ZARA — CYPRUS WAREHOUSE, NIGHT.
The dock smelled of salt and diesel and the cheap fear that comes when people move illegal things at midnight. We picked a rickety warehouse two roads from the port — low profile, one camera we'd looped because Kai's friend owed us a favor. The ledger said the next movement would pass through here: shell-company routings, flight legs, forwarding numbers. It looked like a map to a crime.
"You ready?" Kai asked, trying to make it sound casual. He didn't look casual. He looked tired in a way only island boys can — sunburnt and stubborn. He'd volunteered as our local face; he'd stepped up because he'd never been the sort to let Zara do this alone.
"We go in, copy, leave," Leo said. He'd taped the thumb drive to his glove like a talisman. "Fast and quiet."
Rina's voice came over comm: Two men onsite. Buyer to collect crate at 00:15. No fireworks unless they give us a reason.
We breezed inside like ghosts. Pallets, tarps, a crate with fresh tape waiting — the classic handoff set. I slid the cutters across the strap, peeled the board open. Cases inside. Serial numbers. A manifest. A line that hit like a knife:
> PROJECT ORIGIN — NEURO-CLASS: COGNITIVE RECONSOLIDATION MODULE — DEPLOYMENT: ON-SITE.
My stomach dropped. I read it again. Neuro-class. Cognitive reconsolidation. Deployment on-site.
I closed the crate and took photos, fingers steady despite the tremor that always came when the edges of the world revealed something monstrous.
"Someone's here," Kai hissed. He heard movement — a small sound by the rear door. Two silhouettes, then flashlights. Ambush.
We moved like we'd rehearsed this life into muscle. Leo hit the door with a shoulder and they came at us. Gunshots sparked. A man in a balaclava took a step and Kai shoved him into the stack of crates. I kicked a rifle away, hit the man's arm, and the world turned into loud breathing and hot metal.
A flash of motion — a woman dancing around the shadows — and I saw her cap slip back for a second. Aria Morttii. She'd been everywhere and nowhere. She smiled like she owned the night.
We should have split. We didn't. We fought. Kai went down when a bullet nicked his thigh. He cursed and dropped, more angry than hurt. I dragged him for cover, everything a thrum of panic. Leo covered me, his rifle barking, his eyes on the far door.
"Drive?" I yelled.
He had it. The thumb drive was warm in his fist. He handed me the ledger photos, then grabbed Kai. "We go—now."
We fell into the van like people who'd lived through too many endings. Rina's voice cut in: Extraction route B. Two minutes. Move.
Kai's blood was warm on my hand. He gritted his teeth when I pressed at the wound. "It's just a graze," he said, though the limp said otherwise.
At the safehouse, Rina was already waiting with a medical kit. She worked fast, quiet, professional. When the pressure bandage was on, I finally forced myself to open the drive Leo had risked his neck for.
The file names were clinical. One folder title made me want to punch a wall: PROJECT ORIGIN — SUBJECT LOGS.
Inside: classification files, footage, and the part that made my throat close — a schematic for a neural implant and a dossier on "behavioral pattern overwrite via pharmacological and synaptic reconsolidation."
Translation, simple and ugly: they were reprogramming people. Erasing who they were and writing what they wanted in their place. Memory scratches, artificial memories, implanted directives. Selina's face — my sister — appeared in a timestamped report, flagged as "stabilized — receptive."
My hands trembled. I had found the thing that had taken Selina — not a prison, but a factory that rebuilt people.
"What would it take to reverse?" I whispered, the question a dangerous prayer.
Rina looked at the files, the diagrams. "You can attempt reconsolidation therapy—remove the implant, purge the pharmacological traces, and re-expose original memory engrams. It's experimental, risky. You could erase her completely, or you could wake her. There's no guarantee."
"You mean kill her or bring her back," I said flatly. The room went small.
"Yes," Rina said. No consolation. No sugar. Just the ledger and the cold facts. "And you'd need the lab's master key: the source firmware and the reverse compound. That's in transit. That's what they move."
A cold, hard edge cut me. The transfer wasn't just paperwork. It was the thing that kept Selina's fate moving forward — and if we intercepted it, we could get what we needed. If we failed, she'd move deeper into the system.
I looked at Leo. He'd been quiet during the download. He touched my knee with a thumb — a small human thing.
"I will help you bring her back," he said. "Whatever it takes."
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to throw myself at him and never let the world unfold in front of him again. But my chest still held Marrakesh's scar. His silence there was a cut.
"Then tell me everything," I said. "Now."
<<<<<
LEO — SAFEHOUSE, LATER — CONFESSION.
The confession I'd avoided was a small animal that kept gnawing at my bones. Marrakesh had been an impossible night. The compound had been compromised. Orders came from a room that smelled like coffee and fear. We had a list — names — and a chance to save dozens of operatives and civilians. The operation split, and those in my circle were told to sign: consolidate the casualties under a KIA and burn certain names to prevent a wider massacre.
Aria was one of the names consolidated. I signed that document. I had convinced myself I was choosing greater good — save forty lives by siding with command and write the rest off. I hadn't anticipated Aria's survival. She walked out of the classified file and became a living accusation, a ghost fed on my omission.
"I thought I was protecting you," I told Zara, watching her face in the harsh lamp light. "I thought if you knew who I was, you'd leave. I thought my past would make you run. I lied to preserve you."
She breathed, hard. "You signed someone's death notice."
"I covered it with paperwork I thought would keep people alive," he said. "I also tried to find her after. I sent signals, funds — whatever I could hide in dead accounts. I was looking for someone I thought was dead. I failed. Then I kept failing."
"Why didn't you tell me any of this?" Her voice was small and terrible. "Why keep me in the dark while Aria circled like a viper?"
"Because every time I opened my mouth, I saw the lives that would be lost if I spoke," he said. "Because I wanted to pretend I was clean. Because I'm a coward and because I'm not. I don't have a simple answer. I have an ugly one: I was scared of being the reason you let me go."
She stared at him like she was measuring the length of a blade.
"You made choices," she said finally. "They hurt people." Her hand tightened on the bandage she'd wrapped around Kai's thigh. "Selina is one of those people we cannot afford to lose. That lab — Project Origin — that's how they broke her."
"I will fix it," he said. "I swear to you. I've been trying for years. I'm sorry I didn't say it. I thought secrets would protect you."
"What's the plan?" she asked. The question was a demand for action — for more than words.
I pushed the file toward her: logs of transactions, a shipping manifest with a pattern: Cyprus, London, then a private runner to the Mediterranean—mobile labs that could be anchored to freighters. "We follow the manifest. We intercept the firmware and the reverse compound. We take the lab offline. We remove the implant and attempt reconsolidation in a medical facility that's off-grid. We get Selina back or we burn everything until there's nothing left to feed the program."
Her eyes flashed. "And what are the chances?"
"Low," I admitted. "Dangerous. But we have to try."
She considered me — not just the man confessing, but the partner in a thousand nights, the man who'd saved her life and also kept her from knowing her sister's file sooner. "If we do this," she said, voice steady, "no more secrets. Not between us."
"No more secrets," he repeated, and for a fraction of time I saw a small, honest thing in him — the man he wanted to be.
<<<<<
ZARA — THE MORAL LINE.
We drew up a plan: intercept the next transfer to a mobile lab, seize the firmware and the reverse compound, and set up an emergency reconsolidation protocol in a safe medical site. Rina passed us contact names — a neurologist who owed favors, a surgeon with deniability. All of it was gray and on the edge of criminal.
"And the cost?" I asked. The ledger was proof, but it asked us to cross moral lines: break into labs, steal compounds, possibly kill guards, and experiment on a person who might never be the same.
Rina looked at us like a woman used to choices that no one should have to make. "You'll have to lie to so many people," she said. "You will have to burn relationships. You'll have to promise things you might not keep. But if we don't, they scale Project Origin. Selina becomes a template, not an exception."
I thought of my sister's laugh, of sticky pancakes when she was small, of the way she braided her hair. The choice was clear in the only way it ever is: heart first, then consequences.
"We do it," I said.
Leo's relief was a soft thing that made me want to curse. "We do it together," he said.
<<<<<
LEO — DEADLY TURN.
We made one mistake: trust a single burner that Rina forwarded. The message looked legit — a reroute notice for a mobile lab: Docking off the south coast, 48 hours. We thought we had time. We thought we could prepare.
Aria had the same message — but she had already moved the lab. She'd accelerated the deployment. Instead of docking, the lab would transfer at sea, in motion.
An hour after we finalized the plan, the safehouse lights exploded. The room filled with smoke. Someone had breached the back wall. Shots. Panic.
Kai shoved me toward the window while Rina grabbed the ledger. I saw a shadow at the front door — a man with a gun and a badge that might have been real. This was no cheap merc job. This was official-looking precision.
We scrambled out the back as the world went sideways. Fire licked the curtains. The man we'd trusted to keep us safe at the safehouse — a deniable asset Rina had hired — had turned. Noor? A hired hand? We didn't know.
Outside, a black van peeled away. In the chaos, a silhouette moved across the street and a single figure paused in the halogen glow. She tipped her head and then turned the other way—Aria, watching us burn and smiling like she'd won a game no one else understood.
Kai was hit in the scramble, not fatally but badly enough. We dragged him into the alley and I wrapped my jacket around him, all the while thinking: we'd traded time and safety for a lead. The price had come due.
Rina grabbed us by the shoulders. "They moved the lab earlier," she hissed. "Aria accelerated them. We lost the window. They're already at sea and moving."
My breath came in constricted lungs. Selina — the faint pulse of a sister who might be waking under someone else's hand — might be a ship away.
"We go," Leo said. "Now."
We left the safehouse in pieces, soot still in our hair. Trust had fractured so many times that night it sounded like glass underfoot. Leo looked at me — eyes red, face lined — and I realized we had crossed the line. Secrets had nearly killed us.
We had a map and a broken plan. We had each other. We had a sister somewhere between machines and memory. We were tired, dangerous, and utterly alive. And we were already running toward the sea.