A visceral, biological reaction I hadn’t felt in decades. Stomach plummeting.
The photos weren’t from the outside. Not grainy telephoto shots taken from a parked car.
High-resolution images of the Geneva facility’s interior. The containment cells. The labs.
My office.
The screen under my thumb made a sharp snap. Cracks bloomed across the glass, distorting the image of my own desk. Hadn’t realized I was squeezing it.
“She has everything.” Alban’s words barely audible. “The dark web mirrors are already populating. Mainstream outlets are picking it up. Interpol issued a provisional warrant twelve minutes ago. The Swiss authorities are raiding the perimeter as we speak.”
Couldn’t answer. Couldn’t speak.
The rage that filled me now wasn’t hot. Cold. Surgical. The kind that calculates trajectories and acceptable casualties.
This wasn’t just exposure. Erasure. Years of work. The evolution of the human species, the perfection of the mind, all of it reduced to a sensationalist tabloid headline by a grieving sister with a laptop.
But how?
Analysis pushed past the anger. Rage was inefficient. Logic was the only way forward.
Maeve Durham was resourceful, yes. But she was outside the walls. She couldn’t have breached the Geneva servers. The encryption on those files was quantum-resistant. The physical gap was total.
Unless the gap invited her in.
The photo of my office. The angle was taken from near the doorway.
“Alban. The security logs from the night of the infiltration. Pull them.”
“Sir, the system is...”
“Pull. Them.”
Alban scrambled back to the comms station. I stared at the cracked screen in my palm. A shard of glass sliced into skin. A drop of blood welled up, dark, before it smeared against the image of Maeve Durham’s face.
“I have them.” Voice cracking. “Unauthorized access detected at 0200 hours. The terminal in your office.”
“Who?”
“Login credentials masked. But the biometric handshake... sir, it’s internal.”
Internal.
The word echoed in the silent cabin.
“Cross-reference with the emergency recall. Total headcount.”
“I’m running the roster.”
I stood and walked to the window, staring out at the infinite blackness of the Atlantic night.
Knew before he said the name. Knew.
The only variable that fit the equation.
“Havoc.” The name fell like a blade. “Havoc is unaccounted for.”
I closed my eyes for a single heartbeat.
