The rain had stopped by dawn, leaving Geneva wrapped in silver mist. Silas parked the motorcycle two blocks from the U.N. Intelligence Annex and watched as the morning shift began—analysts with coffee cups, security drones gliding overhead, diplomats arriving in tinted sedans.
He hadn't slept. His jacket was scorched, his ribs ached from the blast, and his mind was a storm of half-truths. Dr. Roarke's message, the man with the tattoo, the words Signal Ghost—none of it fit. Yet the directive she'd warned about was real. He could feel it breathing down his neck.
He adjusted his collar and walked toward the building, blending with the suits. The facial scanner above the door whirred softly as it processed him.
"Agent Silas Ward, Division Seven," he said, voice flat.
The scanner beeped green. He was still cleared for entry. For now.
Inside, the Annex was a cathedral of glass and quiet. Screens displayed live feeds from embassies, satellite networks, and encrypted backchannels. He passed a row of analysts, each wearing the same expression: focused, exhausted, unknowingly complicit.
"Ward," a voice called from behind.
He turned. Director Marlowe stood by the briefing room door—gray suit, steel-gray eyes, the kind of man who looked like he'd been carved out of protocol itself.
"Inside," Marlowe said. "Now."
Silas followed him in.
The room was dim, the blinds drawn. Two other agents sat at the table, both unfamiliar—internal affairs, judging by their dark lapel pins. A holo-screen flickered to life, displaying stills from the train yard explosion.
"Care to explain this?" Marlowe asked.
Silas said nothing.
The female investigator leaned forward. "You were off the grid for sixteen hours. During that time, there was a breach in Division Seven's encrypted vault. Classified files—Project Oracle, the Geneva Protocol—were accessed and copied. The access key used? Yours."
Silas met her gaze, steady. "I was tracking a fugitive—Dr. Evelyn Roarke. She triggered the breach remotely. I was trying to contain it."
Marlowe's voice was calm, but his jaw tightened. "You expect us to believe she hacked through six layers of agency encryption from a dead account? Roarke's been presumed dead for three years."
Silas clenched his fists beneath the table. "Then who sent the message? Who sent me coordinates with her signature code?"
Silence.
Then the male investigator spoke, tone clinical. "We ran your vehicle trace. The same night, two operatives were killed outside the city. You were there."
"I didn't kill them," Silas said.
"But you were there," the man pressed.
Marlowe exhaled slowly. "Until we sort this out, you're suspended from field operations. Hand over your credentials."
Silas's pulse quickened. "You think I'm part of this."
"I think," Marlowe said evenly, "you've been compromised."
A cold wave of realization hit him. Roarke's warning hadn't been paranoia. They were inside the agency.
Silas placed his badge on the table and turned to leave.
"Agent Ward," Marlowe said softly, "don't make this worse."
He didn't answer. He walked out, past the guards, past the glass walls that suddenly felt like a cage. The moment the elevator doors closed, he pulled a slim black keycard from his sleeve—the one Marlowe didn't know about. Roarke's data drive was still in his pocket.
He wasn't done yet.
---
The city was waking as he crossed the Rhône Bridge. He slipped into a café near the waterfront, ordered black coffee, and opened his secure tablet.
He uploaded Roarke's drive into a sandbox environment. Lines of code appeared, encrypted and recursive, like a living organism rewriting itself.
A voice message decrypted midstream. It was Roarke again.
> "If you're reading this, they've found you. Don't trust anyone from Division Seven. The Geneva Protocol wasn't just predictive AI—it was designed to rewrite public data, alter digital truth. The Directive wants control over perception itself. Once the Signal Ghost activates, no one will know what's real anymore."
Silas froze.
Control over truth. Not just surveillance—total narrative control. History, news, even memories stored in the cloud. The perfect weapon in a world addicted to information.
He looked up and caught his reflection in the café window. Behind him, a man in a dark coat was pretending to read the paper. His reflection didn't move with his gestures.
Silas stood slowly, palming his comm chip. "I know you're watching," he said quietly.
The man folded the paper. "Then stop running."
He reached inside his coat.
Silas didn't wait. He smashed the window beside him, dove through the frame, and hit the street running. A suppressed shot cracked behind him, glass raining like shards of light.
He sprinted through the morning traffic, horn blasts echoing. The man followed—precise, trained.
Silas cut into an alley, vaulted a dumpster, rolled, came up firing. The man ducked behind a van, returned fire, missed by inches.
Pedestrians screamed and scattered.
Silas reached the end of the alley and kicked through a service door into a maintenance corridor. The hum of power lines filled the air. His pursuer followed, closing fast.
He stopped by a junction box, ripped open the panel, and yanked two high-voltage cables free. Sparks arced wildly.
The man turned the corner—and Silas slammed the cables together, flooding the corridor with blinding light.
The shock wave threw both of them back. Silas hit the wall hard, ears ringing. The other man didn't move.
Smoke drifted through the hallway.
Silas staggered to his feet, breathing hard. He searched the body—no ID, no tag, but there it was again: three black lines tattooed on the wrist.
He took a photo, pocketed the man's encrypted phone, and slipped out before security arrived.
---
Two hours later, Silas sat in a safehouse across the border in France, the kind used for deep-cover dropouts. The walls were bare concrete, the air cold and dry.
He connected the stolen phone to his terminal. It took forty minutes to bypass the encryption—Roarke's drive helped.
What he found wasn't a contact list. It was a live feed.
A map of Europe glowed red and blue, pulsing with signal trails. At the center: Geneva.
A cluster of nodes labeled SIG-GHOST//ACTIVE.
And below it—his name. WARD.SILAS – Priority Target.
His breath caught. The Directive had tagged him. The machine was already rewriting the logs, framing him for the breach. By dawn, every agency on the continent would see him as a traitor.
He sat back, numb. Then his terminal beeped. An incoming connection—no source. Just text:
> "Silas. If you want the truth, meet me in Venice. Midnight. Look for the glass mask." – E.R.
Roarke was alive.
He stared at the message, the city lights flickering outside like ghosts on water.
For a moment, he considered going dark—disappearing for good. But then he remembered his parents' faces, the files marked Geneva Protocol, and the world that would soon believe every lie it was told.
He packed his weapons, zipped the case, and checked the drive one last time. The Signal Ghost pulsed faintly on the screen, like a heartbeat waiting to be silenced.
He whispered to the empty room,
> "Alright, Roarke. Venice it is."
And then he was gone, into the mist.