The rain in Florence never quite touched the ground.
It hissed softly as it fell, burned away by heat rising from the city's underbelly — from power grids, smuggler tunnels, and secrets buried so deep even satellites ignored them.
Dominic knew these veins. He'd lived in them once, before the war. Before Amelia.
Now he was back in the place where he'd buried the darkest parts of himself.
His breath steamed against the underground glass as he stared into the encrypted terminal embedded in the concrete.
"Node offline," the machine hissed.
"Please input retinal and blood pattern for override."
He pressed his thumb to the pad and leaned into the scanner.
A flash. A beep. Then silence.
Until the door unsealed with a soft hydraulic hiss.
He was inside.
The Vault was real.
Most agents whispered about it. A forgotten facility for ghost ops and unapproved tech. Hidden in the sewers of a city too beautiful to suspect anything sinister lived beneath its gold-domed cathedrals.
Now he needed it. Because Kael had Amelia.
Because the clock was ticking.
He stepped into the dark.
Elsewhere, in Kairox's Alpine facility.
Amelia sat cross-legged in the cold observation cell, eyes closed, lips murmuring an old lullaby she didn't remember learning. Her wrists still bore the imprint of the cuffs.
Kael had given her space — for now.
But her mind was sharper than it had been in days. Something about the last injection had cleared the fog instead of deepening it. That was their mistake.
They thought she'd been softened. Tamed.
But memory had returned — in fragments and static images. Blood on tiles. Screams in echoing labs. A girl with the same face as hers sobbing behind glass.
And Dominic.
He had lied to her.
But he had also held her when she collapsed. Fought for her when she wanted to vanish. Said her name like it was salvation, not science.
She couldn't decide if that made him a monster or a martyr.
But she knew she had to get out.
A whisper in the walls pulled her attention.
She moved to the vent.
"Amelia," a voice said — filtered, metallic, familiar.
"Dominic?"
"It's me. I breached the outer grid. I'm thirty meters from your cell. Don't talk. Just listen."
Her fingers clutched the cold steel.
"There's a lab five floors down with synthetic bypass keys," he said. "I need you to fake sedation in two hours. I'll trigger the blackout. When they come to move you — run."
"Kestrel won't let me leave," she whispered.
"I don't care what Kestrel thinks. You're getting out."
A pause.
Then softer: "I should've told you the truth. About your past. About what they did. I didn't because I thought it would break you."
"It did," she said. "But I survived anyway."
The line crackled. Then cut out.
Amelia sat back.
Something inside her was shifting — hardening.
Kestrel thought she was a memory to reclaim.
Dominic thought she was a life to save.
But she wasn't either.
She was a weapon learning how to pull her own trigger.
Back in The Vault.
Dominic loaded the last of the signal jammers into his tactical vest. A prototype electro-pulse rested in a steel briefcase, its timer ticking in slow red increments. One blast could wipe out the neural link grid in the entire Alpine base for three minutes.
He only needed two.
Before he could leave, a figure stepped from the shadows.
"Nice to see you're still suicidal," the woman said.
Dominic didn't smile.
"Eris."
She was tall, lean, and terrifying in the quietest ways. Ex-Kairox. Ex-lover. Ex-human, some whispered.
"You're hunting Kestrel?" she asked.
"I'm ending him."
She whistled. "Took you long enough. I've been tracking his data trail for weeks. That bastard's building something even darker than memory mods."
He closed the case with a click. "You in?"
"I want his heart in a jar," she said, already moving.
Hours later. The Blackout.
Alarms wailed across the Alpine compound.
Lights flickered.
Lock mechanisms froze mid-cycle.
Amelia bolted from her cell, ducking as a shockwave from the jammer rattled the hall. A guard reached for her — she slammed his skull into the door frame and kept running.
From the catwalks above, Dominic and Eris covered her movement.
"She's fast," Eris said. "You sure she's not enhanced?"
"She's pissed."
Kestrel's voice exploded over the intercom. "Initiate lockdown! Lock all vertical lifts!"
Eris cursed. "We've got ninety seconds."
They reached the central shaft just as Amelia burst into view, blood smeared on her cheek, hair tangled.
Their eyes met.
For a second, it was like the first time all over again.
Then the platform beneath her feet exploded.
She screamed.
Dominic lunged.
Their hands met in mid-air.
He pulled her into the alcove as debris rained.
Eris fired down the corridor, laying cover.
"Exit tunnel!" she shouted.
But before they could move, a figure appeared in the smoke.
Kestrel.
His coat was torn. A gun in one hand. And something else in the other — a small black cube pulsing red.
"Step away from her," he said.
Dominic raised his gun.
"Last chance, Kestrel."
But Kestrel didn't aim at Dominic.
He pressed the cube against his own temple.
"Let her choose."
The cube hissed — releasing a thin blue beam toward Amelia.
Her breath hitched.
Her pupils dilated.
And for a moment… she stood frozen.
Torn.
Her voice cracked. "What is that?"
"Your true memory," Kestrel said.
She backed away.
Dominic moved toward her. "Don't listen—"
But she was already trembling.
"I remember now…"