The fall was a brutal baptism into darkness and cold. I hit the rushing water with an impact that drove the air from my lungs and sent a jarring shock through my bones. The blackness was absolute, a thick, liquid void that smelled of a century of filth and decay. The current, strong and immediate, grabbed me, pulling me under, the weight of the Aegis Conduit case a lead anchor in my hand. I fought against it, kicking toward a surface I could not see, my lungs burning.
I broke through with a choked gasp, sucking in the foul, damp air. I was in a sewer tunnel. A narrow brick channel, the water moving fast and cold around my waist. Far above, a ragged square of gray light marked the hole we had made in the office floor. It was already shrinking as my eyes adjusted to the profound dark. I still had the case. That was one victory. I needed another.
— Petrova! — he called out, his voice a raw bark that the tunnel swallowed.
A cough answered him from the darkness a few meters away. He pushed through the thigh-deep water, the current fighting him with a steady, indifferent pressure. He found her clinging to the slimy brick of the tunnel wall, her face a pale smudge in the gloom. She was alive. She was shivering, her breath coming in ragged bursts, but she was alive. They had lost nearly everything in the ambush—weapons, gear, any semblance of a plan. Their physical condition had taken a sharp dive, a 10% drop into exhaustion and shock. But they had the one thing that mattered.
The sounds from the warehouse above were muffled, but I could feel the hunt through the soles of my shoes. The vibration of heavy boots on the floorboards. I didn't need my psychic sense to know The Chorus was searching, but I used it anyway. I closed my eyes, reaching out. It was not the chaotic noise of an Echoed Asset. This was a cold, disciplined silence, a psychic grid of focused emptiness spreading out from the warehouse. They were sweeping the area, methodical and patient. They were 30 meters away, a world away, and yet right on top of us.
— They’re searching, — he said, his voice low. — A psychic sweep. We have to move.
— Which way? — Petrova’s voice was tight, strained, but the scientist’s logic was already cutting through the fear. In this subterranean labyrinth, every direction was the same shade of black.
— Away from the light, — he said. It was the only answer he had.
They pushed off from the wall, letting the current guide them deeper into the city’s guts. The water was a physical enemy, sucking the heat from their bodies. The darkness was a pressure on the eyes. Petrova, the physicist who built weapons of memory, took the lead. She could not see, but she understood the logic of the construction, the language of the city’s hidden bones. She ran a hand along the weeping brick wall, feeling for the curve of a junction, the change in texture that signaled an outflow pipe.
The only sounds were the gurgle of the water and the scrape of their shoes on the unseen floor. A distant, low rumble vibrated through the tunnel—a U-Bahn train, a ghost of the world above. They were beneath the streets of Hamburg, a city that didn't know they existed, hunted by men who were no longer men. Sineus kept the heavy Aegis Conduit case pressed against his side, its unnatural cold a constant reminder of the stakes.
They found a small alcove after what felt like an hour, a maintenance junction where three tunnels met, offering a small ledge out of the main current. It was a place to breathe. The air was thick with the smell of wet earth and ozone. In the faint, reflected light from some distant grate, he saw the gash on Petrova’s arm. A deep, ugly tear from the splintered floorboards, bleeding sluggishly into the filth of her coat sleeve.
— It’s nothing, — she said, seeing his gaze. Her teeth were chattering.
— It will be something if it gets infected down here, — he replied, his voice flat. — Hold still.
He tore a strip from the hem of his own soaked shirt. The fabric was coarse and cold. He knelt in the shallow water, carefully cleaning the wound as best he could, then binding it tightly. It was a practical, necessary action. There was no room for sentiment in the dark. But as his fingers brushed her skin, he felt the tremor of her exhaustion, the fragile warmth of her life. It was a reminder that their partnership was no longer just tactical. It was all they had. She watched him, her expression unreadable in the gloom, then gave a single, sharp nod.
He sat back on the ledge, the cold seeping deeper into him. He ran the calculus of their situation. They were fugitives, burned by the CIA, hunted by the KGB. Kestrel and his psychically shielded Chorus were closing a net around them. They had no weapons, no communications, no support. They had one asset: the Aegis Conduit, a doomsday device they didn't fully understand, their only shield against a weapon that could unmake a city. Their strategic options had been reduced to one. A desperate one.
The world was a closing fist. Every conventional path—every agency, every border, every safe house—was a death trap. They couldn't run. They couldn't hide. He realized with a chilling certainty that they had to stop playing on Kestrel’s board. They had to kick the whole table over.
There was a protocol. A ghost story whispered by old Cold War architects, a contingency so deep and dangerous it was officially denied. A panic button for the end of the world. The Black Parliament. A council of enemies, a summit of spymasters from every major power, convened only in the face of a threat that could wipe them all from the map.
— There’s a protocol, — he said, his voice quiet but clear in the echoing dark. Petrova looked up, her eyes questioning. — A last resort. It forces a meeting.
— Of who?
— Everyone, — he said. The word felt heavy, insane. — CIA, KGB, MI6. The French. All of them. In one room.
— They’ll kill us, — she stated, a simple fact.
— They’ll listen first. Kestrel and his Chorus are a non-state actor with a reality-bending weapon. He’s not a threat to their power. He’s a threat to the world they fight over. He’s bad for business.
The choice was stark. To activate the protocol, he had to broadcast a specific coded phrase on a public shortwave frequency. It would burn his last, deepest cover identity, a legend the CIA had spent a decade building. It was the final card in his hand. The price of forcing the world's secret masters to the table was his own ghost status, turning him from a rogue agent into a global target for every intelligence service on the planet. He would be utterly alone.
But it was the only move left. It was a shift from being a hunted piece, subjugated to the whims of others, to an actor who could force history to a single point.
— We’re not asking for help, — Sineus said, the decision hardening into resolve. — We’re calling a summit. We’re going to Zurich.
A faint shimmer of static seemed to dance on the surface of the black water at their feet, a ripple of a world bending to a new, desperate will.
They had a plan.
Now they had to get out of the dark and survive long enough to set the world on fire.
