Location: Langley, Virginia
Miranda stepped into the silence of her home. The rain had followed her, tapping lightly on the windows. She locked the door behind her, dropped her bag, and exhaled.
Habit guided her—coat hung, boots off, a drink to take the edge off.
The kitchen light flicked on with a hum. Yellow fluorescence bathed the room.
She moved straight to the cabinet above the sink. Glass. Bourbon. She reached—
—then stopped.
Her eyes narrowed.
The chair in the far-left corner. That wasn't right. She always kept it to the right—angled to face the window. It was subtle. But not a mistake she would ever make.
She lowered the glass slowly.
Then touched the stove. Still warm.
No doubt.
They were already here.
She took a step toward the misplaced chair.
Steel bit flesh.
A sharp sting tore into her lower back—a blade, precise and cruel. But Miranda twisted just in time, making it a graze rather than a fatal strike. She drove her elbow back into the attacker's ribs, causing him to grunt and stagger.
One.
She spun. The man lunged again. She sidestepped, grabbed the kitchen towel, and wrapped it around his wrist, twisting the knife out of his hand with trained motion. Before he could recover, she slammed his head into the countertop. Bone cracked.
He dropped.
Another silhouette surged from the hallway—two.
She ducked under his wild punch, slid across the tile on her knee, grabbed a broken table leg from under the counter, and rammed it into his shin. He howled, went down on one knee.
She kneed him in the face. Blood sprayed across the fridge.
Then came three.
Bigger. Smarter.
This one didn't charge. He circled. Calm. Tactical.
Miranda's breathing was heavy, blood dripping from her side.
"You don't walk out of this house," he said coldly.
She raised her fists. "Neither do you."
He struck fast—jab, hook, elbow. She blocked one, dodged two, took the third to the shoulder. Pain bloomed, but she held firm. She slammed her foot into the side of his knee—partial collapse. Enough.
He came again, knife in hand.
This time, she grabbed his wrist mid-swing, twisted, and snapped it against the sink edge. The knife fell.
She headbutted him. He fell, dazed.
She grabbed the knife and drove it deep into his side. Once. Twice. Done.
Three bodies.
Blood on the floor.
Miranda collapsed against the counter, breath sharp. She clutched her wound, eyes darting to the hallway.
No more movement.
Location: Switzerland
B-TR 9485 cut through the Alpine mist, its headlights piercing the narrow road ahead. The border was behind them. The weight of silence heavier than the cargo it carried.
Jack sat behind the wheel. His hand still throbbed from the stab wound—wrapped tightly in torn cloth—but his eyes stayed forward. Always forward.
Beside him, barely twenty, sat a recruit—thin, pale, with eyes too old for his age. He held a small military duffel tight to his chest, as if it contained what little innocence he had left.
Jack broke the silence.
"What's your name?"
The kid turned slightly. Cautious. Then, "Viktor, sir. Viktor Sokolov. Yours?"
Jack kept his eyes on the road. "Mayors... Jack Mayors."
Viktor blinked. Almost startled. Then quietly muttered, "You're the wanted man... the red notice... 57 murders."
Jack didn't flinch. His knuckles stayed tight on the wheel.
"Yeah. That's what they say."
Viktor was quiet. He looked down at his hands.
"Is it true?"
Jack took a breath. Rain hit the windshield softly now—just like the doubt in Viktor's voice.
He spoke, not to defend himself, but to tell the truth.
"I've killed men, yes. But not for pleasure. And not the ones they claim I did."
A pause. Then Jack looked at him, just briefly.
"But I've also saved people. People no one talks about. The world doesn't care about those stories. Only blood makes headlines."
Viktor stared ahead again. "…I didn't want this life, you know. They took me when I was fifteen. Broke me down. Built me into this."
Jack nodded slowly.
"Yeah. That's what they do. Make you think there's no way out. That you're born to be a ghost in someone else's war."
The truck kept moving. The summit was just hours away. But in that cabin, a quiet battle was being won—one mind at a time.
"Viktor...you ever think of doing something different?"
Viktor looked at him. "Like what?"
"Like living a life...no one deserves this. I'm here because I've no choice."
That time...the recruit didn't look like a recruit. But a boy, who thought of his future.
Location: The Palais des Nations, Geneva
The Palais des Nations stood tall like a relic of peace in a world gasping for order. On the outside, its walls were wrapped in a sheen of quiet elegance. But inside, history was being sharpened like a blade.
The International Security and Human Rights Summit had begun.
World leaders filled the grand hall, the scent of polished wood and stale diplomacy heavy in the air. Flags from over thirty nations lined the perimeter, a tapestry of color masking the cold war of words about to unfold. Beneath a ceiling of faded murals—depictions of peace long since blurred—presidents, ministers, and covert heads of intelligence took their seats.
Jack Mayors wasn't here yet. But his shadow would soon reach the room.
High above, mounted cameras blinked red. Journalists were boxed into a glass viewing deck—silenced spectators. Below, delegates exchanged smiles tight enough to snap. Suits brushed past each other, shoulders stiff, hands lingering just a second too long in handshakes that meant nothing.
The Swiss moderator stepped up to the center podium, his voice crisp and rehearsed, amplified to the walls and to history.
"Welcome to the Geneva Summit. Today, we gather not just as sovereign nations, but as watchmen of humanity. Let this summit mark the end of surveillance without conscience… and power without restraint."
A ripple of murmurs passed through the crowd. Not everyone here agreed. Some weren't here for peace at all.
Across the hall, the U.S. Secretary of Defense leaned toward the German envoy.
"They're gonna open the Pandora files," he whispered. "You know that, right?"
"If they do," the German replied coldly, "your agencies won't be the only ones bleeding."
Red folders passed between gloved hands. UN-marked, sealed, classified. The kind of documents that changed borders without a single bullet fired. Some spoke of declassifying old joint-ops. Others hinted at the exposure of a silent war in cyberspace. Whispers about rogue networks. About sleeper cells embedded deep inside governments. About something called The Echelon Syndicate.
The moderator continued, but no one truly listened. Eyes were scanning the room. Calculating exits. Measuring who'd survive if the truth came out.
Far above, in the media deck, a reporter went live:
"Day one of the summit begins with tension already crackling through the chamber. Sources confirm the agenda will explore cyber control policy, surveillance reform, and a controversial move to declassify decades of secret alliances. But the real fear—"
She looked toward the chamber floor.
"—is what they won't say on the record."
"Where's Langley on this?""China's refusing to sign the reform unless Section 7 is redacted…""We shouldn't be declassifying this. It'll tear our alliances apart…""They're bluffing," the French foreign intelligence chief said coldly, adjusting his sleeve. "If Section 7 comes out, half of us will be branded criminals in our own countries. Ghost operations. Proxy wars. Shadow surveillance. This isn't just policy—it's legacy."
"The people deserve to know," came a quiet voice from the Canadian delegation.
The silence that followed was louder than the debate.
At the head of the table, the UN Security Liaison leaned forward, fingers interlocked, brows pressed together. "If we keep secrets, we feed conspiracy. If we expose them… we risk war."
On the far end of the conference table, the UK's cyber defense minister activated an encrypted brief. A red warning flashed across his tablet. "We're being scanned. Someone's trying to ghost the summit's firewall."
Eyes snapped to attention. A few aides stepped away from their officials, whispering into comms.
Then came the voice—low, measured—from the Israeli delegate.
"If there's one thing you all need to understand… it's that we're not in control anymore."
"Meaning?" the German foreign secretary asked stiffly.
The Israeli laid a black dossier on the table. Sealed. Stamped. A single name typed across the top: Cyrus Black.
"He's already watching."
Gasps. A few flinched. Some didn't know the name. Others knew only the name.
"I thought he was dead.""I thought he was a myth…""No one stays dead if the world needs them alive," the Israeli replied.
"And Cyrus…? Right now, he's the only man who can keep every one of you breathing by the end of this week."
Silence fell across the war room like a steel curtain.
"He controls backdoors into global networks, digital kill codes, entire fleets of surveillance satellites, and twenty years of buried intelligence. You try to go ahead with these reforms—especially declassifying alliances—and you're not just triggering chaos… you're inviting him to burn us all."
A beat. Then another.
The UN Liaison finally spoke, but his voice was quieter now.
"Then what do you suggest?"
The Israeli sighed, glancing around the table. "Hope he wants to be found."
Outside, camera shutters clicked. News anchors stood under floodlights, narrating the summit with polite optimism. Behind the walls, the world's most powerful men and women realized the summit wasn't a meeting anymore.
B-TR 9485. The truck approached the destination...almost 7 kilometers away from the summit. It was a small shed. Viktor opened the container.
The recruits came down.
"I guess this is where we bid farewell," said Jack. They stood as a group in front of him.
"I'm sorry about your hand, buddy...it's been a few long days for me," Jack said, looking at the recruit whom he had shot earlier on at the hand.
"Go...free yourselves. Live a life...not as slaves. Enjoy it, every moment of it, cause any day we can leave this world." He said, seeing Serah right in front of him, smiling.
"Just look out for the people you love," ended Jack.
They went...Viktor waited. After some time, he left.
He got a call. From Six.
Six said, "It's about to begin in 5 minutes...Am inside...killed a bastard who identified me. Cyrus is here. Don't know where...not in the summit. He's somewhere outside...I'll send you the footages."
The line went dead.
The footages were provided in bear real time. The summit's internal feed.
Leaders talking, drinking. Security checkpoints, drone echoes, even the thermal overlays.
The summit was about to start.
As he was watching the camera glitched and then it was fine.
As he was just going through the footages to fund Cyrus or even anything unusual , it glitched again. In sometime, it glitched again. Every 12 seconds it glitched.
A mistake...no...it wasn't.
The glitch always came after a flash of light — like a reflection off glass.
He rewound. Frame by frame.
There — just before the feed cut:
A shimmer. A shadow.
No ID. No signature. But definitely there.
He connected with Six once again and asked, "Six, what's the exact geolocation of cam 4B?" Jack whispered.
Six responded "Outside perimeter, 7.2 clicks west. That camera isn't ours. It's linked to an offshore utility grid."
"Hmm...I'll see if there's anything...I'll tag you, my location."
Jack's pulse slowed.
He toggled between feeds. Checked the time stamps. Cross-referenced satellite scans (Six had patched in a recon hack for low-orbit drones). And the pattern was clear.
Each time that glitch occurred — three minutes later, a drone camera feed would blink on the opposite side of the city.
Then a blind spot in traffic control. Then a thermal dropout.
Only someone with deep-rooted access could orchestrate this much coordinated disappearance.
And it always centered on one location.
A dead zone — 7 kilometers out, buried near the edge of a coastal military buffer, long thought to be decommissioned.
Jack marked it.
It was not inside the summit.
It was watching it.
A perfect vantage point. Far enough to remain unseen. Close enough to strike — and vanish.
Cyrus wasn't in the storm. He was the eye.
Jack eyes cold. "He's setting the table before he flips it over."
He looked up at the storm clouds gathering over Geneva. In the distance, the skyline shimmered, glass and steel stacked like a fortress. Cameras. Drones. Eyes. All waiting.
He rolled his shoulder — pain lanced through him.
Seven kilometers.
One man.
One last shot.