Southbank. 04:32 AM.
The rain fell in thin, surgical sheets over the city that once ruled the world.
Damien Voss, black coat soaked through, crouched in the remains of an abandoned MI6 dead drop beneath Battersea Power Station — a ruin now occupied by rats and ghosts.
Beside him, Asher adjusted the charge on a micro EMP.Mara kept watch at the opening — scarred fingers twitching around her sidearm.Koslov, as usual, was wordless and efficient, rigging a counter-surveillance dampener using a chipped radio and a torn-out piece of his own earpiece.
"Tell me again why we didn't hit the weapons cache first?" Mara muttered.
"Because," Damien murmured, "we're not arming ourselves for a war. Not yet. We're here for the message."
"What message?"
"That we're still breathing."
Above them, hidden in the ruins of London's derelict skyline, The Wolves moved in silence.Twelve.Masked.Loyal to Valeria.
Their orders were simple: Let Damien walk into the trap. Let the message broadcast begin. Then, when the entire net was watching…Execute him on a livestream.
And in the penthouse of Valeria Strand's glass cathedral, she waited.
With a crystal glass of vodka, and the smug calm of a queen checkmating a dying king.
Underground.
Asher set the final charge. "When this blows, we'll knock out the surveillance grid for ten minutes across Westminster."
Damien nodded. "That's all we need."
"And after that?"
Damien looked at the ancient wall behind them — the MI6 communication room, sealed for decades. Its console was dead. The wires behind it? Not.
"We hijack the node," Damien said. "Broadcast our version. The real one. About Zurich. About the corruption at the IMF. The UBI failures. The staged collapses. The sterilization programs in Lagos. All of it."
Koslov glanced over. "And then what? They still kill us."
"Yes," Damien said. "But we choose when."
Above. In a private loft near Shoreditch.
Ella Mercer slipped through an air duct into the shadowed server room of a minor London telecom firm — a front for one of Strand's many media-scrubbing AIs.
She wore a stolen maintenance suit.A needle-drive hidden in her boot.No weapons. Just purpose.
She inserted the drive.
The system flickered.
She smiled.
"Let's give them something they can't erase."
Back at Battersea.
The EMP blew. Silent pulse. Lights above flickered and died.
And for ten minutes, London went blind.
Damien stepped into the server alcove.Flipped the breaker.Power surged through the ancient board.
Screens came alive — relics glowing like ghosts.He opened the audio port.Linked it to a pirate signal.
"This is Damien Voss," he said. Calm. Clear."You've been lied to."
He told them everything.
About the engineered refugee crises.About the forced debt models disguised as aid.About Zurich, and Hartmann.About how Valeria Strand and The Thirteen were not a conspiracy theory… but a currency syndicate with the power to orchestrate nations like stage plays.
His voice echoed across all of London.
And then—
Boom.
The trap snapped shut.
They came from all directions.
Wolves. Twelve of them. Through the roof. Through the tunnels.Silenced rifles. Gas grenades.
Mara fired first — taking down two before getting winged in the shoulder.Koslov roared, slamming a Wolf's head into the concrete so hard the helmet cracked.
Asher—
Asher froze.
One of the Wolves wasn't masked.
She was twenty-three.
Blood on her chin.Fire in her eyes.
"Ella?" Asher gasped.
"Surprise," she said coldly. "You thought you were the one protecting me."
He dropped his rifle.
"You're working with them?"
"No," she snapped. "I am them. I built the worm that hijacked their AI. I rerouted your broadcast. Everything Damien said — it's in every major system. Berlin. DC. Singapore. I did that."
"Why—why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you're still loyal to guilt. I'm loyal to the truth."
The Wolves hesitated. Orders blurred.
Valeria's feed blinked — static on every screen.
"What is this—" she hissed.
Then a new voice replaced Damien's.
Ella's voice.
"My name is Ella Mercer. I was tortured in a facility called The Mooring. I escaped. They tried to break me. They created me."
"And now," her voice sharpened, "I'm going to destroy every last one of them."
On the ground, as more Wolves hesitated, Asher turned — catching a gun tossed by Mara.
Damien met his eyes.
"You in?"
"I'm in."
Together, they fired into the chaos.
Wolves fell. London lit up with the sound of rebellion.
Above, clouds split. Dawn spilled like blood over the Thames.
In the penthouse, Valeria watched the world she'd sculpted begin to fracture.
She didn't scream.She didn't flinch.
She reached for a different phone.
"Initiate Protocol V," she said. "Let the world burn with him."
And miles below, hidden in the coding veins of the city, something began to wake up.
Something worse than truth.