Geneva rain came down harder now, slicking the cobblestones and turning the alley lights into fractured halos. Silas moved fast, jacket collar up, eyes scanning every reflection in the puddles. The city was awake now—horns, trams, chatter—but beneath it all, he heard something else: the sound of pursuit.
Two of the men from the firefight had survived. He'd seen them break formation, vanish into the smoke. If Roarke had planned her escape, she'd left bait—and Silas had taken it.
He turned a corner and ducked into a passageway, pressing his back against cold concrete as a van roared past. Through the rain-streaked glass, he glimpsed the barrel of a weapon. Russian design. Definitely not police.
He waited until the sound faded, then stepped out, heading toward the train yard. His pulse was steady. His brain was not. Every second replayed the chaos from the warehouse—Roarke's voice, the name "Shadow Directive," the encrypted transfer she triggered. His parents had died for that data. Now she'd risked her life for it too.
He had to know why.
The train yard was a skeleton of metal and mist. Freight cars groaned as they shifted on the rails, and the air smelled of oil and rust. He climbed aboard the last car of a departing freight, crouching between containers.
The sound of rain faded as the train gathered speed. Inside, a single crate had been pried open. A laptop sat on it, still humming.
Silas approached carefully, weapon ready.
The screen flickered to life—lines of green code scrolling upward, fast and looping. Then a video window opened.
Dr. Roarke's face appeared, recorded in dim light.
> "Silas... if you're seeing this, I'm out of time. The Directive has agents everywhere—even inside your agency. What your parents discovered wasn't a scandal. It was a weapon."
Static cut across the image, but her voice came through.
> "They called it The Geneva Protocol. A machine-learning program built to predict—and eliminate—threats before they happen. It went rogue. The Shadow Directive controls it now. You have to find the source node. They'll call it 'Signal Ghost.' Follow it, and you'll find me."
The feed cut to black. Then a sharp click echoed behind him.
Silas dove sideways as a suppressed shot tore through the crate where his head had been.
He rolled, came up firing—one shot, two. Sparks flew from the steel. The attacker dropped low, moving like a ghost through the flickering light.
"Always too fast for your own good," a voice rasped in accented English.
Silas fired again, grazing the man's shoulder. He saw the glint of a tattoo on his wrist—three black lines, the same mark on the men from the warehouse.
"Who sent you?" Silas demanded, advancing.
The man laughed quietly. "You already know."
The fight exploded in a blur. The man lunged; Silas parried, caught the forearm, and drove his elbow into the ribcage. The attacker didn't grunt, didn't slow—he moved like a machine. A knee to the gut, a twist, and Silas felt the cold edge of a knife graze his arm.
Pain flared, but he ignored it. Memory turned into movement. He'd trained for this a thousand times—but the man fought like someone who knew him.
He caught the blade mid-swing, slammed his forearm into the attacker's jaw, and used the momentum to pin him against the container wall. The knife clattered to the floor.
"Talk!" Silas shouted.
The man's eyes gleamed from beneath his hood. "You think this is about your parents? It's bigger than them. Bigger than you. They tried to rewrite the world's future. The Directive will finish what they started."
Silas pressed harder, fury rising. "Where's Roarke?"
The man just smiled. "You'll see her soon enough."
Then his hand twitched. A faint beep came from his pocket.
Silas dropped back instinctively—seconds before the small charge detonated, blowing a hole in the side of the carriage. The blast threw him backward, slamming him into the far wall. The world blurred into heat, light, and ringing silence.
He stumbled up, coughing, ears ringing. The man was gone—thrown out or escaped, he couldn't tell. Flames licked at the edge of the crate.
He staggered toward the hole, wind roaring through it. Below, the countryside whipped by—trees, gravel, and river.
Then headlights. A black SUV was pacing the train on a service road. The passenger window rolled down. A rifle barrel appeared.
"Great," Silas muttered.
He grabbed the metal ladder and swung out just as bullets tore through the carriage behind him. The wind howled past. He jumped—hitting the gravel hard, rolling until the world stopped spinning.
The SUV braked hard ahead of him. Doors opened. Two men stepped out, weapons ready.
Silas dove behind a barrier, adrenaline surging. His pistol was half-empty, one clip left.
He waited. Listened. The sound of boots on wet ground. The hiss of rain. He calculated distances automatically—five meters, maybe less.
He rose, fired two shots. One target down. The second ducked behind the SUV, returning fire. Glass shattered around him.
Then a low hum cut through the air—a drone, sleek and silent, hovering above the road. A red targeting beam swept across the ground toward him.
Silas didn't think. He ran.
The drone's missile hit the SUV as he dove over the roadside ditch. The explosion ripped through the quiet morning, heat searing his back. He hit the mud hard, rolled, and lay still until the flames dimmed.
When he finally stood, he was alone. The drone was gone. So were the men.
But the road was no longer empty. A black motorcycle stood a few meters away, engine idling, helmet on the seat. A note taped to the handlebar read:
> "If you want to live, follow the signal."
No signature.
Silas scanned the horizon. No watchers, no cameras. Just gray sky and rising smoke.
He slipped on the helmet, revved the engine, and rode.
As he sped along the rain-slick highway, the data drive in his pocket vibrated once—a pulse of code, the same pattern from Roarke's video. It was broadcasting something. A hidden frequency.
The words echoed in his mind like a ghost through static:
> Follow the signal.
He twisted the throttle harder, vanishing into the storm.