PART 1: Berlin Fallout
Geneva didn't smell like espionage anymore.
Not like it used to.
The airport was polished, sterile. The kind of clean that didn't just scrub away fingerprints, but intent. Izzy passed through immigration with a Tier 2 diplomatic alias, no questions asked.
The cab ride to the meet was silent. Her driver played French jazz. Izzy stared out the window and tried not to think about the last time she'd seen Juno.
That had been Belgrade. 2014.
One of them walked away with a cracked rib.
The other with a pocket full of state secrets.
Geneva – 08:17 a.m.
Location: Old tram depot near Route de Meyrin
The meeting spot was absurd.
A rusted tram warehouse half-covered in ivy, scheduled for demolition six months ago. The walls were tagged with neon insults. The roof had holes. A single tram shell sat under the rafters, pitted with bullet scars from a protest no one remembered.
Juno was already inside.
He leaned against a steel drum, wearing a leather coat and mirrored sunglasses like he thought the Cold War had never ended.
Izzy stepped in without a word.
"I should've brought flowers," Juno said in French.
Izzy replied in perfect Swiss-German. "You're late."
"That makes two of us." He reached into his coat — slowly — and pulled out a small glass drive sealed in a customs bag.
"St. Falco," he said. "Early vault site. Leftover from when the Tether logs went analog. Arthur's thumbprint is on half the control structure."
Izzy held out her hand.
He didn't give it.
"Tell me something," he said. "Why now? Why come looking for dead files from a dead man?"
She held his gaze. "Because they're not dead."
Juno considered that. Then handed it over.
"There's also this," he added, producing a small digital recorder, military-grade.
Izzy tapped it once to activate playback.
Arthur's voice crackled through:
"She wasn't a variable. She was the end state. All of Tether was designed to funnel into her. If they figure that out—well, then God help us all."
Izzy's jaw flexed.
Before she could ask anything more, the tram's outer panel shattered — one shot, silenced. Juno's head snapped back.
He dropped.
Izzy dove, rolled behind the tram's far wheel set. A second bullet missed her by a whisper, punching through the seat where she'd just stood.
She didn't return fire.
Too exposed.
She didn't run.
Too risky.
Instead, she waited.
Three beats. Four.
A pause in the wind.
Then she moved — grabbed Juno's drive, pulled the tram door open, and slipped out the far side.
By the time local police arrived, the depot was empty.
Just blood.
A dead Frenchman.
And the faint scent of jazz still drifting in from the cab outside.
PART 2: Jack's Visitor
Jack walked alone.
Just twenty minutes. A short loop through the quieter streets of Salamanca's old district — sunlight bouncing off terracotta walls, shuttered cafés still unopened, pigeons loitering like lazy sentinels.
Lani had insisted he get some air.
"You're coiled too tight," she said. "You smell like wet paranoia."
He left the pistol holstered but hidden, jacket loose, steps careful.
By the third corner, he knew he was being watched.
Not the kind of sloppy tail he could bait and corner. This one had training — close shadowing, mirrored angles, using reflections in windows instead of risking line of sight.
Jack stopped near a bench. Pretended to study a mural.
A man stepped beside him.
Mid-40s. Clean-shaven. Expensive linen coat. Pale hands. No visible weapon.
"Mr. Rourke," the man said, voice even, Spanish accent faint.
Jack didn't turn. "You've got three seconds."
"Her name isn't Leah."
Now Jack turned.
The man smiled softly. "It's Nera."
Jack stared. "Say that again."
The man leaned slightly closer. "She wasn't part of Tether. She was Tether. The algorithm is her. They didn't build it to protect her — they built it to preserve her."
Jack's fist clenched.
The man raised a calming hand. "You don't understand what she is. But you will. Soon."
Jack didn't answer — he just moved.
A single sidestep, fast and low. Hand to the jacket.
But the man was gone before he could draw — disappeared into a side street with practiced ease, like smoke curling under a locked door.
Jack stood still for a long moment. Then turned around.
The bench where the man had stood held nothing but a folded tourist map and a single almond candy in gold foil.
Back at the clinic, he pocketed both — and said nothing, yet.
PART 3: Digital Bleed
Evelyn hadn't slept.
She looked better, sure — stitched, stable, sipping black coffee with her legs curled under her on the cot — but the bruise under her eyes said fatigue had dug in like shrapnel.
The laptop sat on her knees, keys whispering as her fingers danced.
Jack had just come in, quiet, distracted. He hadn't mentioned the man in the linen coat yet. Just tossed his jacket over the chair and watched Evelyn work.
A low chime interrupted the silence.
Evelyn leaned in.
Her brow furrowed.
"What is it?" Jack asked.
She didn't answer immediately — just widened the terminal window, reading line after line of raw access logs.
"Oslo," she said finally.
"What about it?"
"The fallback node. The one Carl buried six years ago under the consultant registry for Everhjem Asset Management."
"Encrypted?"
"Triple-layered. Off-grid. It's the one Izzy said no one touched since Murmansk."
Jack moved closer. "Someone's touching it now?"
Evelyn zoomed in.
A silent upload queue was running. Steady, slow, invisible to civilian crawlers.
Every file in the chain was being cloned — then re-layered in something else.
"Bleeding," Evelyn whispered.
"From where?"
"Can't trace it fully. IP range triangulates near Yakutsk. Could be military. Could be leased by a third party."
"Could be Carl."
Evelyn didn't respond.
Then, carefully, she said, "Or someone using his dead man's switch."
Jack tensed. "Meaning?"
Evelyn looked up. Her voice was calm, but her eyes weren't.
"Meaning someone out there had Carl's master keys. His clearance. His biometrics. His habits."
"And you don't think it's him."
"No," she said. "Carl would've contacted Izzy directly. Whoever this is… they're hunting something Carl knew but never told."
Jack's gaze dropped to the gold-foiled candy still in his pocket.
He didn't open it.
PART 4: The Vault Map
French-Swiss Border – October 23, 2025 // 16:20 p.m.
Highway B112, 3 km from Montreux
The rental car smelled like fake leather and cold espresso. Izzy kept one hand on the wheel, the other on the small thumbprint lockbox cradled in the passenger seat — Juno's parting gift. Inside: the vault map and a drive encoded with Arthur's confession.
She hadn't stopped moving since the tram depot.
Now, ahead, the checkpoint loomed.
Swiss customs officers in dark coats. A few bored French gendarmes leaning on concrete pylons, one of them halfway through a cigarette.
Izzy slowed, took a breath, checked the mirrors.
Something was off.
Not the checkpoint — that was routine. It was the skyline. The hill behind the customs station had an old communications tower. A relic from the Cold War, rusted and half-collapsed.
And at the very top, someone had removed the antenna dome.
Replaced it with a barrel.
She swerved hard right — just as the round cracked through her rear windshield.
Glass shattered, the steering wheel kicked, and the car fishtailed across the gravel shoulder, tires screaming.
Second shot — punched through the left rear panel, missed her head by six inches.
No third.
She was already out of the car, diving low behind a roadside embankment, lockbox under her arm.
Gun drawn.
She didn't fire. Couldn't see the shooter — just the glint of a scope against rust.
She stayed there five minutes.
No chase.
No movement.
Just birds overhead — startled, then gone.
Eventually, she slipped through the drainage run-off tunnel under the highway and emerged a mile down the road, soaked, pissed off, but alive.
Drive intact.
Juno hadn't died for nothing.
Geneva – 17:10 p.m.
Rented flat, temporary safe zone
She popped the drive into a burner laptop.
One file.
Audio only.
Arthur's voice, tired but clear:
"If they're hearing this, it means I'm gone. Which means they found Leah. Or she found them. I didn't put her in Tether by accident. I put her there because she's the only one who could finish it… or stop it. That depends on which version of me she finds first."
Izzy sat back, eyes closed.
One phrase echoed in her skull:
"Which version of me…"
PART 5: Nera
Salamanca – Rooftop of Lani's Clinic // October 23, 2025 – 20:37 p.m.
The rooftop was quiet.
Tiles warm from the day's heat, sky streaked orange as dusk bled into evening. Jack stood near the ledge, arms folded, staring past the distant antennas like they owed him something.
Izzy stepped out behind him. She carried two cups of coffee.
He didn't look up when she handed one over.
"I had a visitor," Jack said quietly.
"I guessed."
He took a sip. Paused. "He called her Nera."
Izzy stiffened.
"Said she wasn't part of Tether. Said she was Tether. That it was built for her. That they didn't protect her — they preserved her."
Izzy set her cup down on the ledge.
"He said that name like I was supposed to know it. Like I wasn't her father at all."
"You're not," Izzy said, softly.
Jack's jaw twitched.
"I raised her. I bled for her."
"You did," Izzy said. "But blood and origin aren't the same currency."
Inside, Evelyn worked furiously at her laptop, the glow lighting her face in pulsing blue. She heard the name through the wall — Nera — and her fingers moved faster.
She ran a recursive sweep on the ledger.
Third layer encryption.
There, tucked in the dead space behind the ledger's failover routine, was a single folder.
NERA.SED2
She clicked it.
Prompted for key access.
Voiceprint? No. Password? No.
Biometric.
She triggered the test scan.
The drive blinked.
MATCH ERROR
SUBJECT NOT RECOGNIZED
SEARCHING FOR PRIMARY MATCH: L-R-NERA
Back on the roof, Evelyn emerged quietly.
"She's the key," she said.
Jack turned.
Evelyn held up the device.
"NERA.SED2. It's sealed. Full biometric lock. No partial access. Not you. Not Arthur."
Jack stared.
"Only Leah can open it."