“I’ll be in the other room,” I say. “Door stays open. If you need anything—”
“I know,” she says softly. “You’ll already hear it.”
I pause.
Then I nod.
As I walk away, I feel it—the shift.
The moment where a mission becomes personal.
I hate that moment.
Because once it happens, there’s no clean extraction.
Only consequences.
Behind me, Lark reaches for the laptop.
And the truth finally wakes up.
5
Lark
Location: Safehouse — Lisbon
Time: Pre-Dawn
The laptop hums like it’s waking up reluctantly.
I sit on the couch with my knees drawn up, fingers hovering over the keyboard, staring at my own reflection in the dark screen while it loads. My face looks different here—sharper somehow. Like the version of me that believed in distance and safety burned off somewhere between the plaza and the gate.
Aaron didn’t watch me sit down.
That matters.
He gave me space the way people do when they know control is already taken from you—and they refuse to steal more.
The room is quiet except for the muted sounds of him moving in the adjacent space. Not pacing. Checking. Securing. A rhythm built from repetition and survival.
I plug the drive in.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Then the system recognizes it.
A small window opens. No title. No logo. Just a directory with dates that don’t line up with official records and file names that look intentionally dull.
I swallow.
I remember the night I copied it.
I wasn’t supposed to be in that archive. The data had already been flagged for “cleanup,” which is a polite way of saying erase without review. I was supposed to confirm deletion and sign my name to a digital grave marker.
Instead, I saw a discrepancy.
Three transfer routes. Same shell organizations. Same timestamps—but different destinations depending on which database you checked.
