The alley smelled of rust and rot.
Matherson crouched beneath a collapsed scaffold in the outskirts of old Turin, fingers numb from the cold, eyes fixed on the crumbling building across the street. Ghostbyte's voice buzzed in his ear, low and steady.
"You're close. Thirty meters east. Level two. Infrared says no hostiles yet."
Matherson didn't answer.
He was breathing like a man pulling memories through his lungs instead of air. This was more than a mission. This was the place his father's phone had pointed him to the last geo-tag in a sequence of breadcrumbs buried deep in the device's black box.
An unmarked warehouse. No signage. No lights. No cameras.
But inside?
A recording.
His father's final message.
He slipped through the shadows, past shattered windows and broken time. Every footstep cracked over dust and ash. He found the stairs, climbed to the second floor, and entered a room lined with stacked server racks, all long dead. A single laptop waited on a wooden table in the center, its screen dark, but humming faintly.
He hesitated.
"No power source," Ghostbyte whispered in his comm. "It's waiting for something. Maybe biometric."
Matherson reached out, slowly.
Pressed his hand against the screen.
It flickered.
Then it spoke.
Not with words.
With a face.
His father's.
Jayson.
Unshaven. Eyes red. Recording himself in what looked like a panic room.
"Matherson… if you're watching this, I'm probably dead. And if I'm wrong, then God help whoever tried to kill me."
The image glitched, then resumed.
"What they were after… wasn't just the video disc. That was a decoy. A test. The real evidence the full Edenfall ledger is stored in fragments. I broke the keys, encrypted them across nine nodes."
Matherson leaned forward.
"Each node is tied to someone I trusted. Or used to. You'll have to find them. Some may already be dead. Some may kill you on sight. But when you have all nine fragments… you'll have what I died trying to reveal."
The screen paused.
Then Jayson looked straight into the camera.
"You're not just my son. You're the final variable they couldn't predict. That's why they're afraid of you."
A loading bar appeared on the screen:
[1/9 DECRYPTION KEYS UNLOCKED]
Ghostbyte's voice crackled again.
"Holy shit. He really did it."
Matherson stared at the bar. One key down. Eight to go.
But then… another voice entered the comm line.
A voice not supposed to be there.
"Matherson…"
He froze.
"I warned you I was coming."
Kravitch.
The voice was unmistakable. Ice over broken glass.
"You found the first key. Good for you. But you just triggered a beacon."
Ghostbyte swore loudly.
"They laced the device. We're exposed. They're triangulating your location now."
Matherson bolted from the table, down the stairs, out into the alley. Already he could hear tires screeching. Black SUVs. Tactical boots. Dogs.
"M, you need to run. Northbound sewer tunnel, two blocks over. I'll stall them."
But Matherson didn't run.
Not right away.
He stood in the open, fists clenched, breath steaming like smoke from a forge.
He looked at the night sky, the moon framed in broken clouds.
"I'm done running," he muttered.
Then he vanished into the shadows.
Not like a fugitive.
Like a hunter.
Cut To Kravitch's Intercept Van
"Sir, he's moving fast. He's on foot but outpacing our lead drone."
Kravitch stood motionless, arms crossed.
"Let him run."
"Sir?"
He turned, his face unreadable.
"We don't want him dead. Not yet. We want him desperate."
He leaned closer to the screen as Matherson disappeared down a tunnel.
"Let the second ghost do the bleeding."
The soldier blinked. "Second ghost?"
Kravitch smiled.
But said nothing.