Havoc. Tertia Generation.
The Prima generation, Reaper and Specter, had been flawed, too attached to their pasts. The Quinta generation, Blackout, had been unstable, prone to physical breakdown.
But the Tertia? They were optimal. Stable. Efficient. Their conditioning didn’t rely on erasing memories; it relied on rewriting emotional context. They didn’t need a chip to be controlled. Didn’t have a kill switch because they didn’t need one. Loyalty was structural, part of their neural architecture.
Havoc had no weakness. No woman. No trauma he couldn’t compartmentalize.
And he had betrayed me.
“The breach history. Was it a single event?”
“No, sir.” Barely audible. “There was at least another occurrence.”
All the while he stood in my office, took my orders. While he looked me in the eye.
Not malfunctioning. Not broken by love or trauma.
He’d chosen this. Therefore, my hypothesis about the bond and the possibility of Oblivion 2.0 were flawed and needed to be reevaluated.
“What are your orders?”
Alban trailed off. We both knew the answer.
No remote wipe. No chip. I’d been so arrogant, so certain of the Tertia stability, that I hadn’t installed the failsafe.
Looked at my reflection in the dark glass of the window. The silver hair. The tailored suit. The blood smeared on my palm.
The game had changed. No longer the architect. The target.
But targets could shoot back.
I turned to Alban. Didn’t raise my voice. Didn’t need to. The air pressure in the cabin seemed to drop, sucking the oxygen out of the room.
“Find him.”
“Sir, he’s a ghost. If he’s gone rogue...”
“I don’t care if you have to burn half the continent to flush him out. Find him.”
The blood on my hand caught the cabin lights.
“And Alban?”
“Yes, Sir?”
“Do not kill him. I want him alive.”
Havoc would regret his betrayal.
They all would.
Chapter 29
Havoc
9:47 PM.
Luxembourg is a bank vault pretending to be a country. Clean streets, silent nights, and more secrets buried under the concrete than actual soil. Perfect for hiding money. Even better for hiding crimes.
