Location; High-Speed Subterranean Rail, Tibetan Border – En Route to Bhutan Safehouse
The compartment trembled under the force of the train slicing through the underground rail, shielded from satellites and radar. Damien sat in silence, his eyes half-closed, fingers pressed to his temples as a silent storm raged inside his mind.
The artifact—The Core of Continuum—was no longer an object.
It was him now.
Or more accurately, it was fused to his neural network, accessing every encrypted frequency Archer had seeded across the globe. Every pulse of energy, every coded message, every dormant operative—it whispered their secrets to Damien like ghosts spilling sins in the dark.
Nora sat across from him, her hand gently resting over his. "Damien, you've barely spoken. What do you see?"
He opened his eyes. They were no longer just blue—they shimmered with an unnatural luminescence. "Archer's reach… it's worse than we thought. He's established deep-net hubs in Lagos, Mumbai, Buenos Aires… even under Vatican City. He's using cultural sanctuaries as digital cloaks."
Cassandra raised a brow. "Religious strongholds? That's how he's masking transmissions. Brilliant. Diabolical."
Damien nodded. "And he's reactivating something. Something older than all of this. A protocol called Project Ascendant. I haven't cracked its full meaning yet, but it's buried in code that dates back to the Cold War. Russian black sites. South African labs. It's connected to human augmentation—military-grade manipulation of genetics."
Nora frowned. "Is that how he plans to replicate what you did with the artifact?"
"Exactly. But it's unstable," Damien said. "He's already lost test subjects in Caracas and New Delhi. If he pushes too far, it won't just break minds—it'll rip through entire populations."
Cassandra pulled up a map on her holopad. "I traced one of the communication forks to a decommissioned airfield in Mongolia. It was shut down after a supposed 'chemical mishap' in 1998. Satellite scans show recent heat signatures."
"Could be a mobile lab," Nora said. "Or worse—a prototype activation center."
Just then, Damien winced, gripping the seat's edge.
"Another surge?" Nora asked, rushing to his side.
He nodded. "It's not just Archer's commands. I'm tapping into his lieutenants now. His cousin—Ilona Archer—is running psychological warfare tests in Bangkok. His uncle, Peter Wexler, is laundering biofunds through pharmaceutical fronts in Kenya."
Cassandra's eyes widened. "Wexler's a blood relative? I thought he was just an ally."
Damien shook his head. "They're a family of shadows. Archer's network is built on blood loyalty."
A silence hung between them.
Then Nora spoke, voice low. "We need our family too."
Damien met her eyes, nodding.
It was time to awaken their own legacy.
His cousin, Selene Blackwood—a rogue bioethics genius—had vanished from Tavara's records years ago. Rumor had it she'd turned her back on corporate labs after exposing unethical human trials. If anyone could counter Archer's mutation protocol, it was Selene.
And Nora's uncle, Dr. Emory Vale—a reclusive AI theorist once hunted for predicting military-political collapses—was last seen in Northern Norway. His knowledge of predictive modeling could give them a path forward… or warn them how close they were to global destabilization.
Cassandra closed her screen. "So what now?"
Damien's voice was steady. "We split."
"What?" Nora asked, alarmed.
"There are two fronts. One in Mongolia. The other in Norway. Archer's spreading his roots faster than we can chase him. I'll take Cassandra to Mongolia. Nora… you find Emory Vale."
Nora hesitated. "We just reconnected. And now—"
Damien leaned forward, touching her cheek gently. "Every second counts. We can't protect the world if we're always standing still. But I'll come back to you. I swear it."
Their kiss was fleeting—filled with fire, and fear.
The train slowed as it approached the Bhutanese border. Time to move.
As they disembarked into the icy dawn, Damien caught a final vision from the artifact—a pulse in the Middle East, and a name:
"The Serpent's Gate."