"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
___WEIGHT OF TRUTH
The cursor blinks. Taunting. Waiting.
The words won’t come. Not tonight. Not after everything.
Lana exhales, leans back, rubbing her temples. The dim laptop glow reflects off her whiskey glass, its amber surface trembling with each impatient tap of her fingers. Outside, sirens wail, neon signs pulse like a city-wide heartbeat.
Steady. Relentless.
Her apartment is a mess. An organized one. Notes and case files plaster the walls, a chaotic mosaic of corruption, cover ups, and digital deception. Some cases are fresh, corporate fraud, police scandals, AI disinformation. Others are older, from a time when she still believed that exposing the truth could change things.
That belief died three years ago, along with Daniel Vega.
In the far corner, a single folder sits beneath a stack of newspapers. Lana hasn’t touched it in months, doesn’t need to. She knows every page by heart. Old emails, leaked documents, classified reports. And a photo. Vega, smiling. Weeks away from death he never saw coming.
A source. A whistleblower. A friend.
A dead man.
She takes another sip of whiskey. Try to focus now.
The Sentinel is barely surviving. Her last refuge, running on fumes. Funding? A joke. Readership? A ghost town.
Independent media like The Sentinel doesn’t just die. It gets killed. Corporate smear jobs, algorithmic suppression, quiet government threats. The slow suffocation of truth.
She scrolls through her news feed, watching the engineered narratives in real-time.
A deepfake of a senator leaks online, slurring through a speech about open borders. The footage is fake. The outrage is real.
A “leaked intelligence memo” claims China has backdoors into U.S. infrastructure. No sources. No verification. It doesn’t matter. The markets shudder. Politicians scramble.
An AI-generated report predicts 32% job losses in the next five years. The article buries the fine print. It’s a single scenario of many. Not a certainty. But the headline trends: “Automation Will Replace You.”
She’s seen it all before. She’s written about it.
No one cared.
Her phone buzzes. Cole.
She exhales sharply before checking the message.
COLE: Got anything? Traffic’s down 30.
She exhales sharply through her nose, thumbs hovering over the keyboard before she responds.
LANA: Define “anything.”
COLE: Something that gets clicks. Immigration, AI, China. Whatever fear sells this week.
Lana stares at the message, teeth grinding.
Whatever scares people.
“Fuck that.”
She closes the chat without replying. Not worth the fight.
Truth doesn’t sell. Fear does.
She pushes away from the desk, stretching, rolling the tension from her shoulders. At the window, the city sprawls beneath her; millions of lives, wired into the same digital feeds, seeing only what they’re meant to see. The glow of a billboard flickers across her reflection, distorting her face.
She once believed in the power of the press.
Now she’s just another ghost screaming into digital void.
And no one is listening.
___TRUTH IN THE CODE
Lana is sinking into sleep when a soft chime cuts through the low hum of her laptop fan and pulls her back.
2:13 AM. “Damn, it’s late.”
Her eyes blur as she leans forward to close the laptop. A dull ache knots her neck. The whiskey is settling in, slowing her fingers. She should sleep, shut down her laptop, crawl into bed, let the world burn without her for a few hours.
Instead, she clicks the notification.
A new file appears in her secure dropbox, encrypted. No sender.
Her stomach churns. Tonight’s dinner? Whiskey.
Tips like this are rare. Most whistleblowers either back out or disappear first. The last time she got one, it led to a classified military leak and six months of legal battles to stay out of prison.
She hesitates, cursor hovering over the digital grenade.
She opens the file.
The message is short. Too short. No greeting. No preamble. Just one sentence.
"The attacks aren’t random. Follow the pattern. The truth is buried in the code."
Attached: a data file. Rows of timestamps, locations, system logs. A mess at first glance: power outages, banking errors, stock market glitches, server crashes. Nothing big. Nothing obvious. But something feels… wrong.
Lana frowns, scrolling. A blackout in Chicago. A network failure in Berlin. A Tokyo financial crash, brief and contained. No headlines. No mass panic. No obvious link. Just… tests.
Something reads... deliberate.
Her pulse quickens. A chill unfurls down her spine.
She opens another window, cross-referencing news archives. The pattern isn’t in the attacks, its in what follows. A policy shift. A security measure. A software patch. A new law, slipped under the noise.
She exhales slowly, a bad feeling settling next to the whiskey in her gut.
These aren’t cyber-attacks. They’re stress tests.
Someone, some group, is probing the weak points in global infrastructure. Mapping failures. Timing recoveries. Measuring the magnitude and volume of the chaos rippling through economies, governments, public perception.
And no one is noticing.
She presses her tongue across her teeth, thinking. Weighing risk against truth.
Her instincts scream at her. STOP!
Three years ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated. Back then she still believed the system could be fixed. That the truth could change something.
Now, she knows better.
Last time she followed a trail this deep, she lost Daniel Vega. Lost everything.
Lana leans back, eyes locked on the screen. Hesitating. Just for a second.
She could walk away. Pretend she never saw it.
She closes her eyes. Exhales. Then she makes the choice she always makes.
Because she already knows. This wasn’t just a warning.
It was a challenge.
__PATTERNED CHAOS
Lana’s fingers move fast, jumping between databases, encrypted forums, and buried government archives. Her screen flickers under the weight of too many tabs, a digital war room assembling itself in real time. Links. Red flags. and Half-formed connections.
The pattern sharpens with each click, the pieces locking together like a trap.
Each cyber-attack leaves no smoldering ruins, no blood in the streets. No screams. Instead, policy shifts. Quiet regulation changes. a surveillance contract, a government directive buried under bureaucratic jargon.
Not newsworthy. Not obvious. But together? A noose tightening one quiet law at a time.
Lana rubs a hand over face and softly whistles as she exhales through her teeth. Who benefits from this?
The government?
The corporations lobbying for more data access?
Or someone else? Something else pulling the strings from deeper in the dark?
She needs a second set of eyes.
Lana hesitates, fingers hovering over the keyboard. Sending a message like this is like lighting a match in a dark room. If someone’s watching, they’ll see the spark.
Still, she types:
LANA: Available? Need your expertise. Strange patterns in global attacks. Looks deliberate.
She encrypts the file and sends it to Ethan Cross, a former hacker turned cybersecurity consultant. He’s been her go-to for years, paranoid as hell, but brilliant.
Minutes pass. Then an hour. No response. Her gut twists. Empty. Acidic. Unease sinks into something colder.
She checks his last known activity. Offline for 3 days.
Her pulse kicks up. That’s not normal.
She flips to another window, fingers dancing over the keys. No new posts. No recent logins. The usual underground forums where Ethan lurks? Silent. No digital footprint, not even a breadcrumb.
Lana exhales sharply. Fingers tapping. Then drumming. Then going still.
He’s gone dark. That never means anything good.
She takes a couple antacids to settle her stomach. It could be nothing. Maybe Ethan is on the move. Maybe he’s just being careful. But Lana’s seen this before. Sources just don’t go quiet. They vanish, never to be seen again.
When they do, it’s never random.
She stands up stretches, relieving her knotted back muscles. She hates this. Is this another dead end? Or is she already too late?
She’s been burned before. Chased ghosts. Hit brick walls. Followed vapor trails. Worse yet? Chased stories that got people killed.
Doubt slithers up her spine, cold static. If she keeps going, does she become the next corrupted file? The next name erased?
She absently blows her hair out of view, forcing the exhaustion aside. No. Not yet.
Lana pulls up her backup drives, offline storage, every fail safe she has left. Encrypt the files. Copies them. Copies them again. If someone wipes her system, they won’t erase her.
Lana logs onto another server, scraping deep-web forums, scanning backchannels, chasing digital whispers hidden in encrypted threads. Every message feels like a half-heard conversation where the speaker is long gone.
She finds something.
Corrupted timestamps nearly hide a fragmented conversation, half deleted. One line stands out, final echo from an account that no longer exists.
“They’re not breaking the system. They’re rewriting it.”
Lana’s ears roar as her pulse stumbles, then races.
She copies the thread, heartbeat loud. Before it vanishes. Before someone erases it too.
Lana doesn’t know what she’s hunting yet, but she knows one thing,
She’s not the only hunter.
___VANISHING EVIDENCE
Lana blearily blinks at her screen, nursing the last dregs of a too cold coffee. She rubs her temples, clicking through her inbox. Something feels… off.
She logs into her dead-drop server, a private instance she set up on a darknet relay. It’s where she keeps sensitive files, things too volatile for cloud storage.
But when the directory loads in seconds, much too quickly, her jaws clench.
The folders are still there, named in her organization style. But as she clicks through… Nothing. Nada. Zip. Every file wiped clean.
Maybe it’s corruption. A failed sync. But the timestamps are fresh. Too fresh.
These weren’t just deleted. Someone cleaned them. Properly. No metadata. No logs. No trace they ever existed.
She flips to her encrypted chat server, an air-gapped instance running off a private Tor node. Her last message to Ethan should still be there.
Lana yanks open her offline vault, a drive she keeps disconnected from the internet. If anything’s safe, it’s here.
The file loads. For a second, everything looks normal.
Then she sees it.
Sentences tweaked. Context softened. The most damning pieces, the ones that directly linked the attacks to defense contracts, just… gone.
She switches to a fresh tunnel and loads up an aggregator. Normal search won’t cut it. She scrapes archived headlines, cross checks cached pages.
Then she sees it.
Her name. Her byline. She didn’t write it.
Her stomach drops, but her brain doesn’t catch up fast enough.
“Fuck.” She breathes.
It’s her style. Her cadence. The same words twisted just enough to make her sound like a conspiratorial nut job.
Lana shuts the laptop, her heart thudding against her ribs. Needs air. Needs distance.
The city should feel open at night. Like she can disappear. But it doesn’t. Not anymore.
She moves through the streets, shoulders hunched against the autumn chill. The air should be crisp, grounding. Instead, it feels like shes not getting enough. Like something is pressing on her chest.
Traffic cameras. Security drones overhead. The glow of phone screens as pedestrians scroll through algorithm-fed headlines, oblivious to the invisible hands steering them.
She pulls up her hood, hands shoved deep into her pockets, fingers curled tight. Keeps her head down. Just another face in the city.
The feeling doesn’t fade. It thickens, like the city itself is closing in around her.
Her hairs rose and goose bumps spread across her skin. She rolls her shoulders, shakes out her hands. Forces herself to breathe. It doesn’t help.
She changes course, cuts through an alley. Doubles back. Takes a new street. Pauses at a crosswalk just long enough to watch the people behind her. Normal. Too normal.
The feeling doesn’t fade.
Lana’s mind starts to race. Is she being paced? Is someone keeping just far enough back she can’t see them?
She can’t shake it. Someone is watching.
She stops near a convenience store, pulls up her phone. Not to check it, but to see behind her. The glass window reflects the street behind her, fractured by neon light.
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Camera on.
Night mode on.
Nothing.
She looks up from her phone and catches a shape in the windows reflection.
Not walking. Not shifting weight. Just standing. Too still.
Her heart forgets to beat for a moment. Maybe its nothing. A shadow, a trick of the light. Her body doesn’t believe that.
She turns.
Gone. Maybe just out of sight. The sidewalk is empty, but the absence feels deliberate.
A slow, cold sensation of dread starts in her gut, moves up her spine, and spreads through her body.
Were they ever there? Or is she finally cracking?
“Breathe Lana.” She whispers to herself.
Lana exhales, releasing the breath she’s been holding. Forces her feet to move. Just keep walking. Act normal.
Fear gets people killed. She knows that. That doesn’t mean she’s wrong.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here,” she says to herself.
By the time Lana reaches her apartment, her hands are cold and unsteady. She bolts the door behind her, checks it twice.
Something is off. The air feels wrong. Too still.
She swears she can feel it, the slightest hint of cold. A faint whisper lingers in the room, hinting at something new in the room. But that’s impossible. Right?
She checks the locks. The windows. Scans the apartment, waiting for something to be out of place. Everything is exactly where she left it. Almost too exact.
She lets out a small, nervous laugh. It’s just in her head. She’s rattled. That’s all.
She heads to her desk. Stops cold.
Her screen is on.
A message blinks on the monitor. One line.
STOP DIGGING, LANA.
The blood drains from her face.
She doesn’t move.
She doesn’t breathe.
The cold in the room is real.
__ECHO PROTOCOL
Lana’s hands grip the edge of her desk, fingers stiff, breath shallow. The cold has nothing to do with the temperature.
She locks her jaw, shoving back the rising dread. The message glares at her from the screen, a stark grave marker.
The text shifts.
WE SEE YOU, LANA.
Fear rushes through her. The system isn’t just watching. It’s responding.
She shoves back from the desk. Her apartment once, a place of solace, now feels compromised. The walls press closer. The silence, thick and unnatural.
They’re inside.
Not just her system. Her entire life
A voice in her head screams to walk away. But fear doesn’t pay the bills. Fear never gets justice.
Lana slams the laptop shut and yanks the battery out. Useless reflex. They already got what they wanted.
She reaches for her emergency machine. It’s an old Lenovo, air-gapped, untouched by the cloud. No Wi-Fi. No automatic logins. Just raw storage and forensic tools built to dig beneath digital shadows.
She powers it on, plugs in the external drive, the last copy of the encrypted file they tried to erase.
Lines of cascading code flood the screen as her decryption tool runs. The progress bar inches forward bit by bit, agonizingly slow.
An hour crawls by. The room feels smaller. A single thought wont leave her mind.
She’s been in the game long enough to know: the second you look at something forbidden, it looks back.
A ping shatters her reverie.
The file unlocks.
Lana leans in, scanning the contents. System logs. Time-stamped reports. AI-generated predictive models.
She scrolls, faster, then slower, her pulse quickening.
“It’s gotta be here somewhere.” She mutters
Then she sees it.
ECHO PROTOCOL.
Buried deep in an operational log, referenced once.
Lana stares at the words. The phrase is clinical, vague, two words in seas of data. Something about it feels… wrong.
She’s spent years uncovering classified projects, but even the most top-secret initiatives leave virtual fingerprints. Leaks. References in obscure budget reports. Whispers in dark-web forums.
But Echo Protocol?
Nothing.
That’s what scares her the most.
She flips tactics. Instead of searching for the name, she follows the money.
Government contracts. Defense procurement ledgers. Buried under layers of shell companies and private contractors, she finds it.
Project EP.
A contract, issued five years ago. Funded by:
* Stratos Defense Systems (autonomous weapons contractor)
* Paragon Industries (behavioral analytics and social engineering)
* Department of Homeland Security.
Lana exhales, a soft whistle escaping through her teeth.
“What the fuck?”
These aren’t cybersecurity firms. They are control systems. Companies that build the architecture of surveillance and influence.
Of power.
She pieces it together, her mind moving faster than her fingers.
Echo Protocol isn’t predicting cyber threats.
It’s controlling them.
And if it can predict attacks, it can predict people.
Movements. Behavior. Dissent.
Lana chews her lip, the sick realization curdling in her gut.
This isn’t about security.
It’s a preemptive strike against free will.
A ping.
She freezes.
Her burner phone vibrates. A new encrypted message appears on the screen.
UNKNOWN: You’re not the only one looking.
A second later…
Message deleted.
Lana throws the phone against the wall. It shatters.
She should be safe. Her laptop is air-gapped, no Wi-Fi, No Bluetooth. No network access. The system’s clean.
Suddenly the fan whines louder, like the machine is straining against something invisible.
Then, one by one, the decrypted files begin deleting themselves.
“Shit!”
This isn’t remote access. It’s not a network breach.
“It’s in the drive,” she murmurs.
Her own copy was compromised before she even opened it.
She lunges, yanking the external drive loose.
Too late.
The screen glitches. Then goes black.
A single line of text appears.
“LAST WARNING LANA”
Then, a small pop.
Her laptop goes dead.
Lana takes deep breaths, hands shaking. Her heartbeat pounds in her ears.
They aren’t just watching.
They are predicting her actions.
They were always ahead of her.
__SYSTEM WATCHES BACK
Lana’s breath is slow. Measured. Her hands? Not so much. They tremble as she grips the edges of her desk, knuckles white, nails digging in. Not from fear. From fury.
The words still burn in her mind, seared into the backs of her eyelids.
The room feels wrong. Like it’s holding its breath.
Her breaths are steady, but her body is braced. Waiting.
Lana forces herself to move. Shoves the fear down, makes space for something sharper.
Focus.
Her gaze flicks to the closet. Her go-bag. She opens it up and takes out a new backup phone, untouched, still wrapped in foil.
Owl.
Ex-NSA. One of the last real whistleblowers before they started disappearing. If anyone knows about Echo Protocol, it’s him.
Lana hesitates. Then sends the message.
LANA: Need intel. Found something big. If you're out there, respond.
Minutes drag. Nothing. Lana taps her fingers against the desk, gaze flicking to the door. She half expected footsteps in the hall.
Then, a reply.
OWL: If you found what I think. You already know too much. Walk away.
Lana’s heart slams against her ribs. Her grip tightens on the phone.
Her fingers fly over the screen before doubt can settle in.
LANA: Not an option.
A long pause. Too long.
OWL: You think this is a story? It’s not. It’s a free ticket punch. They don’t just predict threats, they erase them.
Lana swallows hard, but it doesn't go down. Her throat stays tight.
Her thumbs hesitate over the screen, but she forces herself to type.
LANA: Show me.
Another pause. Longer this time.
Then,
OWL: Fine. One file. After this, you’re on your own.
A secure link appears in the chat. Lana doesn’t hesitate. She taps it before she can think.
The file is small. Too small. Lana starts decrypting it. Her fingers feeling slick. Her breath coming shallow.
If this is real, if Owl is telling the truth…
Her Wi-Fi drops. Hard.
Lana stiffens. The apartment hums with silence, thick and unnatural. She swipes at the screen, nothing. No signal. No reconnecting icon. Just dead air.
Then her backup phone screen flickers.
Her stomach knots. It’s not just the Wi-Fi.
A new message appears in the chat. Not from Owl.
337An61: YOU’RE ALREADY COMPROMISED
Lana’s pulse spikes. She grips the phone tighter, thumbs flying over the screen.
Lana: How?
No reply.
The typing cursor blinks. Waiting.
Then, factory reset initializing…
“No, no, no…” Lana scrambles, hands shaking as she rips the battery out before the wipe can finish.
She grips the useless device, breath coming too fast. Her last connection.
Gone.
Her last link to the outside world just erased itself.
__ERASED IN REAL-TIME
Lana forces herself to move, even as her body resists. This isn’t just about losing files. The system didn’t just wipe her data, they wiped her ability to fight back.
A mistake.
A miscalculation.
She stands too fast. The apartment tilts slightly...too much adrenaline, not enough oxygen. She braces a hand against the desk, exhales sharply.
Think. Move. Now.
She shoves back from the desk, heading for the closet. The go-bag is waiting...dusty from years of just-in-case paranoia. She rips the zipper open, her hands moving on instinct. Cash. Burner phone. Change of clothes. Knife.
She grabs it all and bolts for the door.
Then she stops.
The deadbolt.
Unlocked.
Her stomach twists into a knot so tight it threatens to drag her under.
She never leaves it unlocked.
A mistake? No. She doesn’t make mistakes like that.
Lana exhales slow, steady, trying to hear past the pounding in her chest. Her fingers brush against cold metal. The switchblade tucked inside her waistband.
She grips it tight.
Lana shifts, weight on the balls of her feet, heart hammering against her ribs. If they’re here, they want her to know it.
Her eye flick toward the hallway. The apartment is small. Only one way in, one way out. If someone’s inside, they’re between her and the exit.
No sudden moves.
She forces herself to listen. Not just the noise, the spaces between it.
The fridge hums. A car horn outside. A voice in the alley below.
Normal sounds.
But something feels wrong.
Lana grips the switchblade tighter and forces herself to swallow, to push the rising panic down where it can’t take hold. This was always a possibility.
She scans the apartment, eyes sweeping over everything in its place. The desk. The chair. The shelves stacked with files and hard drives. The kitchen counter. The mug she left in the sink. The jacket she tossed over the back of the couch.
All the same. No signs of forced entry. No open drawers. No misplaced objects.
Except...
Her stomach clenches.
Her mail.
She always dumps it on the counter, letting it pile up until she needs to dig out a bill. But now, it’s stacked too neatly. Squared off, arranged like someone meant to put it back exactly the way they found it.
Someone was inside.
Lana’s breath comes shallow. Not just watching. Not just wiping her data.
Inside.
And she never even heard them.
A wave of cold rolls through her chest. It doesn’t matter how careful she was. How many security protocols she followed. They got in anyway.
She swallows hard, tightening her grip on the switchblade.
Think. Move.
Her go-bag is still in the closet, untouched. If they were here to take her, they would’ve done it. This isn’t a raid. This is a message.
They want her to know they can reach her anytime they want.
Lana exhales, forcing her body to obey. She moves, silent, careful. Crouches. Fingers curl around the go-bag strap.
Then...
A sound.
Soft. Almost imperceptible. But there.
A shift in the air. A breath held too long.
Lana’s blood turns to ice.
She’s not alone.
MOVE.
Lana twists, dropping low as a shadow lunges from the darkness. A gloved hand swipes where her throat was a second ago. She throws herself backward, barely ducking the strike...her shoulder slams into the desk, sending papers flying.
Too fast. Too quiet. This isn’t some thug. This is a professional.
Her attacker moves with brutal efficiency, closing the distance before she can fully regain her footing. A fist collides with her ribs...sharp pain flares through her side. She gasps but doesn’t stop moving, twisting away from the next hit.
Her grip tightens on the switchblade. No hesitation. She drives it forward, aiming for flesh.
Miss.
The figure pivots, deflecting with inhuman speed. A boot catches her shin, knocking her off balance. She crashes into the chair, pain radiating up her leg as she sprawls onto the floor.
No time to think. No time to breathe.
They’re already on her.
Lana rolls, the blade still clenched in her fist. The next strike comes...she barely gets the knife up in time. Metal scrapes against something solid...a tactical glove? A weapon? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care.
She does the only thing she can...she throws herself forward.
She doesn’t need to win. She just needs to break free.
The sudden momentum catches the attacker off guard. They stumble, just a fraction, but it’s enough. Lana twists the knife, feels resistance...skin? Fabric? She doesn’t know, but her blade connects, and that’s all that matters.
A sharp inhale. A recoil. She hurt them.
Lana doesn’t stop to see how bad.
She scrambles to her feet, legs screaming in protest. She bolts for the door. She doesn’t make it.
A hand snatches her wrist, yanking her back hard. She spins with the momentum, slamming her elbow into their ribs. A grunt, but they don’t let go.
Desperation fuels her next move.
She rakes the blade across whatever she can reach...an arm, a shoulder, maybe a face. A curse spits through the dark. The grip loosens just enough.
Lana wrenches free, staggers toward the door. She fumbles with the deadbolt, heart slamming against her ribs.
Footsteps behind her. Fast. Closing in.
She doesn’t think. She just moves.
Lana wrenches the door open and throws herself into the hall. No shoes. No plan. Just instinct.
The moment she’s out, she slams the door shut behind her, shoving her full weight against it.
A body collides with the other side. The door shakes, but it holds...just for a second. Just enough.
Her feet move before her brain catches up.
Down the hall. Down the stairs. Two at a time. She doesn’t stop. Doesn’t look back.
The city swallows her. Whole.
___NOWHERE SAFE
Lana keeps moving. Fast.
Not too fast.
Doesn’t need the attention. She cuts through the streets in a deliberate but unnatural pattern. She doubles back, slips between crowds. Always clocking for tails.
She doesn’t know how they’re tracking her. Cameras? Facial Recognition? Predictive modeling?
Lana sighs, rubbing her wrist. They are tracking her with everything. Everywhere. All at once.
Time for a test.
She cuts into an alley and activates one of her final two burners. Hides it. Keeps moving.
Lana ducks into a 24-hour laundromat. It’s the right kind of place, dingy, cash-only vending machines. Most important? No working security cameras. The flickering fluorescent lights make everything feel sickly and washed out.
She grabs a handful of change from her go-bag, feeding coins into a vending machine. Not because she’s hungry,but because it gives her a reason to be here. A reason to linger.
The machine spits out a bag of stale pretzels. She doesn’t open it.
Think.
She slides into a corner seat, back to the wall, eyes scanning the room through the dull reflection in the front window. Three people inside. A guy watching infomercials. An old woman folding towels. A kid scrolling through his phone. None of them feel like a threat.
She exhales slowly and pulls out the last burner phone from her go-bag. Factory reset. No previous accounts. She powers it on, masking her movements by pretending to text.
She doesn’t go online.
That’s the mistake they expect her to make. If they already burned her apartment, they’ll be watching for login attempts, tracking IP addresses, waiting for her to resurface.
Instead, she flips through a series of preloaded text drafts, dummy messages to no one. They look like casual conversations, but they’re filled with code phrases only one person would recognize.
She needs to contact OWL. But first, she needs to make sure she’s clean.
Lana selects a specific message, then dials a random number from memory, an old disconnected landline. She doesn’t need it to ring. The act of calling and hanging up is the message.
Now she waits.
She pretends to be absorbed in her phone, but her attention is on the front window. The laundromat reflects everything behind her.
A man outside, wearing a dark hoodie, standing too still.
Not moving toward a destination. Just… waiting.
Lana looks down at her phone, pretending not to notice. A test.
She waits exactly three minutes. The man shifts, but he doesn’t leave.
Too patient.
She makes another call. This time to a different burner number, one she set up months ago. She watches his reflection as her second phone starts ringing in an empty alley two blocks away.
He checks something and turns in the direction of her phone. Like a dog hearing a whistle.
That’s all the confirmation she needs.
Lana doesn’t react. She palms her burner, casually tosses it into the open laundry cart of the old woman folding towels.
She grabs her pretzels and walks out.
Lana moves with purpose but not panic.
She follows a predetermined route. One she memorized long before tonight. Under awnings, through side streets where facial recognition is weak. She keeps her head down, passing through shadowed alleyways where cameras are more likely broken or blind.
At an intersection, she stops right at the edge of a crosswalk. She waits, not for the light, but for the exact moment a delivery truck turns.
The second it blocks the view from the street, she moves. Sharp right, slipping between two parked cars, into a narrow walkway between buildings.
She climbs a rusted fire escape, not fast, but steady. No sudden movements that might trigger motion sensors.
Reaching the roof, she crosses to the other side and drops down into another alley, using the building itself as cover.
No cameras. No clean angle for drones.
She blends back into the crowd three blocks away.
The man in the hoodie? Gone.
For now.
Lana slips into a late-night convenience store, another place where people don’t ask questions. She grabs a bottle of water, pays in cash, and pockets the receipt.
She doesn’t check her phone.
Instead, she pulls out a crumpled piece of newspaper from her jacket pocket, an old habit, carrying analog notes in case things went bad.
Scrawled on the margin: PROJECT EP – CONSULTANT – OWL.
She finds a payphone in the back of the store. Dials a number she hasn’t called in years.
A robotic voice answers. “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”
That was expected. She dials again.
Still disconnected.
She dials a third time.
This time, the line doesn’t cut off immediately. It clicks.
Silence.
Then, static. A low hum. Someone listening.
She doesn’t speak. Neither do they.
She hangs up.
A minute later, the pay phone rings.
She picks up the receiver and a robotic voice lists off a series of numbers. Not a contact number. Just a location.
New York City.
Lana grimaces, feeling her injuries from her narrow escape.
Owl is here.
She won’t be the only one hunting him and he isn’t the only one being hunted.
___NAME IN THE DARK
Lana steps out of the convenience store, wrapping herself in the noise of the city.
She’s been moving for hours, slipping through cracks, misdirecting her pursuers. But she knows better than to believe she’s safe.
A black sedan slows as it approaches.
Her pulse spikes.
They found me.
The car rolls to a stop. The passenger door swings open.
Lana’s fingers curl around the switchblade in her pocket. Then…
Laughter. Drunken voices echo as two club-goers stumble onto the sidewalk. One of them nearly falls, grabbing the door for balance. The driver sighs, visibly irritated.
Lana exhales, turning away before she lingers too long.
False alarm.
But the unease lingers.
Because one day, it won’t be.
The location Owl sent her leads to a run-down storage facility in the Bronx. Rows of numbered units stretch into the dark, buzzing floodlights casting long, jagged shadows.
Lana doesn’t walk straight in. She circles the block first.
She ducks into a shadowed alley, pulling a compact mirror from her pocket. Angles it to check the street behind her. No tails.
Still, she doesn’t trust it
She heads into a nearby bodega, buys a pack of gum she doesn’t need. Uses the store’s convex security mirror to scan the street outside while she lingers at the counter.
Nothing.
But nothing doesn’t mean safe.
Back outside, she crosses the street but doesn’t enter the facility
Not yet.
Instead, she doubles back through an adjacent alley, scales a rusted fire escape, and moves across the rooftops until she has a clear view of the storage lot below.
She crouches, watching.
Ten minutes.
Fifteen.
No movement. No lookout. No ambush.
Finally, she makes her move.
Lana approaches Unit 43, fingers brushing the switchblade in her pocket.
The door is already unlocked.
Not a good sign.
She nudges it open, stepping inside. The air smells like dust, old electronics, and stale cigarettes.
The unit is cramped; server racks, outdated monitors, tangled wires spilling across the floor. But it’s empty.
No Owl.
Only the hum of machines.
A screen flickers to life as Lana debates whether to stay or run.
Lana tenses.
A scrambled voice crackles through an old speaker. Digitally altered, genderless, layered.
“You took your time, Reardon.”
Lana exhales, stepping closer.
“Owl.”
The figure on the screen is a distortion, an anonymous avatar shifting between fragmented pixels. Not a person. Just a presence.
She’s been speaking to them for years, but never like this. Never face to face—even if this barely counts.
Lana: “This how you always do meetings?”
Owl: “Do you always take twenty minutes to check for tails?”
Lana’s jaw tightens. “Still breathing, aren’t I?”
Owl: “For now.”
One of the monitors shifts, displaying a map. A series of data points moving across the city.
“They don’t follow you,” Owl says. “They predict you.”
Lana stares at the screen. The tracking path isn’t from a camera feed. It’s an algorithm. A heatmap of her expected movements.
Where she should be. Where she will be.
She swallows. They were always ahead of her.
She forces herself to focus.
“Owl, your message. ‘If you want the truth, come find me.’ So talk.”
Owl is silent for a moment. Then the screens flicker.
A new file opens. A name appears.
Levi Thompkins.
Lana frowns. “Who the hell is Thompkins?”
Owl’s voice comes through, but something about it is off now. Lower. Slower. Like they’re hesitating.
“Find Thompkins.”
A different monitor blinks on.
A grainy security feed. A room. A figure sitting at a desk, cigarette in hand. Owl.
Lana’s breath catches. For the first time, she’s seeing them.
A voice shouts from outside the feed. The camera jolts. Owl’s head snaps up.
A door bursts open.
A gunman steps into frame.
Lana’s world tilts.
She knows that face.
Daniel.
Daniel Vega.
Her best friend. Dead for two years.
The screen glitches. Owl is moving, scrambling for something, weapon, an escape, anything. Daniel is already raising the gun.
Lana can’t breathe.
She watches, frozen, as Daniel pulls the trigger.
Gunfire, three quick shots.
A body hitting the ground.
The feed cuts to black.
Lana stares at the screen, pulse hammering.
No.
No, no, no...
Daniel is dead. He can’t be here.
She grips the edge of the desk, trying to steady herself. What the hell did she just see?
Owl is gone.
And Daniel, whoever he is now, was the one who killed them.
Her hands tremble. This was never just about Echo Protocol. This is personal.
She forces herself to move. To push forward.
Because dead or alive, Daniel was working for them.
And if she wants answers…
If she wants to stop whatever’s coming…
She has to find Levi Thompkins.
Lana exhales, steadying herself.
“Fine.”
She grabs her go-bag, shoves the door open, and disappears into the city.
Find Thompkins.