We drove for ten minutes, leaving the city center behind. The adrenaline finally began to fade, replaced by the heavy ache of our new reality.
Nyx's phone, now fully connected, suddenly started to ping. Again. And again. A wave of delayed, encrypted notifications came through.
"What is it?" I asked, my voice raw.
Nyx pulled the car over to the side of a bridge. The river roiled below, a gray, churning ribbon. Her face was pale as she stared at her screen.
"They're... they're old messages," she whispered, her hands shaking. "From my secure network. From the past two hours. They were stuck in a buffer, waiting for me to get out of the jammer."
She looked up at me, her eyes wide with a new, impossible hope.
"They're from Elias," she said. "He's alive. He wasn't in the penthouse. Dante sent him to the Zurich estate with Marchand as a precaution. He's safe. He has our money. He has our passports. He's been waiting for our call."
It was a victory. A small but vital piece on the chessboard was still ours.
"And..." Nyx's voice cracked, her calm demeanor breaking. "And this one. The last one. It came in two minutes ago."
She turned the phone toward me. It wasn't from Elias. Instead, it was a single, corrupted audio file from a "ghost" sender, routed through several countries.
My finger, slick with rain and trembling, pressed the play icon.
Static. A hiss. The sound of a man struggling for breath. Then, a single, broken, agonizingly familiar word, so low it was almost a groan, before the file cut out.
"...Isabella..."
It was his voice. It was Dante. He was alive.