The Danube was the color of a washed-out photograph, a flat, indifferent gray that swallowed the light. It moved slow, heavy with the secrets of every capital it had passed through. Sineus stood on the bridge, the cold iron of the railing seeping through his gloves. Vienna was quiet now. The screams had faded, both the real ones and the psychic echoes that had clung to the air like poison for weeks. The war was over. He had won. The thought was as hollow as a spent shell casing.
He had been moving for a month, a ghost drifting between cities, erasing his own trail. Zurich to Helsinki, then south, a winding path of third-class train cars and rented rooms that smelled of stale smoke and other people’s lives. He had returned to Vienna because it was the city where the echoes had first found him, in a quiet bar with a terrified courier. It felt right to end it here, on a bridge, with the cold water flowing beneath. A bookend.
His body ached with a weariness that went deeper than muscle. The final fight in the sanatorium had scraped something raw inside him, a psychic exhaustion that no amount of sleep could touch. He had unmade a man and a machine, and the effort had left him feeling unmade himself. He was a collection of tired reflexes and a single, burning purpose.
He pulled his hand from his pocket. In his palm lay the small, silver locket. It was smooth and unadorned, a simple oval of metal that should have been as cold as the iron railing. It wasn't. It was warm, a small, impossible pocket of heat against his skin. It was the only thing left of Anja Petrova. The only proof she had ever existed.
He had opened it a hundred times. Each time, the inside was the same: empty, polished silver. But each time his skin brushed the inner surface, the same fragment of a memory touched his mind. The warmth of a sun he’d never felt. The scent of salt and flowers he couldn’t name. A snatch of a simple, haunting melody. It wasn't his memory. It was hers. A final, fading broadcast from a life he had only glimpsed.
The locket was not a memento. It was a compass. It was a debt. It was the first clue in a new war, one that had no flags, no agencies, only a single question: what happened to her? And a second, harder one: who were the men who had pulled Kestrel’s strings? The men who had used his former partner’s pain as a cover for their own quiet moves on the board.
He leaned against the railing, the wind cutting through his coat. It was the same kind of bridge as the one in the alley, weeks ago. A lifetime ago. A place to watch the world and feel its fractures. He looked down at the gray, churning water. His own reflection stared back, a pale, grim face he barely recognized. The man in the water looked older, his eyes holding a coldness that hadn't been there before.
The reflection wavered.
For a bare second, the image in the water shifted. It wasn't the violent, glitching flicker of a memory anomaly. This was different. It was clean. Clear. The man in the reflection was still him, but standing beside him was a woman. Anja Petrova. She wasn't bruised or covered in the dust of the collapsing sanatorium. She was wearing a simple dress, and she was smiling at him. A small, tired, genuine smile.
It was the smile she never had the chance to give him. A ghost of a choice made, a partnership forged in fire and paid for in ash. It was a glimpse of a world that could have been, a quiet moment of peace they had earned but could never claim. It was a memory that had meaning, a flicker of sentinence in the vast, cold river.
Then, the image dissolved. A faint, soft hiss of television static shimmered on the water's surface for a heartbeat, a quiet scar where the vision had been. It wasn't the hungry, aggressive noise of the Echo Protocol. This was the static of a world settling, the faint, residual hum of a wound that had been cauterized. Then it was gone, and he was alone again, his own tired face staring back from the gray water.
The world was stable. The price had been paid.
He closed his fist around the locket, its warmth a solid, real thing in the cold. He had no peace. He had no victory. He had a purpose. He traded peace for a purpose. He would find the men behind Kestrel. He would unravel the conspiracy Thorne had hidden behind the chaos. He would understand the memory in the locket.
He took a slow breath, the cold air burning his lungs. He reached into his coat, his fingers finding the familiar shape of a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. A simple habit for a complicated world. The flame cupped in his hands was a tiny, defiant star against the gray afternoon.
The war was over.
His had just begun.
