He believed—naively, as it turned out—that a leader who ruled behind walls stopped being one.
So the dinner had been private. A quiet restaurant tucked between two financial towers, chosen not for secrecy but for symbolism. Transparency. Accessibility.
Ms. Vos—back then she was Sky, not President Sky, not Director, not anything with weight—stood across the street, blending into the evening crowd.
She wasn't officially on duty.
That was the problem.
She had resigned from active SLCO field operations six months earlier. Too many ghosts. Too many bodies that didn't make the news. She had been reassigned to advisory work—policy, oversight, logistics.
Clean work.
Or so she'd thought.
Her phone had vibrated once in her pocket.
An unregistered number.
One word.
Now.
Her training kicked in before her mind did.
She scanned the windows.
Third floor. East-facing.
She saw the flicker of movement too late.
The sound was wrong—not loud, not sharp. A suppressed crack that folded into the night like it had always belonged there.
The glass didn't shatter.
Raktomb's body jerked once.
Then slumped.
Screams followed seconds later, delayed by disbelief.
Sky was already moving.
She crossed the street against traffic, badge out, voice cutting through panic as she entered the restaurant. The smell of iron hit her immediately.
Blood pooled beneath the table, spreading slowly, deliberately, like it knew it had time.
Raktomb's eyes were open.
Unfocused.
She knelt beside him, fingers pressing to his neck, even though she already knew.
Gone.
"Who did this?" someone shouted.
Sky turned, eyes sharp, scanning faces.
Then she saw him.
Across the street.
Standing where she had been moments earlier.
Watching.
No mask.
No rush.
Just calm.
Their eyes met.
And for a fraction of a second—just long enough to burn—he smiled.
Then he turned and disappeared into the crowd.
The official story was clean.
Too clean.
An unidentified shooter. No recovered weapon. No reliable footage. A single corrupted camera file from a nearby building that showed nothing but light distortion.
Anomalies were dismissed.
Evidence evaporated.
Sky knew better.
She pushed.
Hard.
Too hard.
Internal Affairs pulled her off the case within forty-eight hours.
They cited conflict of interest.
She cited incompetence.
The argument ended with her badge on a table and a file stamped CLASSIFIED — NATIONAL STABILITY sliding across to replace it.
Someone had buried the truth.
Not erased it.
Buried it.
And that meant intention.
Weeks later, she received a visit.
Not from law enforcement.
From Desmond Haverly.
At the time, he was a rising political star—sharp, eloquent, untouchable. A man who spoke about reform while quietly perfecting control.
They met in a government building with too much glass and not enough warmth.
"I'm sorry about Elijah," he said, voice smooth, eyes calculating. "He was… idealistic."
Sky didn't respond.
Haverly continued, unbothered.
"Some doors are not meant to be opened," he said gently. "Some truths destabilize more than they heal."
She leaned forward.
"Are you threatening me?"
He smiled faintly.
"I'm advising you."
She left the meeting knowing two things.
One—Haverly knew more than he should.
Two—if she kept digging, people would disappear.
So she did the only thing she could.
She waited.
Sky rebuilt herself piece by piece.
She helped restructure the LCO from within—quietly, patiently. Pushed for better encryption. Redundant oversight. Black-box archives that couldn't be altered without leaving scars.
She watched networks form.
She watched corruption adapt.
She learned how masterminds thought.
And every year, on the night Raktomb died, she replayed that smile in her head.
Until tonight.
Until the video.
The one file they'd never been able to open.
The one anomaly that refused to stay dead.
The face on the screen hadn't aged in her memory.
Because power preserved him.
Ms. Vos opened her eyes.
The blank screen reflected her again, but she wasn't the same woman who had first sat down.
Because now she knew.
This wasn't an isolated assassination.
It was a keystone event.
Raktomb hadn't been killed for what he was doing.
He had been killed for what he was about to stop.
The financial corridors.
The grey banks.
The neutral zones Leora had unknowingly dismantled in court.
They weren't tools.
They were infrastructure.
And Desmond Haverly had built them.
Jonathan Redd hadn't been silenced because he failed.
He'd been silenced because he was visible.
Cain hadn't been a mastermind.
He'd been bait.
Foot soldiers existed to distract people from the architects.
And Aldric Benedict—
She exhaled slowly.
Aldric wasn't a coincidence.
He was a variable.
Someone who saw patterns too early. Who asked the wrong questions at the wrong time. Who didn't know when to look away.
The kind of person systems like Haverly's couldn't afford.
The kind Raktomb had trusted.
The kind Sky would now protect—whether he wanted it or not.
She stood.
The room felt smaller.
More fragile.
Her voice broke the silence, quiet but absolute.
"Desmond Haverly."
The name settled into the air like a verdict.
Eight years late.
And finally ready to be enforced.