The win in Trieste had given the task force momentum.
Too much momentum.
Lysander was a man who understood the psychology of the hunt when his prey got confident, he didn't hide. He bit back.
It started with silence.
Chloe was running through Vanguard's stolen data when three of her secure channels went dark cut off mid-stream.
"Michael," she said over comms, "we've lost our uplink to the Honolulu node. This wasn't a glitch someone just shut us out."
Duval's face went pale. "That's our main backup archive."
Then the second blow landed.
Hurley's supply caches in Split food, comm gear, medical kits were gone. Not stolen. Burned.
The third hit was almost invisible until Neal found it. His offshore accounts, the ones he'd buried under six layers of false identities, had been emptied.
Neal's smirk was gone. "He's not just coming after our mission he's coming after us."
A small, unmarked package arrived at the safehouse later that afternoon. Inside: a flash drive.
Chloe scanned it for traps, then plugged it in. A grainy video played.
Lysander's voice was deep, smooth, and completely calm. His face was obscured in shadow.
> "You're playing my game now. You've taken a pawn. You've burned one of my ships. In return, I've taken three of your rooks off the board. You don't know who they are yet, but you will when you hear the news. And then, you will understand every move you make will cost you twice over."
The video ended on a single frame: the team's own safehouse, photographed from a nearby building last night.
"Everyone pack," Michael said instantly. "We're moving out. Now."
Swagger was already scanning rooftops with a spotting scope. "We've got two, maybe three pairs of eyes on us. One's packing a suppressed rifle. Too far for a clean shot through this rain."
Duval grabbed the drives, Neal wiped their local servers, and Hurley stuffed what gear remained into heavy duffels.
Juliet's tone was clipped, urgent. "We can't just run from him we need to figure out how he's finding us."
Michael's mind was already running patterns. "He's not just tracking us. He's anticipating us. That means one of two things: predictive modeling from our data or he's got a fresh leak."
Neal frowned. "Drosset's gone. Unless "
"Unless he wasn't the only one," Duval finished grimly.
They relocated to a NATO training site outside Bari, Italy a place with no paper trail and no easy approach routes. For forty-eight hours, there was peace.
Then Peter burst into the ops room with a printed briefing. "Lysander's network just triggered an Interpol manhunt for us. Anonymous tips, falsified evidence everything from bank fraud to arms trafficking. If this sticks, we're fugitives in every port."
Sophie crossed her arms. "He's not just dismantling our resources he's trying to make our allies turn on us."
Hurley muttered, "That's not a net that's a noose."
Michael leaned over the table. "Then we don't wait for him to pull it tight. We flip the rope."
They split into pairs. Neal and Sophie would seed disinformation into Lysander's financial routes making him chase fake assets. Hurley and Chloe would plant false comm traffic about an "emergency meeting" in Marseille. Duval, Swagger, Juliet, and Michael would use that distraction to intercept one of Lysander's real couriers in Montenegro, hoping to get a live source.
Swagger slid a suppressed pistol into his holster. "If this courier's even half as paranoid as his boss, this is gonna be messy."
Juliet smirked. "Good thing messy's our specialty."
By the end of the day, the bait was working. Chloe's systems lit up with traces of Lysander's network reacting rerouting funds, pulling assets.
In Montenegro, a black SUV carrying the courier rolled toward the border checkpoint. Michael's team hit it fast two cars boxing it in, Swagger dropping the driver with a tranq round, Duval yanking the courier into the backseat before anyone knew what happened.
Juliet cuffed him and leaned close. "Lysander says you're his most trusted messenger. So start talking before I prove him wrong."
The courier's smirk was thin, defiant. "You think you've turned the game around? You haven't even seen the board."