He’s wrong.
“He’s cutting left,” Jase murmurs.
“I see him.”
The operator slips through a crowd near a market entrance, jacket zipped, head down, earpiece barely visible if you know what to look for. He doesn’t hurry.
That tells me he thinks the countdown is doing the work for him.
“Lena,” I murmur, mic low. “Confirm trigger proximity.”
“Thirty meters,” she answers. “He’s the hub. Secondary nodes are waiting for his confirmation ping.”
“Time to activation?”
“Under two minutes.”
Plenty.
I angle right, letting the crowd swallow me. Civilian faces blur past—unaware, unthreatening, alive. Every step I take is measured to keep them that way.
The operator slows near a parked delivery van.
Of course he does.
Jase drifts wide, cutting off the exit vector without breaking stride.
I close the final distance and bump the operator’s shoulder hard enough to spin him half a step.
“Sorry,” I say automatically.
He nods, distracted—then freezes.
Because my hand is already on his wrist.
I twist.
The device drops into my palm—small, innocuous, lethal.
Jase is there instantly, body blocking sightlines as we pivot the man behind the van.
The operator struggles once.
Just once.
I put him down with a controlled strike to the throat. He collapses silently, breath gone, fight finished before it begins.
I don’t look at him again.
“Device secured,” I say. “Lena.”
“I’m in,” she replies immediately. “Hold—almost—”
The van’s engine ticks as it cools. Somewhere nearby, someone laughs.
Life continues.
Then Lena exhales sharply. “Black Crown Red One is dead.”
