Marseille had changed.
Or maybe she had.
The city once smelled of sea salt and old stone. Now it reeked of surveillance. It wasn't in the air—it was in the eyes. The way people paused too long at cafés. The quiet whispers behind phones. Something in the undercurrent was off.
Wearing black boots to protect herself from the wind blowing off the Mediterranean, Audrey stood at the edge of the ancient harbor. Yachts glinted on the lake far away like lost jewels. She was dressed in normal attire, such as faded trousers and a half-zipped vintage leather jacket, but her demeanor suggested that she was an operative.
With his hands in his coat pockets and his gaze following the roadway behind them, Sebastian stood next to her.
He remarked, "I thought it was louder." "More disorderly."
"It was," she said quietly. "Before they cleaned the city." The soul is still present, just hidden beneath polish.
He didn't answer. His eyes had been fixed on the dilapidated structure across the street, which had been a marine museum but was now a closed government annex. Five years ago, it was officially decommissioned due to a flood. Informally, residents said that the lights continued to flicker at night.
It was also where Project Heretic began.
Not in some gleaming lab in Zurich. Not in the classified bunker in Utah. Here—beneath Marseille's forgotten wings, beneath false floors and bribed zoning permits.
Audrey took a slow breath. Her voice was quieter now. "This was the place where they scrubbed our pasts. Burned the real names. Assigned new ones. Lucien and I came in the same day."
Sebastian glanced at her. "Did you come willingly?"
She didn't flinch. "Not the way you're asking. I was young. Angry. The recruiters were clever. They told us we were protecting people. That we'd become something more."
"And Lucien?"
Her jaw clenched. "He never needed convincing."
They crossed the street, slipping into the shadow of the building. Entry was simple—she found the back access hatch sealed with a rusted biometric reader.
She leaned close and whispered: "Heretic Alpha–Zero."
A second later, the device hissed open.
Sebastian raised a brow. "Spoken access? That's archaic."
"Heretic ran differently. They believed code could be cracked. But a voice changes with pain, age, weather. Emotion leaves marks. They thought that was the truest signature."
"And now?"
"They were wrong."
Inside, the dust greeted them like memory. Thick, undisturbed. The main corridor smelled of mildew and metal. The walls bore remnants of institutional beige, but most had peeled to reveal layers of graphite paint beneath. Surveillance domes were long cracked open. But Audrey knew—this place still breathed in hidden ways.
She led him down two flights of stairs.
"Did anyone else make it out?" Sebastian asked.
"From the first cohort?" Her voice grew distant. "No. Lucien and I were the only ones to finish the full training."
"Finish, or survive?"
"Same thing."
At the bottom of the stairwell, they reached a sealed metal door.
Audrey knelt and pressed her palm to a near-invisible panel. Nothing happened.
"Damn it." She pulled out a small multi-frequency scanner, rerouted the short-range signal.
The door responded—slowly. As if recognizing a ghost.
Behind it: the Archive.
Unlike the rest of the building, this room was pristine. Cold, sterile. LED strips still hummed. Cabinets of hard-drives, data slates, and reinforced tablets lined the walls. In the center was a command desk—flat, silent, waiting.
She stepped forward, hands steady. "This room isn't connected to the grid. It was a closed loop. Only used when one of us went rogue."
Sebastian paced the perimeter, then stopped. "Why would they leave it operational?"
"They didn't," she said. "Someone brought it back online."
Lucien.
Audrey activated the terminal. It came to life in stages—one light, then another. Finally, a screen bloomed across the desk's surface.
WELCOME: DELACOUR.A
PROTOCOL: OBSIDIAN REMNANT
FILES ACCESSED: 72 HOURS AGO
USER: UNKNOWN
She inhaled sharply. "He's deeper in than I thought."
Sebastian frowned. "What's Obsidian Remnant?"
She hesitated.
Then: "The kill switch."
He turned fully to her now.
Audrey's voice dropped. "They didn't just erase our records. They embedded subliminal markers in every Heretic agent. Triggers. Conditioning to… neutralize us, if we ever went rogue."
"You're telling me—"
"I was programmed to self-destruct," she said flatly. "If certain conditions were met. Lucien's trying to unlock that. Not kill me. Turn me back into what I was. A weapon without loyalty."
Sebastian's voice was low. "Can it be reversed?"
"If I get to the core fragment first, maybe."
She sifted through the files—encrypted directives, blackmail archives, and data logs of field agents long since vanished. But one caught her breath.
FRAGMENT DELTA–BLACK: PROJECT MARROW
She opened it.
The screen flickered. Then revealed something impossible.
A video. Grainy, but real. Surveillance footage. A young girl—barely ten—running drills in a metal corridor. Not military. Not training.
Survival.
Audrey leaned in. Her voice cracked.
"That's… that's me."
The file name confirmed it:
SUBJECT: ADELLE MARIE DELACOUR
DATE: 17 OCTOBER, 2002
PHASE: PRE-HERETIC CONDITIONING
Sebastian froze.
"You were in this… before the Project?"
She sat heavily in the chair. "No one ever told me. I thought I enlisted at seventeen. But this... they had me since I was a child."
The realization burned.
"Lucien knew," she whispered. "He's always known."
Sebastian sat beside her, taking her hand. "They rewrote your life."
"Rewrote?" Her voice was hollow. "They built it. I don't know who I am. Who I ever was."
He gripped her hand tighter. "You're Audrey. You're not what they made."
The lights above them dimmed suddenly.
Warning tones buzzed in the command console.
REMOTE ACCESS INITIATED
SWAN–PHASE 2 COMMENCING
USER ID: H3R3T1C
SYSTEM LOCKDOWN: 60 SECONDS
"He's back in," she said, fingers flying across the interface.
Sebastian rose, gun drawn. "What's he doing?"
"Triggering the failsafe."
"What happens in sixty seconds?"
She looked up, eyes ice-cold. "This room goes nuclear."
He pulled her from the console. "Out. Now."
They ran.
The hallway behind them trembled with a distant rumble—vents releasing pressure, circuits frying themselves. The very building seemed to scream.
They raced up the stairs—two flights, then another. The air thickened with smoke and static discharge. Alarms blared, low and angry.
Sebastian shoved the exit hatch open, daylight nearly blinding. They stumbled out into the alley just as the bottom floors detonated with a dull, seismic thump.
Audrey landed hard, breath knocked out. Her ears rang. Debris showered the alley. But above all else, the Archive was gone.
Wiped clean.
Sebastian pulled her up. "You alright?"
She coughed. "I just lost everything."
"No. He just exposed himself. He's playing too loud now."
Audrey leaned against the wall, bleeding from her elbow, face streaked with ash and anger.
"He's rewriting the board. If he gets to the rest of the Project cores, I'm not the only one he'll turn."
Sebastian's eyes hardened. "Then we burn the board."
She looked at him. Something deep behind her gaze clicked back into place. Not coldness. Not cruelty. But clarity.
"We go global," she said. "Every hidden node. Every base. Every file. We find them all—and we destroy them."
He nodded. "And Lucien?"
Her answer was instant. "We put him down."