Snow blanketed the Syndicate's outpost like a funeral shroud. From the outside, it looked like an abandoned biotech facility. Inside, it was a fortress wrapped in shadow, firepower, and secrets that could collapse empires.
Nora crouched behind a rusted ventilation unit, clutching a tablet wired into the facility's security system. A few feet behind her, Dax adjusted the frequency jammer, sweat beading under his thick parka.
"You sure you wanna do this?" he asked, not looking up.
"I'm already in it, Dax. All the way in." Nora's voice was steady, but her pulse was electric. "We pull Adrian out tonight. Or not at all."
He nodded. "Then it's go time."
Inside the Syndicate's inner sanctum, Adrian sat chained to a surgical chair. His shirt had been torn open; electrodes clung to his chest like metal leeches. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, washing the room in a sickly green.
Across from him stood Kyra Vale—Marcus's cousin, and the Syndicate's newest lead interrogator.
She was elegance wrapped in venom. Red stilettos. Silk gloves. A grin like she enjoyed peeling back secrets one nerve at a time.
"Let's play a game," she purred. "You lie, you bleed. You tell the truth, you bleed slower."
Adrian smirked, blood already trickling from a split lip. "Kinky. You always bring your trauma to work?"
She slapped him, hard. "Where is the real Ghost File?"
"Would you believe I swallowed it?"
Another slap.
He grunted but kept his eyes on hers.
"I'm the only one who can decrypt it," he said. "Hurt me too much, you lose your leverage."
Kyra leaned in close, running a nail along his jaw. "You think you're in control. But I know your type. Broken prince playing hero. People like you always crack."
"Then you'll have fun trying."
Meanwhile, Nora and Dax moved like phantoms through the facility's lower levels. The security feeds now looped, thanks to her hacking skills—and a custom script she'd rewritten in Adrian's encrypted language, which she'd memorized late into sleepless nights.
"He's on Sub-Level 3," she whispered. "But there's a complication."
"What kind?"
"There's a server vault. Marked Tier Z. That's where they've mirrored his neural scans. If they get enough of him, they won't need him."
Dax grimaced. "So we need to wipe the vault, extract the man, and not die doing it. Piece of cake."
They split up. Nora took the server route; Dax headed toward extraction with a tranquilizer rifle and zero patience.
The Tier Z Vault was a steel tomb lined with biometric readers. Nora pulled out a stolen Syndicate hand chip, jammed it into the panel, and prayed.
The lock hissed.
Inside, racks of AI-processing drives pulsed with digital light. The Ghost File wasn't just a list—it was an evolving map of every double agent, dirty asset, and high-value traitor connected to global crime webs.
And it had Adrian's thoughts encoded into it.
She stared at the data stream.
Then her stomach turned.
There—highlighted in flashing red—was a name.
Nora Vexley.
She froze.
The file marked her as an anomaly. A potential mole. A wildcard. With a kill order… pending review.
Her blood ran cold. Had Adrian flagged her? Had someone else slipped her in as a fail-safe?
A hiss behind her made her spin.
Kyra Vale stood at the doorway, holding a shock pistol and smiling like she'd just caught her favorite pet peeing on her designer rug.
"Oh darling," Kyra cooed. "You really should've stayed in the nursery."
Nora dove, grabbing a carbon rod from the server base. Kyra fired, barely missing her shoulder.
The two collided like dancers in a death spiral—fists, knees, and fury.
Nora caught a lucky hit and sent Kyra tumbling into a rack of drives. Sparks flew.
The data began corrupting.
Good.
She didn't stop to admire the chaos. She planted a timed virus bomb in the port and ran.
Meanwhile, Dax reached Adrian and sedated the two guards with a precision that would've made John Wick blush.
"You look like shit," Dax said, cutting Adrian's restraints.
"I've had worse mornings," Adrian rasped. "Did she come?"
"Nora's frying your brain copy in the vault."
Adrian froze. "Wait, what?"
Dax gave him a look. "You didn't tell her?"
"There wasn't time."
"Oh, there's time now. If we live."
They raced toward the rendezvous point. Nora joined them mid-run, breathless, blood on her sleeve.
"I saw my name," she said, not even pretending to be okay.
Adrian skidded to a halt. "Nora—"
"You flagged me as a threat."
"No," he said quickly. "The file was corrupted. There were decoys… I had to plant names they wouldn't question."
"So you made me a decoy."
"To protect you."
"By putting a hit on me?!"
A nearby explosion cut the conversation short.
The virus bomb triggered a surge that blacked out half the facility.
Red alarms screamed. Emergency lights flickered.
"Later," Dax growled. "Let's live first."
They reached the escape lift, only to find it disabled. Backup generators powered a single route: the old waste chute.
Adrian looked at Nora. "It's tight. Slippery. Dangerous."
She quirked a brow. "Sounds like my last relationship."
He smirked despite the pain. "Still want in?"
"I'm not leaving you. Even if I want to strangle you later."
Together, they slid into the chute, tumbling into darkness. A splash of icy water and chemical stench met them at the bottom.
But they were out.
Alive.
Bruised, bloody, and not okay.
Later that night, back in their hideout bunker, Nora patched Adrian's arm in silence.
He winced. "Want to yell now?"
"Not yet."
"Then I'll talk."
She glanced up.
"I never wanted you in the file," he said. "But if they knew I trusted you, they'd have gone after you harder. So I hid you behind misdirection."
Nora looked away. "Still hurts."
"I know."
He reached out, fingers brushing her jaw. "You think I'd survive without you?"
"You were doing fine before I showed up."
"Lie," he said. "I was surviving. That's not the same as living."
Her throat tightened.
"You make me want more, Nora. Not power. Not revenge. Just more… time."
She leaned into his touch. "Then let's make time."
Their kiss was slower this time. Not desperate. But deep.
Like coming home after a war.
Their clothes fell away, soft rustles against concrete and shadows. Scars met scars. Warmth battled the cold.
He held her like she was a promise.
And for the first time in months, Nora allowed herself to believe they might actually make it.
Even if the world burned around them.