PART 1: Blood on Steel
The tunnels were colder than they should've been.
Water dripped in rhythmic taps from corroded pipes above, echoing through the dark like a metronome. Izzy led the way with the thermal torch, the beam cutting through mildew and rust like a scalpel through scar tissue.
Evelyn followed, wrapped tight, favoring her right side. Jack brought up the rear, the duffel slung over one shoulder and a pistol low in his other hand.
They hadn't spoken since leaving the Madrid flat.
Izzy's voice broke the silence.
"Next fork, we head left — old eastbound access corridor. It should bring us out under the rail depot by Salamanca."
Jack grunted in acknowledgment.
Then he stopped.
"Hold."
Izzy froze mid-step.
Jack crouched slightly, ears straining. A soft click behind them. Not mechanical. Not structural.
Deliberate.
He pivoted just as the first figure dropped from the ceiling grate.
Black clothes. Masked. Compact build.
Blade drawn.
Jack fired before the man touched ground. One shot — center chest.
The figure crumpled without a sound.
But the second was faster.
Out from the shadows, behind Evelyn — a blur and a flash.
A shot rang out.
Evelyn gasped.
Izzy turned in time to see her stumble against the wall, clutching her side.
The second assailant moved for the bag.
Jack shouted, closed the gap in two strides, and smashed the pistol butt across the figure's temple. They dropped hard, groaning.
Izzy knelt beside Evelyn.
"Where?"
Evelyn pulled her hand back — blood, dark and thick.
"Ribs. Didn't go through."
Jack planted a boot on the groaning assailant's chest, gun raised.
"Who sent you?"
The figure spat blood, then grinned beneath the cracked edge of their mask.
"You're already dead, Rourke. You just haven't figured out who's writing the eulogy."
Jack's finger tightened on the trigger — but didn't pull.
Instead, he looked back.
Izzy had Evelyn upright, pressed against the tunnel wall. Blood still flowed, but it wasn't pumping — no arterial spray.
"Through-and-through," Izzy said, calm and clinical. "No lung hit. She'll make it."
Jack nodded once.
Then Izzy turned.
Raised her weapon.
No warning.
No hesitation.
One shot to the head.
The tunnel echoed. The body went still.
Izzy holstered the pistol like it was nothing.
Jack said nothing about it.
They moved on.
"We need to move," Jack growled, already yanking the bag from the floor — too late. The decoy was gone, snatched in the chaos. Just a few seconds. That's all it took.
Izzy grabbed Evelyn's arm, supported her weight.
"We don't have time to finish this."
Jack didn't argue.
They moved, fast, leaving behind two bodies and one very dangerous piece of bait.
PART 2: Lani's Clinic
The door to Lani's clinic wasn't marked.
It was a rusted elevator shaft in the back of a shuttered convenience store — hidden behind stacked pallets of expired detergent and moldy paper towels. Jack carried Evelyn over the threshold, her coat pressed tight against the wound, breath shallow but steady.
Inside, the basement smelled of iodine, dust, and ozone.
Lani didn't speak when she saw them.
She just pointed to the table.
"On your back," she said to Evelyn, already pulling on gloves.
Evelyn nodded faintly, slid out of Jack's arms, and lay flat without a sound.
Lani worked fast — needle, forceps, gauze. No wasted motion.
She didn't ask names. Didn't ask how it happened.
But as she stitched, her voice was calm and direct.
"You're lucky. Clean pass, no fragmentation. Another inch and it would've nicked the liver."
Evelyn muttered something about amateurs.
Jack paced.
Izzy sat near the equipment shelf, pulled the thermal torch from her coat, and turned it over in her hands.
Lani glanced up once.
"You're the one using Madrid 3F Alpha," she said.
Izzy met her eyes.
"Didn't think anyone still monitored that signature."
"I don't," Lani replied. "But someone tried to buy the access logs three days ago. Asked for anyone tagged in the old Sevens archives."
Evelyn winced. "Names."
Lani nodded. "Not locations. Just names."
Later, after Evelyn was stable and resting on a cot under heat lamps, Izzy unzipped one of the side compartments of her coat and pulled out a folded note.
She handed it to Jack.
"What's this?" he asked.
"Backup instructions," Izzy said. "In case they got the real drive."
Jack unfolded the paper. Inside: a list of fake financial trails, scrambled company names, and one embedded file key labeled KNOT-RED-THREE.
"This was on the decoy?" he asked.
Izzy nodded.
"It's nothing. Noise. Misdirection. But if they crack it, they'll find an old leak from the Cyprus network. A bait trail."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "And if they believe it?"
"They'll burn two weeks chasing ghosts."
PART 3: Operation Tether
It was near midnight.
The clinic was quiet now — just the low hum of a server rack tucked behind a plastic curtain and the steady drip of water through a leaky pipe in the ceiling.
Izzy sat cross-legged on the floor, Evelyn's laptop open on a makeshift crate desk, light blue glow casting sharp angles across her face.
Jack leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, gaze fixed on nothing.
He hadn't said much since the tunnel.
Not since the shot.
Not since the groan stopped.
Evelyn was asleep under a silver blanket, the pulse monitor slow and steady beside her.
Izzy tapped a few keys.
"You ever hear of something called 'Tether'?" she asked without looking up.
Jack blinked. "Tether?"
"Showed up in the Berlin leak's metadata," she said. "Hidden in the log string. Just one line: 'Tether entry confirmed.'"
Jack pushed off the wall. "It's a program?"
"Was. Maybe. Nobody outside certain Directorate tiers was supposed to know. A database for identity resets — clean civilian wipes. Birth records. School transcripts. Life from scratch."
"Black book ops?"
Izzy nodded. "But this wasn't for agents. It was for… legacies."
Jack frowned.
Izzy turned the screen slightly toward him.
"Leah's name showed up on one of the sidetracks. Not in the ledger. In Tether."
Jack stepped closer.
He didn't look at the screen.
Instead, he ran a hand over his jaw, eyes flicking to the side. He looked tired — not physically, but underneath. As if his mind had somewhere else it kept trying not to return to.
Izzy noticed.
"You've been quiet."
Jack shrugged.
"You did what had to be done," he said.
"I didn't ask that."
Jack didn't answer.
He looked down at the keyboard. Then at Evelyn.
Then: "I didn't know it'd be that easy."
"It's not," Izzy said. "It's just fast."
Jack's mouth twitched.
"I thought maybe I'd feel something. Regret. Relief. Anything."
"You will," she said. "Just not when you expect to."
He turned away, walked slowly to the back door, cracked it for air.
Behind him, Izzy turned back to the terminal and whispered:
"Welcome to the other half of justice."
PART 4: Message from the Dead
The message came in as a static burst.
Izzy caught it mid-yawn, half-slumped in a folding chair beside Evelyn's cot, eyes glassy with screen fatigue and half-watched code scrolls. Her laptop flickered — not a full alert, just a quiet handshake signal, almost polite.
She sat up fast.
It was an old protocol.
Obsolete.
Russian packet route.
Node prefix: MUR-23-7R.
Her fingers flew across the keys. She cracked the cipher in four commands, rerouted through a Swiss proxy, then paused.
Only one message waited.
No subject line.
No attachments.
Just twelve words:
You never did learn to drink tea without sugar.
Izzy didn't breathe.
Her eyes scanned the digital signature again.
The transmission's root.
Burn pattern.
Timing.
Carl.
No doubt.
It wasn't spoofed — it couldn't be. This drop had been dead since the Balkans, when Carl had embedded it inside a NATO maintenance server during a months-long disinformation sweep.
No one else knew the phrase.
It was personal.
Private.
Back in 2015, during an op in Skopje, she'd spit out a bitter mug of tea mid-interrogation and Carl had smirked and said those exact words.
She leaned back slowly.
Jack appeared at her side.
"What is it?"
Izzy didn't answer right away.
Instead, she turned the screen toward him.
Jack read it. Then looked at her.
"I thought he was dead."
Izzy's voice was quiet.
"He's not. Not yet."
PART 5: The Map Beneath the Ledger
Morning filtered in through the vents like cigarette smoke — soft, slow, slightly toxic.
Evelyn sat propped up beneath a thermal blanket, laptop balanced on her legs, fingers gliding over the keys with the ease of someone used to typing through pain.
Jack sipped weak coffee from a steel cup and said nothing.
Izzy stood at the corner table, arms folded, watching the lines of decrypted metadata spill across the screen like veins.
"This isn't money," she said finally.
"No," Evelyn agreed. "It's personnel. Every name tagged in the ledger? There's a second layer. Code-red identifiers. Not fugitives. Not whistleblowers."
"Operatives?" Jack asked.
"Some," Evelyn said. "But not all. Some are kids. Some are ghosts. Some are… insurance."
She enlarged a node cluster.
At the top of the structure, one name blinked faintly.
LEAH ROURKE
Classification: N-6
Directive: TETHER / SEED
Status: UNDECLARED
Jack leaned forward, eyes narrowing.
"Tether again."
"She's not a target," Evelyn said. "She's a successor node. Arthur built a whole path around her."
"A path to what?"
Evelyn's voice dropped. "Continuity."
Izzy didn't say anything.
She just stared at Leah's name — the way it sat in the center, surrounded by redacted tags and soft-spoken algorithms.
After a long silence, Evelyn glanced at her.
"You ever wonder," she said, "how you got to be a police inspector when most of your cohort already retired?"
Izzy didn't blink.
"Not really."
Evelyn smiled faintly.
"I do."
Izzy turned, met her eyes.
"I didn't take the job to be believed," she said. "I took it so I could see who was lying."
Then she walked out — slow, careful steps, like someone carrying a weight no one else could see.