The car that took me and Petrova from the shadow of the Berlin wall was as gray and anonymous as our new identities. It moved south through the night, a ghost on the autobahn, leaving the city of fugitives behind. I had traded the frantic chase for a cold, humming dread. In Vienna, the dealer Anja Petrova knew of was my only path forward, a desperate gambit played on a board where all the other pieces were hostile. The address was for an antique shop in the Josefstadt district, a place where the past was sold by the kilogram.
The shop’s bell chimed a thin, brittle note as I pushed the door open, Petrova following me inside. The air was thick with the smell of dust, old paper, and the sweet decay of forgotten things. Furniture stood in shrouded herds. Clocks with stopped hands lined the walls, their silence louder than any ticking. A man sat behind a heavy oak counter, his face lost in the green-shaded glow of a banker’s lamp. He didn’t look up.
— We are closed, — the man said, his voice a dry rustle of leaves.
— We were told Zoltan Haas could help us find something that is lost, — Sineus said. The words were a key, provided by Petrova.
The man looked up. His eyes were pale, magnified by thick spectacles into twin pools of watery light. He was not Haas. He was a gatekeeper. He studied us for a long moment, his gaze lingering on the heavy case Petrova carried, then gave a slow, deliberate nod toward a beaded curtain at the back of the shop. The price of entry was the correct password and the visible weight of our desperation.
Sineus pushed through the curtain. The back room was a dragon’s hoard of chaos. Stacks of books and ledgers leaned at precarious angles. Uncrated artifacts, strange geometries of metal and crystal, lay on velvet cloths next to dismantled radios. In the center of the room, a man stood with his back to them, polishing a tarnished silver astrolabe. He was short, stout, and wore a wine-colored smoking jacket that had seen better decades.
— You are late, — he said without turning. This was Zoltan Haas. — The city’s memory is thin tonight. I could barely hear you coming.
— We were delayed, — Sineus said, setting his own bag down. Petrova placed the Aegis Conduit case beside it, the sound a dull thud in the cluttered silence.
Haas finally turned. His face was round and cherubic, a jarring contrast to the shrewd, calculating light in his dark eyes. He smiled, but it didn't reach them. — Ah, the famous Sineus. And the brilliant Dr. Petrova. A rogue from the West and a ghost from the East. My shop hasn't seen such a desperate pairing since the war. What is it you think I can find for you?
— The Echo Protocol, — Petrova said, her voice sharp and precise. She would not play his games. — We know it’s active. We need its location.
Haas chuckled, a low, rumbling sound. He set the astrolabe down and picked up a small, inert radio, its tubes cold and dark. He held it to his ear for a moment, as if listening to something only he could hear. A faint crackle of static, thin as a spider’s thread, leaked from the dead speaker. — Active? My dear doctor, it is not active. It is singing. A terrible, world-ending aria. And I can hear it.
He closed his eyes. — It is east. Far east. In the cold. A place where the maps have gone blank. The Ural mountains. The signature is a scream that has no throat, a constant, high-frequency torment that is scraping the inside of reality.
The Urals. The information was a solid weight in the room, a destination. It was the first piece of solid ground they had stood on since Berlin. Sineus felt a fraction of the tension in his shoulders ease. This was the first step.
— We need to destroy it, — Sineus stated.
Haas’s eyes snapped open, his good humor vanishing like a snuffed candle. He looked at Sineus not as a client, but as a fool. — Destroy it? You think it is a tank you can put a shell into? You think you can just turn it off?
He gestured wildly at the clutter around them, at the forgotten objects saturated with the past. — This world is a story, held together by what we remember. The Echo Protocol is not a weapon that makes noise. It is a weapon that makes silence. It doesn't just erase a memory; it rips the page from the book.
— We understand the physics, — Petrova cut in, her patience worn thin.
— Do you? — Haas shot back, his voice rising. — Do you understand the failsafe? The dead man’s switch Kestrel’s masters built into it? When the machine’s core is breached, it does not simply power down. It detonates. Not with fire and radiation, but with pure, weaponized Oblivion. It creates an Ashen Tract. A permanent hole in the world where nothing can be remembered, and so nothing can exist.
He leaned forward, his face inches from Sineus’s. — You destroy that machine, and you erase a thousand square kilometers of the Soviet Union from existence. Not just the land. The history. The idea of it. It will be a cancer of nothingness that will spread. That is the price of your victory.
The air in the room grew cold. The hope of a simple objective—find and destroy—was gone, replaced by an impossible choice. To let the weapon live was to let Kestrel turn the world into a madhouse. To destroy it was to unleash a wound that could never heal. Subjugation of memory, or its total annihilation.
— There is a defense, — Sineus said. It wasn't a question. It was a demand. Haas was a dealer. He never presented a problem without holding the solution.
Haas smiled again, the merchant returning. He walked over to a heavy, lead-lined chest in the corner of the room. He opened it. Inside, nestled on a bed of black velvet, was a sphere of metal so dark it seemed to drink the light. It was no bigger than a human head, its surface unnaturally smooth and cold.
— The Aegis Conduit, — Haas said, his voice now a reverent whisper. — A very rare, very dangerous piece of insurance. It does not stop the blast. It absorbs it. It drinks the Oblivion. But it needs a living mind to open the valve. The process is… absolute.
The cost of using it was a life. Another impossible price.
— You have one, — Petrova stated, her eyes fixed on the black sphere.
— I do, — Haas confirmed, closing the chest. — And I will part with it. For a price.
He let the words hang in the air, the silence stretching. Sineus waited. The dealer would name his terms. This was the fulcrum of the deal.
— I am a simple businessman, — Haas began, his tone oily. — I live in a dangerous world. I require my own insurance. There is a KGB depot in Hamburg. A storage facility for their more… esoteric acquisitions. Inside is a prototype memory core. Not a weapon, but a high-capacity storage device. I want it.
A heist. A suicide run into a secure Soviet facility in the heart of West Germany. The demand was absurd, designed to be impossible. It was a test.
— Why? — Sineus asked.
— The core can be modified, — Haas said, waving a dismissive hand. — It can be made into a shield. A personal one. A bunker for the mind when the bombs of memory start to fall. I am a practical man. I intend to survive the world you and your friends are breaking.
Sineus looked at Petrova. Her face was a mask of cold calculation. She gave a barely perceptible nod. The depot was a hard target, but her knowledge of KGB protocols made it possible. Difficult. Lethal. But possible. There were no other options on the table. The Aegis Conduit was the only path forward that didn't end with a continent-sized hole in the world.
The choice was clear. The price was blood and risk.
— We’ll get your core, — Sineus said. The words were flat, devoid of emotion. It was not a promise. It was a statement of a transaction.
Haas’s smile returned, genuine this time. He clapped his hands together. — Excellent! I will provide the schematics I have. The rest, my friends, is up to you.
He handed them a roll of papers tied with a red ribbon. The deal was done. They had their insurance policy, but the premium was another war.
The air outside the shop was cold and clean, a stark contrast to the dusty confines of Haas’s world. The streetlights cast long, distorted shadows on the wet cobblestones.
Now I had to plan a heist.
