The room Cain chose for this wasn't a boardroom, and it wasn't a lab. He could've summoned the other masked heads of Talon and given them a performance with maps, projections, the usual ritual of power. He could've done it alone in his own mind and treated the rest of them like expendables and footnotes.
Instead, he called only two people. Dagger. And Koren. That alone told Shawn more than the speech was going to.
The chamber sat deep under the Vulturis complex, below the lab floors, below the armory vaults, below the freight tunnels that stretched beneath Geneva like veins. The walls here weren't polished or lit for presentation. They were poured concrete, scarred by old blasting charges, patched in places with black steel plates. No cameras. No surveillance hum. Just a long table, a projection slab, and the low thrum of the city above bleeding through bedrock.
Koren looked like he hadn't slept in two days. Which was generous, because it might have been three. His clothes were still lab-scrubs black, collar crumpled, hair stuck to his forehead. He hovered at the edge of the projection field, clutching his datapad like it was capable of saving him if this went wrong.
Dagger didn't hover. He stood opposite Cain, hands relaxed behind his back, mask in place. In the light of the table, the black of the mask looked like glass — not glossy, not cheap, but depthless. No eyes. No expression. Just reflection.
Cain, by contrast, wore no mask at all. That was his own kind of mask. A man who's identity was unknown outside of Talon. Didn't matter if you knew who he was, he'd find you first anyway.
"Thank you both for coming," he said, in the voice he used when he was about to drop a live grenade and call it a discussion.
Koren swallowed. "You… you didn't exactly make it sound optional."
Cain smiled politely. "Doctor, you're here because this is partially your work. Dagger—"
He turned his eyes to Shawn.
"...you're here because I'm going to give you the truth. And once you have it, there's no taking it back."
Dagger tilted his head a fraction. "You're assuming I want it."
Cain's mouth curved. "You'll want this."
He pressed his palm to the table surface. The slab flickered to life, and Europe bled into existence in red wireframe.
The map rotated and zoomed. Borders ghosted in and out. Roads, energy grids, armored lines of shipment routes Talon should not have had access to, Talon always had access it "should not have."
Finally, the map held steady over Central Europe. A pulsing spiral glowed, bright and insistent. Munich. Cain didn't say the name yet. He watched them see it.
Koren swallowed again. "You're… you're moving on the German corridor? Cain, that corridor is—"
Cain raised a finger, not shushing him so much as gently caging his panic. "No. We're not moving on the corridor."
He tapped two fingers to the table, and the map pulled tighter, cutting down from national scale to city scale. Streets came into focus. Districts. Security grids, thermal signatures. A perimeter in heavy white that ringed an industrial campus on the eastern edge of the city.
It wasn't Talon architecture , not classic Talon, anyway. The style was too clean. Too vertical. Too proud. It looked like a sanctum built by someone who wanted the world to see him, fear him, and praise him for giving them that opportunity.
"This," Cain said quietly, "is the Arc Spire."
Koren frowned. "That wasn't in any of our… I've never heard of..."
"Of course you haven't," Cain said. "You're new to the politics. You were brought in for your hands, not your memory."
He didn't say it cruelly. He said it like a teacher noting which tool in the kit did which job.
Dagger didn't move or respond. He knew Cain would explain.
"The Arc Spire," Cain continued, "is the headquarters of a man who once sat where I sit now."
The air in the room tightened in a way Koren didn't understand, but Dagger did.
Cain went on. "Talon has always presented to the outside world like a creature with one mind. One intention. One hand reaching forward into the future. That is, of course, a lie. We were never one hand. We were five."
He said it almost fondly.
"Five of us. Five seats. Five different visions of what the world needed to become, all moving in parallel. Finance. Intelligence. Enforcement. Evolution. Doctrine. We built Talon as a spine, not a throne, no kings, no idols. Only function."
He touched the map again. The Arc Spire brightened like a wound.
"One of us decided he was better than that."
Koren blinked. "You're saying there's...there was...another board head? And he left?"
Cain's smile didn't reach his eyes. "He did more than leave."
He took his hand from the table. For a moment, the projection froze on that pale structure, looming over Munich like a tooth.
"He broke off," Cain said. "Took his followers. Stole assets. Stole prototypes. Stole people. Declared that his branch was the only true Talon. Claimed we'd grown weak. Claimed we'd lost the willingness to do what is necessary."
He looked up at Dagger.
"He believes he is Talon. He believes the rest of us are obsolete."
A muscle in Koren's jaw twitched. "And… and you've tried to remove him."
Cain actually laughed at that. It wasn't kind. "Of course we've tried."
He gestured lazily toward the map. "We've sent strike teams. They never came back. We've tried to starve him. He smuggled fuel routes right under us. We tried data compromise. He burned entire server farms and then rebuilt them in three days. He knows our signals. Our infiltration tricks. Our recruitment channels. He knows our tells because we taught him all of them."
"And you couldn't just…" Koren hesitated. "Assassinate him?"
Cain's eyes flashed briefly with something like humor. "Doctor. If you could see him right now, you would not use the word 'just' anywhere near his name."
He tapped the table again and new data washed across the projection.
The Arc Spire split open into internal overlays: levels, bulkheads, machine bays, deep-storage vats. Guard rotations. Kill zones. Drone nests.
And then: movement.
Ten new heat signatures appeared in the schematic. Ten bodies mapped in a faint luminous gold under the red scan, each with a small steady pulse point at the base of the neck. Neck. Spine. Control.
Koren's breath hitched. "Oh."
Cain nodded once. "Oh."
He didn't look at Koren when he said it. He looked at Dagger.
"Project Meret," Cain said, "was never about street enforcement. It wasn't about chaos management. It wasn't about terror weapons or deniable assets. All of that is useful. Decorative, even."
He leaned forward, fingers laced, and his voice dropped to something almost reverent.
"This is a decapitation strike."
The room felt smaller.
"Those soldiers," Cain said softly, "are going to walk into the Arc Spire, kill everything that belongs to him, and bring me his head."
Koren went pale. "That's...Cain, that's not....those are human trials....this is...."
"Doctor," Cain said, turning to him at last. "Look at me."
Koren did. He didn't hold the gaze long.
"We are at war internally," Cain said, voice slow and patient. "Our enemy is not some politician in London skimming postwar contracts. It is not some smuggler running personnel through ports. It is not some choked little minister laundering fear into policy. Our enemy is a man who knows us, who can predict us, and who thinks he can replace us. Every failed hit we've thrown at him has made him bolder. Every failure we've given him has been a gift. So we will not fail him again."
He gestured to the ten gold silhouettes.
"We're going to hand him evolution instead."
He let that sit.
Koren licked his lips, throat dry. "You're… sending them alone?"
"They won't be alone," Cain said. "They'll have command tether."
Koren blinked. "Which is—?"
Cain lifted his other hand, and for the first time, Dagger saw it.
Small. Matte black. The size of a thick remote transmitter. The embedded indicator lights pulsed in rhythm with Cain's own pulse, or seemed to.
He turned it in his hand like a coin.
"Before we injected them with Meret," Cain said mildly, "we implanted each of them at the C7 junction with an obedience spine. I speak, they listen. If they hesitate, I remind them. If they resist, I correct them. If they defy me..."
He pressed one thumb briefly against a recessed contact. A faint, ugly whine pulsed into the air, more felt than heard. Koren flinched like someone had stabbed him behind the ear.
"—they die," Cain finished.
Koren stared. "That… that's—"
"Complete control," Cain said. "Leverage you can hold in one hand."
He tilted the device toward Dagger. "In my hand."
Dagger finally spoke. "And you're telling me because…?"
Cain met his gaze, unblinking.
"Because you're going to lead them."
The air left the room.
Koren choked. "That's not—no. No, no, no, you can't send him in there, he's not, this is internal structural rebellion, this is high-level Talon civil theatre and you want to drop him into..."
Cain didn't even look at him. "Doctor."
Koren shut up. It wasn't obedience. It was survival.
Dagger didn't move. Didn't fidget. Didn't give anything away behind the mask. "You want me to take ten unstable prototypes," he said evenly, "against a man who's survived every attempt you've made to cut him down."
"Yes."
"And you expect me to walk them into his stronghold and walk them back out again."
"Yes."
"And if they turn on me?"
Cain smiled. "They won't."
Something flickered, just for a heartbeat, behind Dagger's stillness. "You tested them against unarmed Talon recruits. You haven't tested them against fear."
Cain's eyes warmed. "That's why you're there."
Dagger tilted his head. "So I can calm them?"
"So you can break them," Cain said simply. "If they forget who holds authority, you will remind them. If they start believing the serum makes them gods, you will kneel them. I saw how you taught Brann and the other two humility. Pain makes memory. You'll use that again."
He paused, as if granting a courtesy.
"And if any of them decide to play hero for a different master," he added, almost lazily, "I'll turn off their spine in real time. Problem solved. No friendly fire you can't justify."
Koren stared between them in horror. "This is...this is slaughter."
Cain didn't look away from Dagger. "This is correction. Our house, Doctor. Our rules. Our traitor. The rest of the world doesn't get to see this."
He leaned in a fraction. His tone softened.
"Dagger," he said, and he used the name like a promise. "You've proven yourself useful. More than useful. Rourke's fall. Koren's stability work. The first live bonding. The discipline you're carving into the batch. You are closer to these soldiers than anyone alive. They'll listen to you. They'll fear you. They'll want to impress you. Good. Use that. Take it to Munich."
Dagger said nothing.
Cain watched him for several seconds, then continued, quieter.
"Understand the stakes. This is not about field test. This is not about proof-of-concept. This is not about selling the serum to foreign buyers and calling it influence. This is us cutting out a rot before it spreads. There used to be five of us at the top of this structure. Five. We are four now, and that is… acceptable. If he becomes three, we are finished. He will not sit in my chair. I won't allow it."
He tapped the Arc Spire on the projection. "I'm not sending you to negotiate. I'm sending you to end him."
He let the words hang.
Then, as if nothing had just shifted in history, Cain straightened and smoothed his sleeve.
"We deploy in four weeks," he said.
Koren jolted. "Four weeks?"
Cain turned calmly. "Doctor, if 'four weeks' sounds fast to you, be glad I'm not saying 'tomorrow.'"
"But the prototypes.. they're still stabilizing, the dormancy gates have only held in controlled lab conditions, we haven't tracked long-term cognitive drift, we haven't mapped second-stage adaptation patterns under sustained trauma, we haven't..."
"And if we wait," Cain interrupted, "he digs in deeper, reinforces the Spire, buys off more of our cells, and starts broadcasting his version of Talon to every scared little militia in Europe. Then we aren't a shadow. We're competing brands."
He turned back to Dagger, as though the conversation hadn't been interrupted.
"You'll have a handler team two clicks outside Munich in the flood tunnels," Cain said. "No insignia. No Talon colors. Denied if captured. You'll lead the entry, confirm internal kill positions, and give me the signal."
"What signal?" Dagger asked quietly.
Cain smiled, something almost genuine. "Three words," he said. "Any three you like. I'll know when you mean them."
"And after?" Dagger asked.
Cain's eyes glinted. "After?" He shrugged. "After, if you're standing in the Spire and he isn't, you're one step closer to becoming something more than field asset."
Koren made a tiny, helpless sound. "You're grooming him as a..."
Cain cut him off with a look so polite it felt like a razor. "Doctor. You're here because I'm generous. Please don't waste generosity by panicking in my presence."
Koren swallowed hard and went very still.
Cain exhaled slowly and, for a brief moment, the weariness bled through. The tension. The anger. The possessive, territorial fury of someone who refused to lose what he'd built.
"He thinks he can outgrow us," Cain said softly. "He thinks he can become Talon alone. He thinks we'll fracture and fall apart while he crowns himself over the ruins."
He looked back up.
"Show him what happens to men who think they're too big for the rest of us."
The room held its breath.
Dagger finally spoke.
"When?"
Cain smiled.
"I knew you'd say yes."
Dagger didn't correct him.
Cain palmed the projector and the map collapsed, Munich fading into flat darkness. For a moment, the only light left in the room came from the pulse of the little transmitter in Cain's hand.
Then he turned, as if the conversation were over, because in his mind it was.
"Doctor," he said mildly, without looking back, "tune the implants again. I want zero latency when I speak. If any of them hesitate to move on my command, I want them on the floor before the thought finishes forming."
Koren's voice was thin. "I… I can try, but if we strain the spine interface beyond the current amplitude we risk—"
"Try," Cain repeated. "If you break one, we'll grow another."
And to Dagger: "Drill them harder. Humble them again. Especially Brann. He thinks strength means authority. Make sure he understands that authority speaks from above, not from the front."
Cain moved toward the exit, then paused at the doorway and looked back one last time. His gaze found Dagger's mask, and there was something almost like pride there.
"I'll have route maps and secure entry patterns to you tomorrow," he said. "Study them. Own them. This mission isn't about theater. It's about balance."
He tapped the side of his skull with two fingers.
"Remember that word," he said softly. "Balance. It's what separates us from animals — and from zealots."
Then he was gone.
The door slid shut with a soft hydraulic whisper, and the concrete room felt immediately bigger without him in it.
For a long beat, neither of the two men left behind spoke.
The Arc Spire had vanished from the projection, but Munich still pressed against Dagger's mind like a migraine.
Koren was the first to crack.
"This is suicide," he whispered.
Dagger didn't respond.
Koren's laugh came out brittle. "No, not suicide. Suicide implies some kind of noble self-selection. This is just... this is just feeding you into his war with himself and calling it strategy."
Still nothing.
Koren scrubbed a shaking hand over his face. "He says 'there used to be five seats.' Five. So he's talking about a man who sat where you just stood. Someone who knows exactly how Cain thinks. Someone who survived multiple assassination attempts. Someone who built an entire offshoot branch of Talon in Munich and kept it alive. And Cain wants to walk ten unstable serum-bonded subjects and one infiltrator into that man's house."
Dagger finally spoke.
"Eleven."
Koren blinked. "What?"
"It's eleven," Dagger said quietly. "You're forgetting Cain."
Koren made a strangled noise. "Cain's not going inside..."
Dagger turned his head toward him. The blank black lenses of his mask pinned the doctor in place.
"Dagger," Koren whispered, voice cracking. "Tell me you're not actually considering doing this."
Shawn didn't answer right away.
Because here was the thing: Cain thought he understood him. Cain thought loyalty was a matter of leverage, and leverage a matter of fear. Cain thought that because he'd given Dagger a role of trainer, enforcer, handler of the Meret prototypes, that meant he owned him. Cain wasn't the only one with a contingency.
Shawn had already built his own.
The soldiers could adapt to bullets, blades, cold, heat, concussive force. They could break themselves and knit back together. They could learn. But he'd also given them a quiet kill-switch, something Cain didn't know existed and Koren didn't understand even when he was holding it in his hands. He'd written it into the serum's binding layer, tucked in behind Koren's "stability gates," folded into the logic of survival.
Cyanide.
A whisper of it and the Meret engine went still. No regeneration. No adaptation. Twenty-four hours of docility — or death if they couldn't survive without the serum's aggression carrying them.
Only Shawn knew. And the highest members of Overwatch. He hadn't told Koren because Koren would panic, and panicking people got overheard.
So: eleven. Ten soldiers he could stop if he had to. And himself. You don't walk into hell without water.
Shawn finally answered.
"I'm not considering it," he said.
Koren let out something between relief and a breathless laugh. "Good. Okay. Good. So we fake readiness, we stall Cain, we sabotage the implants so they can't field..."
"I'm not considering it," Shawn repeated, "because it's already happening."
Koren stared at him.
Shawn's voice stayed level. "Cain isn't asking. Cain's already moving pieces. He's already built the perimeter safehouse in the Munich flood tunnels. He's already positioned a shell company in the logistics ring to cover exfil. He's already purged half the file records on the missing hit squads so no one in the Arc Spire even knows which names to anticipate. He's not giving us four weeks to prepare. He's giving himself four weeks to reshape the board for after."
Koren swallowed. "After…?"
"After the Arc Spire falls," Shawn said. "After the fifth seat is gone. After he's not sharing air with anyone."
Koren sank back against the table. "This is… this is internal regime change."
Shawn didn't bother dignifying that with an answer.
Koren's voice dropped to a whisper. "And you're just going to do it? March in there with his leash squad and… and… what? Assassinate the breakaway head of Talon so Cain can consolidate power?"
Shawn's answer surprised even Koren.
"No."
Koren blinked. "No?"
"I'm going to keep Cain from getting exactly what he wants."
Koren stared, mouth open. "And how in God's name are you planning to do that?"
In the dim underground light, the black mask turned slightly toward the door where Cain had left. When Shawn spoke next, his voice was low enough that the concrete itself would've had to lean in to hear it.
"By making sure," he said, "I'm the only one who walks out of Munich still holding a leash."