Fractured Trust

The sound of a helicopter is something you feel more than you hear. It rattles your teeth, vibrates in your chest. But on that roof, holding Dante’s lifeless hand, I felt nothing.

I was hollowed out.

He was gone.

And I was standing on a burning building with a dead man and a mission that had cost everything.

I knelt there for a long time. Time lost its meaning. Sirens wailed below, a cacophony of red and blue lights cutting through the darkness. The organization was crumbling, their financial networks dissolving into code, but it didn't matter.

I had won. And I had lost.

Finally, I stood up. My knees were stiff, my body aching from the night's brutality. I leaned down and kissed Dante’s forehead. It was cold.

"I'll finish it," I whispered. "I promise."

I took his comms device. I took his gun. And I took the small, silver locket he always wore around his neck.

I didn't know what was inside. I didn't want to look. Not yet.

I made my way to the service stairwell. The elevator was out, the shaft filled with smoke. I descended fifty flights of stairs, passing panicked guests and shouting firefighters. I blended in, just another victim of the tragedy.

I slipped out a side exit into the alley where Felix and I had started this nightmare.

The air was thick with smoke and the smell of ozone. I leaned against the brick wall, trying to catch my breath, trying to steady my hands.

My earpiece crackled.

"Aria?"

It was a voice I hadn't expected to hear. A voice that should have been silenced in the explosion.

"Felix?" I choked out.

"I'm alive," he said, his voice strained. "Barely. I'm in the van. South perimeter."

"I'm coming."

I ran. I didn't look back at the tower. I didn't look at the bodies being carried out on stretchers.

I found the van parked in the shadows of a construction site. Felix was in the driver's seat, clutching his side. His face was pale, sweat beading on his forehead.

"Dante?" he asked as I climbed in.

I shook my head.

Felix closed his eyes. He let out a long, shuddering breath. "He saved us," he whispered. "He knew."

"He knew what?"

"That Lucius had a contingency plan. A kill switch." Felix grimaced in pain. "He uploaded the virus, but he also triggered a localized EMP. It fried their comms. That's why the backup teams didn't swarm us."

"He sacrificed himself," I said, the weight of it crushing me.

"He did what he had to do." Felix started the engine. "And now we have to do what we have to do."

"What's that?"

"Disappear," he said. "The organization is broken, but the pieces are still dangerous. And they'll be looking for us."

He handed me a new phone. A burner.

"There's a safe house in Prague," he said. "The coordinates are on there. Go. I'll lead them away."

"I'm not leaving you," I said.

"You have to," he said, looking at me with eyes that were too old for his face. "You have the key. You have the leverage. You're the only one who can make sure this never happens again."

He was right. I hated it, but he was right.

I got out of the van.

"Aria," he said.

I turned.

"Check the locket."

He drove away, disappearing into the chaos of the city.

I stood alone on the street corner. I opened my hand. The silver locket gleamed in the streetlights.

I pried it open.

Inside was a tiny, folded piece of paper. Microfilm.

And a photo.

Not of a woman. Not of a child.

It was a photo of two young recruits, smiling at the camera, arms around each other's shoulders. Dante and Felix.

And on the back, in Dante’s messy scrawl:

*Whatever it takes.*

I closed the locket. I put it around my neck.

I walked to the nearest subway station. I didn't look back.

I was a ghost now. A memory.

But ghosts have a way of haunting the living.

And I had a lot of haunting to do.

But first, I had to deal with the tracker.

I reached into my pocket, feeling for the small, hard lump I had found earlier.

I pulled it out. It wasn't just a tracker.

It was a microphone.

And it was still transmitting.