Skies Over Oslo – 9:42 p.m. (Local Time)
The jet sliced through clouds, black as oil against a frozen sky. Below them: Norway's corporate sector, where old-world billionaires now built empires from shadows and satellites.
Juliana stood at the window, arms folded. She hadn't spoken since the briefing.
Damian joined her, face freshly stitched, the bruises under his eye turning sick yellow.
"You ever been to CalyxNet before?" she asked.
"Once," he said. "Twelve years ago. Before I defected."
"And?"
"It made the CIA look like kindergarten."
"Good. I like hard targets."
*******
10:19 p.m. – CalyxNet Corporate HQ, Oslo
CalyxNet looked like a modern church — obsidian glass, fifteen stories tall, rimmed with thermal drones and laser ID checkpoints. No signage. No logos. No windows on the upper floors.
Inside: encrypted servers, data vaults, and a private team of black ops coders under Director Marrow's control. Juliana, dressed in a courier's uniform, stepped through the eastern tunnel under the guise of a tech delivery runner.
Echo and Damian shadowed her from the rooftop. Nael guided her via comm.
"Thermal scans show eight guards. All armed. Sublevel vault is straight ahead, but there's something strange…"
"Talk to me," Juliana whispered.
"The security node you're looking for is encrypted with… a heartbeat signature."
Juliana blinked. "What?"
"It only unlocks for the person it's coded to. No biometrics. No passphrase. Just their actual heart rhythm."
"Let me guess," Echo said. "Marrow's heartbeat."
"Exactly."
"So we're screwed," Damian muttered.
"No," Juliana said. "We steal the beat."
*****
10:37 p.m. – The Elevator to Hell
Juliana rode the central lift down into the belly of the tower. The walls pulsed with LED veins — blood-red and alive.
"Echo, status?"
"I'm in position. West rooftop. Got eyes on their private medical bay."
"Perfect. Grab me a rhythm."
"Copy."
The elevator opened.
Two guards stood at the vault door.
Juliana didn't give them a chance.
She feigned a stumble — dropped the tablet in her hand — and as one leaned forward, she yanked a hidden blade from her sleeve and stabbed him straight through the throat.
The second pulled a gun.
Juliana dropped, rolled, kicked his knee out, and snapped his neck with one violent twist.
"Nael. You're up."
"Spoofing the ECG monitor now… give me fifteen seconds…"
Beep… beep… click. The door opened.
******
10:42 p.m. – Inside the Vault
Rows of servers blinked silently like a sleeping machine god. Juliana stepped inside, heart racing.
This was it. The origin of every Syndicate operation. The command center for assassination markets. The birthplace of Project Black Rose.
"Pull the backups," she told Nael. "Take everything."
"Already in motion."
She scanned the monitors… and froze.
One screen displayed a live feed. Of her mother. Alive. Tied to a medical chair. Breathing. Unconscious. "No…" Juliana whispered.
Then the feed shifted.
A voice echoed through the vault. "Hello, Juliana." Marrow.
"You've made quite a mess."
"Show your face," she growled.
"Not yet. But you should know — you're not alone in that building."
On the next screen: Raven. Walking the same hallways.
******
10:45 p.m. – Tower Alarm Triggered
"Juliana, get out of there!" Nael shouted.
"Not without my mother."
"It's a trap. They wanted you to see her."
Juliana ripped the hard drives from the server racks and bolted for the exit — the lights above her turned blood-red, sirens wailing.
Upstairs, Echo engaged in a gunfight with two private guards. Raven slipped past a security checkpoint like a shadow.
****
10:50 p.m. – Emergency Stairwell
Juliana slammed into a stairwell door — and came face to face with her worst nightmare.
Sophia Li. A former Black Rose operative. Juliana's training partner. The one she left behind when the project was shut down.
"Sophia?" she breathed. The woman smiled. "Hello, Widow." "You're supposed to be dead."
"Aren't we all?"
Sophia raised a suppressed pistol. Juliana didn't hesitate. She drew her blade and lunged.
10:53 p.m. – Stairwell Fight
The clash was fast, brutal, surgical. Blades slashing. Bones cracking. They knew each other's rhythm, each other's pressure points. Sophia landed a cut across Juliana's cheek. Juliana returned it with a stab to her gut. "You sided with Marrow?" Juliana gasped.
"He gave me purpose," Sophia hissed. "You gave me abandonment."
"You were supposed to be free."
"Freedom is a lie." Sophia raised the gun. Juliana fired first. The bullet hit between her eyes. Sophia collapsed. Dead.
*******
10:58 p.m. – Rooftop Extraction. Juliana staggered onto the rooftop. Echo pulled her into the evac harness as the chopper hovered overhead. She clutched the stolen hard drives to her chest. Blood on her lips. Sophia's ghost in her lungs. Damian helped her inside.
**** "You okay?"
She looked him dead in the eye.
"No."
She dropped the drives on the seat. "But I got everything."
********
11:16 p.m. – In Flight. Juliana sat between Echo and Damian, staring at the tablet as Nael decrypted the CalyxNet archive in real-time.
"You're not going to like this," Nael said.
"Try me."
He zoomed in on a file labeled: "Black Rose 2.0 – Subject 11." It wasn't Juliana.
It wasn't Subject 10. It was Raven.