“The Nine will do exactly what they do,” I cut in. “We’re here to learn.”
Behind me, the fight collapses quickly. Two more operatives down. One escapes through a maintenance hatch before the gate fully seals—annoying, but not catastrophic. A runner means they’ll report. Which means they’ll move.
Good.
The chamber quiets, the smoke still curling, sparks hissing where energy bolts melted metal.
My team drags the captured agent toward me, hands bound, mask still on.
He struggles, silent, refusing to beg. He’s disciplined. He’s been trained to die without talking.
Which tells me he’s carrying something.
“Scan him,” I order.
Sable’s voice comes through. “Already scanning. He’s got an implant.”
My pulse steadies into something colder. “Where?”
“Jaw,” she says. “Right side. It’s—” A pause, then: “It’s a dead-man packet.”
I stare at the agent. He stops struggling for a moment, like he can feel the attention shift. Like he knows we found the real payload.
“Open your mouth,” I say.
He glares at me through the mask.
I lean closer. “You can do it the easy way,” I murmur. “Or I can do it the hard way and you can taste your own teeth.”
His eyes flicker—anger, then calculation. He’s deciding whether pain is worth protecting the packet.
He stays silent.
So I gesture.
Rook steps in with a compact medical tool—cold metal, surgical clamp, and a dampener injector. We’re not gentle, but we’re precise. We don’t want the packet triggering.
The agent jerks as the injector hits his neck, his muscles going rigid. Not unconscious—paralyzed.
His eyes widen with fury.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “Welcome to being a resource.”
Rook removes the mask. The agent’s mouth is clenched.
Rook pries his jaw open with the clamp.
And there it is: an implant embedded along the molar line, sleek and black, with a micro-lens no bigger than a grain of sand. A tiny pulse of light flickers inside it, like a heartbeat.
A dead-man packet keyed to something.
Keyed to someone.
Sable’s voice tightens. “It’s broadcasting a failsafe. If he dies, it dumps.”
“Dump where?” I ask.
She pauses, reading the scan. “External routing… encrypted. But the handshake signature is tagged.”
