The café in Gothenburg was quiet, tucked in a back alley that smelled of old smoke and fresh rain. Ethan sat at a corner table, hood up, eyes flicking between the entrance and the USB drive plugged into a burner laptop in front of him. The data was still locked behind multiple layers of encryption—Jakob's handiwork.
He had one name in mind.
Lucia Marek.
Ex-cryptographer, ex-lover, and maybe the only person left in Europe who could crack something this deep without leaving a digital footprint. Last he'd heard, she was working under a new identity as a freelance journalist. But if Shadow Protocol had surfaced, she'd be tracking it too.
He tapped into a secure contact line. Encrypted messaging. An old code phrase:
"Red sky over Vienna. Need a safe sunrise."
He hit send.
Fifteen minutes later, his phone lit up. Unknown number. Message only:
> "Still chasing ghosts, Ward? Meet me in Prague. Old Town Clock. 48 hours."
He stared at the screen. The irony stung. Prague—the city where it had all fallen apart.
---
Flashback – Two Years Ago
Interpol's Operation Nightfall was supposed to shut down a black-market AI arms exchange. Ethan had led the cyber team. Lucia had built the AI killswitch. And Jakob… Jakob had gone rogue halfway through.
The mission collapsed.
An agent died.
And Ethan—haunted by guilt and betrayal—vanished.
---
Present
Now, the same broken trail was calling him back.
Ethan powered down the laptop. He couldn't risk staying in one place for long. But before he left, he opened a small pocket notebook. Inside were three handwritten names—contacts who had vanished in the last six months:
Lars O'Neill – digital forensics, Berlin
Tarek Basra – info-broker, Istanbul
Sophia Chang – banking AI systems, Zurich
All linked to the original Shadow Protocol project.
All dead.
All ruled "accidents."
He underlined one word beneath the list: "Culling."
Someone wasn't just reviving the protocol. They were eliminating everyone who had ever touched it.
---
Ethan left the café under a low sky and melting daylight. He passed an alley mirror and didn't recognize himself—longer hair, beard, scars. Still hunted. Still alive.
His train to Prague left in six hours. Until then, he had one stop to make: a man in the Gothenburg docks who owed him a favor and carried a long memory—and an even longer reach into the underworld.
Because if Shadow Protocol really worked the way they once feared…
The next death wouldn't be an agent.
It would be a nation.
---
End of Chapter 3