The surf crashed onto the black volcanic sand, each wave a hiss of cold, grey water. Huddled behind a jagged outcrop of basalt that glistened like wet obsidian, Isabelle Moreau worked with cold, efficient movements. The rain was a steady, miserable drizzle that soaked through the shoulders of her tactical gear. She unfolded the satellite uplink, a flat, dark grey device no bigger than a book, and angled its small dish toward the bruised sky. The Kestrel VTOL, their high-speed transport, lay half-submerged in the surf fifty meters away, a broken-winged bird of composite and steel.
Sineus was nearby, methodically field-stripping his rifle, cleaning the salt and grit from its action with an almost meditative focus. Nadia Petrova, the young archaeologist, was checking their meager supply of medical kits, her face pale but her hands steady. They were a team of three, stranded on an island that should not exist, with the world’s navies waiting in the water. Moreau ignored the cold seeping into her bones. The cold was a constant. The mission was the variable. She powered on the comms unit, its screen glowing a soft, familiar green against the gloom.
A secure, encrypted connection took twelve seconds to establish. The link was a ghost, a whisper of data bouncing off a chain of satellites, invisible to the fleets ringing their position. A voice, crisp and familiar, came through the small speaker, devoid of static. It was Anya Sharma, her handler, the director of a South Asian intelligence agency’s historical assets division.
— Report, — Anya’s voice was as calm as if Moreau were checking in from a cafe in Vienna.
— Kestrel is down. We are on the island. Axiom, Russian, and Chinese fleets have established a blockade. Hostile contact confirmed and engaged. We require immediate support, — Moreau’s report was clipped, professional. A statement of facts. She was an operative requesting assets, a standard protocol.
There was a pause, just long enough for Moreau to register the sound of the wind whistling over the basalt. The silence was the first sign that protocol was dead.
— The political situation has collapsed, Isabelle, — Anya said, her tone hardening slightly. — An emergency global council to declare Thule Ultima neutral territory has fractured. Axiom’s proxies blocked the vote.
Moreau’s jaw tightened. She looked out at the grey sea, at the distant, menacing shapes of the warships. They were not just rivals anymore; they were the new law.
— My agency cannot act, — Anya continued, and the words were like chips of ice. — Officially, you were never here. The Kestrel’s flight plan was erased an hour ago. You are disavowed, Isabelle.
The words hit with the force of a physical blow. Disavowed. It was a clean, surgical cut. Her career, her support structure, her very identity as an agent of her government—all of it, erased. She was a ghost. A non-person on a phantom island. She felt a cold that had nothing to do with the rain.
She stared at the comms unit, the source of the sentence that had just unmade her life. Her first instinct, the one drilled into her by years of training, was to cut the link, to vanish. But Anya was still talking.
— That was the official statement, — Anya’s voice softened, losing its hard, directorial edge. It was the voice of the woman who had recruited her, the mentor, not the director. — Now, this is me talking. Not the agency. Balance must be maintained, Isabelle. Magnusson cannot have this.
A new data packet, small and tightly encrypted, streamed into her device. It was a rogue transfer, an act of treason on Anya’s part. Moreau’s fingers hovered over the screen. She accepted.
A map appeared on the screen, a tactical overlay of a section of the island two kilometers to their north. A single heat signature was marked. Telemetry data scrolled beside it. Russian Spetsnaz. A small reconnaissance team.
— They hate Axiom more than they hate you, — Anya said, her voice a low murmur. — They were part of a joint operation in the Barents Sea that Axiom sabotaged. They have a score to settle. Perhaps you can find common cause.
It was a lifeline, but a venomous one. An alliance with an enemy force, based on a sliver of leaked intelligence from a handler who had just disavowed her. It was insane. It was all she had.
— Understood, — Moreau said, her voice flat and empty. She cut the link.
She held the comms unit in her hand for a long moment. The 1.5-kilogram device, once her connection to a global power structure, now felt like nothing more than a dead weight. The belief that had anchored her entire life—that order could be imposed, that control was the ultimate answer to chaos—had shattered.
She looked over at Sineus. He had finished with his weapon and was now examining a small, brass gimbaled compass he had produced from a pouch. Its needle was spinning uselessly, a perfect reflection of the island’s chaotic physics. He wasn’t looking at it for direction. He was studying it, diagnosing the nature of the failure. He was not looking for orders from a broken system. He was reading the world as it was. In that moment, he was the only fixed point in her fractured world. He was her new true north.
Moreau stood, her movements once again crisp and decisive. She walked over to where Sineus and Nadia were taking shelter.
— We have a new objective, — she announced, her voice cutting through the sound of the wind and the sea.
— We’re going to find the Russians.
