Location; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – Archer's Desert Bio-Lab
Damien stared at Marcus—his cousin, once declared dead, now resurrected as a living weapon. The air between them was thick with tension, disbelief, and a gnawing sense of betrayal.
"You were barely twelve when the fire happened," Damien muttered. "My father searched for your body himself."
Marcus tilted his head. "He didn't find it, did he? That's because Archer's people found me first. Burned, broken… but still alive. They remade me. Sharper. Stronger."
"A pawn."
"A legacy."
Cassandra stepped between them, pistol drawn. "Where are the others? What are those cryo tanks?"
Marcus smiled, a bitter twist of his lips. "Insurance. The perfect Blackwood DNA strand, mixed with Archer's engineered obedience. But one didn't turn out quite right."
He tapped a panel, and one of the cryo chambers hissed open.
Inside was a young woman—no older than twenty—with platinum hair and violet eyes. She blinked against the light, confused, weak.
"Meet Aelira," Marcus said. "Your half-sister."
Damien stiffened. "That's not possible."
"Oh, but it is. Your father was involved in genetic trials—before you were born. Archer stole the research and accelerated it. Aelira is proof that perfection isn't born… it's designed."
Aelira stumbled forward, gaze locking with Damien's. "I know your face. You were in my dreams…"
"What dreams?" Damien asked carefully.
"I saw a war. I saw blood. But I also saw you… stopping it."
Cassandra stepped closer. "She's not like the others, Damien. Her pulse is stable. No neural overlays. She's clean."
Marcus scoffed. "She's defective. She questions. She remembers."
Aelira turned slowly toward Marcus. "You killed them. The others. The ones who asked too many questions."
A jolt of energy cracked between them as she raised her hand—light flickered across her palm, and a nearby console exploded.
Cassandra blinked. "She has abilities?"
Marcus snarled. "That wasn't planned."
Damien stepped beside Aelira. "Then maybe she's exactly what we need."
Back in Norway, Nora and Emory worked late into the frozen night. The countdown now showed just over six days.
"This algorithm," Emory said, pointing at the screen, "can inject a sub-layer into the AI's thought stream. If successful, it will confuse the trigger pattern and cause the system to stall."
"Stall isn't good enough," Nora said. "We need to destroy it."
Emory nodded. "That requires a hardware breach. And that hardware? It's on a deep-sea station off the coast of Ecuador. Protected by Archer's private fleet."
Nora exhaled slowly. "Then we go to Ecuador."
"But there's more," Emory warned. "Someone is feeding Archer intel from within the Blackwood circle. Every move Damien makes, Archer is already three steps ahead."
Nora's jaw clenched. "A traitor."
"Yes. And if you want to win this war… you'll need to find out who."