C-1
The rain arrived before dawn, drifting over Washington D.C. like a thin gray veil. The city was half-awake, half-asleep, a mixture of headlights, muffled horns, and early-morning political ghosts.
Inside the intelligence complex known publicly only as "Astra Data Analysis Center", a young analyst sat alone at his workstation, unaware that the next twelve minutes would change his life forever.
Jack Williams, age twenty-three, rubbed the exhaustion from his eyes and leaned closer to the glowing monitors.
He'd been staring at encrypted packet traffic for six straight hours—routine surveillance scanning, nothing special.
New hires always got the graveyard drudge work. But Jack didn't complain.
He preferred quiet rooms and blinking screens to crowded halls. He liked puzzles. He liked data.
And tonight, data was behaving strangely.
A string of encrypted packets had appeared from an unregistered node in Nevada. Each one minimal, only 192 bytes, repeating with exact precision every seven minutes. Too perfect. Too symmetrical. Too clean.
Human engineers always make mistakes. Machines always leave noise.
This… was neither.
Jack frowned. He typed a quick command:
DECRYPTION ATTEMPT: MODE DELTA
RUNNING…
FAILED.
He tried again. Then again, adjusting parameters, forcing the system to brute-force guess.
The algorithm returned the same rejection:
SIGNATURE LOCKED | RESTRICTED CLEARANCE REQUIRED
Jack blinked.
Restricted clearance? He hadn't triggered anything like that before. It meant the packet belonged to a classified government signature. But if it was a government channel, why was it unregistered?
A knot formed in his stomach. This wasn't routine traffic.
He reached for his comm-line and hesitated. Trainees weren't supposed to escalate anomalies without a complete analysis.
He'd get chewed out. He might even get flagged as "jumpy" or "unreliable."
He needed to be sure. He cracked his knuckles, opened a custom script he wasn't supposed to use—one he'd built on his own time—and fed the packet into it.
The monitors flickered. A line of text appeared:
HELIX//PHI-001: STAGE 3 ACTVATED
Jack froze. He didn't know what HELIX was. But a code labeled "Stage 3" meant one thing in intelligence protocol:
Something had already begun.
Before he could process it, the overhead lights brightened sharply. A cold female voice filled the quiet room.
"Analyst Williams. Step away from the terminal."
Jack jerked upright, heart slamming against his ribs, as the steel door hissed open.
Two-armed security officers stepped inside, weapons were lowered but ready. Behind them walked Director Olivia Ward, the head of Astra's covert operations.
A woman feared even by senior agents. Short, poised, with silver streaks cutting through her black hair and eyes sharp enough to slice through layered lies.
She never came to the analysis floor. Ever. That alone told Jack something was wrong.
She stopped in front of him, expression unreadable.
"Show me the packet," she said.
Jack fumbled with the keyboard, opening the script, displaying the anomaly.
Ward's eyes flicked across the screen. Her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. She turned to the guards.
"Clear the room. Full lockdown."
The guards sealed the door.
Then she leaned toward Jack, voice low and precise.
"Where did you get this script?"
Jack swallowed. "I—I wrote it. To help speed up pattern recognition. It's not harmful—"
"Are you aware," she interrupted, "that you just breached a classified signature never meant to be detected by this department?"
"I didn't mean to breach anything," Jack said quickly.
"It was an anomaly. I was just trying to—"
"Understand it." Ward finished for him. She studied him fora long, unsettling moment.
"You're not supposed to be able to see this traffic."
"It wasn't labeled."
"It isn't supposed to be visible at all."
Jack felt a slow chill creep up his spine.
"What is HELIX?" he asked cautiously.
Ward's expression didn't change. But something in her eyes hardened.
"HELIX," she said, "is the reason you are no longer an analyst."
Jack blinked. "…What?"
She gestured to the screen. "You identified a packet that has eluded senior analysts for years. You decrypted a signature that isn't decryptable. And you did it alone."
"I was just—"
"You were just," Ward said, stepping closer, "recruited."
Jack stared. Recruited? For what?
Before he could speak, Ward typed a master command:
PURGE LOCAL RECORDS: AUTHORIZATION WARD-7
EXECUTING…
COMPLETE.
His workstation went black.
Ward's voice softened—barely.
"You found something you shouldn't have found. That leaves Astra with two options."
She raised two fingers. "Erase you. Or use you."
Jack fought the impulse to step back. "Use me for what?"
Ward nodded toward the sealed door. "For field operations."
Jack almost laughed. He wasn't a fighter. He wasn't even particularly intimidating. He read code, not people. He chased patterns, not criminals.
"You want me in the field?" he asked, incredulous.
"No," Ward corrected. "HELIX wants you in the field."
Jack blinked. "HELIX… the thing the packet warned about?"
Ward exhaled slowly, as if deciding how much he deserved to know.
"HELIX is a black-budget project so classified that ninety percent of Astra doesn't know it ever existed."
She locked eyes with him. "HELIX disappeared ten years ago. Every trace wiped. Every agent involved went off-grid or dead."
She leaned forward. "And today… it woke up."
A sharp knock echoed on the glass wall.
A man in tactical gear stood outside, helmet under one arm, expression unreadably stern.
Ward stepped aside as he entered.
"Williams," she said, "meet your new field mentor."
Jack turned. And froze.
The man in front of him wasn't just intimidating—he radiated danger. Lean, sharp features. Cold eyes. His presence filled the room like coiled electricity.
"Agent Rios?"
"No," Ward said. "Her brother."
The man stepped forward.
"Rafael Rios," he said.
His grip was iron. "Your evaluator for field readiness."
"Evaluator?" Jack echoed.
Ward nodded. "There's a mission tonight. A real one. And you're going."
"Me? But I'm not trained—"
"You don't have time to be trained," Ward said bluntly. "You decrypted HELIX. That makes you a target."
Rafael added, "And the best way to protect a target… is to turn them into an operative."
Jack's pulse hammered. "I'm not sure I can—"
Ward cut him off. "You don't have a choice."
Before Jack could breathe, alarms blared — deep, resonating, urgent. The monitors flashed red.
UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY—LEVEL 3 FACILITY
BREACHTHREAT: UNKNOWN
LOCATION: LOWER ACCESS CORRIDORS
Ward's eyes widened—not with fear, but fury. "Move," she ordered. "Now."
Rafael grabbed Jack's arm, pulling him toward the exit.
Jack stumbled, heart pounding, adrenaline burning through the confusion.
"What is happening?" he demanded.
Ward's voice echoed behind them as the doors slid open: "HELIX knows you saw their message and They're already here."
The hallway lights flickered. Somewhere in the distance, a gunshot cracked.
Rafael shoved Jack into a reinforced elevator. "You wanted to understand the anomaly?"
Rafael said grimly. "You're about to meet it."
The doors slammed shut.