They chose Berlin first.
The lab was buried beneath a tech firm posing as a startup accelerator. On the surface — bright offices, glass walls, sponsored coffee. Underground — servers, encrypted archives, and men who didn't blink when you stared too long.
Evan, Maya, and Juno went in as investors.
Their fake IDs passed every scan.
Juno planted the first breach spike in the fiber room. Maya handled the guards. Evan got them to the elevator using his father's master protocol signature. No alarms. No questions.
Below level 5, the walls turned from glass to steel.
Cameras disappeared.
They passed through doors labeled in black Cyrillic.
Maya whispered, "This isn't just Berlin. It's ex-KGB infrastructure."
Juno was already cracking the terminal at sublevel 2.
"What are we looking for?" Evan asked.
"Proof of synthetic influence," Juno muttered. "They weren't just spying. They were building emotion curves, behavioral nudges — programming reactions into populations. News scripts. Panic cycles. Controlled rebellion."
Evan checked the map.
A secured room marked X-12 pulsed red on the screen.
Juno's voice sharpened. "That's the core server. But it's not just data. There's someone in there."
Maya was already moving. "Let's find out who."
They bypassed the lock and entered.
Inside: one man, strapped to a chair.
Wires in his skull.
He looked up.
"I warned him not to dig so deep," the man whispered.
Evan stepped forward. "Who are you?"
"I was the first trial," he said. "First successful implant. They fed me riots. Gave me panic. Then sold my patterns as algorithms."
Maya frowned. "What do you mean, sold?"
"Governments. Corporations. Anyone who paid could borrow my response loops. They'd trigger fear in you before you saw the headlines."
He looked at Evan.
"You ended the Court. But they already sold the virus."
Juno scanned the servers.
"He's not wrong. These blueprints are on black markets. Neural sequence tech. Predictive loop induction. They're monetizing chaos."
Evan looked at the man. "Can we stop it?"
He shook his head. "Not unless you burn the whole chain. Every server. Every lab. Every test subject."
Juno paused. "There's one more thing."
She turned her screen.
Live feed.
A holding cell — four people inside.
Children.
Maya's voice turned ice cold. "They're still testing."
Juno found the detonation control.
One authorization needed: Evan's signature.
He looked at the screen. The data. The children.
He pressed his thumb to the scanner.
FIRE PROTOCOL CONFIRMED
15 MINUTES TO PURGE
They freed the captives.
Left the test subject with a dose of morphine and his name on a scrap of paper.
Then they ran.
The lab erupted behind them — a silent quake underground. The surface office never knew.
Back at their safehouse, Evan stared at the last entry from the man's file.
X-12 isn't a place. It's a person.