London. 06:42 AM.
Smoke rose from the embers of Battersea.The Wolves were dead or scattered.But Damien Voss was not done.
Valeria's grip on the world was crumbling.
And it was time to break it.
Koslov hotwired a metro tunnel line to transport them beneath the city.Their target: a secure Thirteen Syndicate node buried beneath the ruins of Chancery Lane — where the Wolves received orders, where operations were coordinated across twelve countries.
Damien sat in silence as the old subway screeched through damp rails, the lights overhead flickering like nervous thoughts.
"They'll know we're coming," Mara said. Her voice was hard. And tired.
"Good," Damien said. "Let them prepare."
Asher sat across from him, fingers still stained with the blood of the Wolves he'd helped kill — and of the ones he hadn't.
He looked up at Damien. "I won't run again."
Damien gave a single nod. "Then don't die either."
The Node Vault. 07:12 AM.
The place looked like a cathedral carved out of silicon.Cold blue light.Servers the size of houses.And standing between them and the data core — the last Seven Wolves.
Heavily armored.Cyber-linked.Pumped with predictive reflex stims.
"Final warning," said one. "You enter this vault, you become historical noise."
"Funny," Damien muttered. "I was thinking the same thing."
Then he moved.
The fight was not clean.There was nothing surgical.It was war.
Mara put a knife through a Wolf's eye socket, screaming as blood splashed her face.Koslov took three rounds in the chest, but kept walking, dragging a Wolf down a stairwell with him in a bone-breaking tumble.
Asher ripped a weapon from a dead man's hands and didn't hesitate.
But Damien?
Damien fought like a man with ghosts in his blood.
He danced through bullets.Slid under plasma bursts.Put three rounds in a Wolf's throat before they finished turning.
And when the final Wolf reached for the vault's kill switch, Damien crushed the man's windpipe with the heel of his boot — cold. Efficient. Final.
The Node opened.
Thousands of petabytes.Routed through Ella's worm.And broadcasting to every screen in the world.
Images of genocide disguised as "climate regulation."Signed orders showing the Syndicate orchestrated collapses in Eastern Africa, Brazil, and Eastern Europe.Videos of Thirteen members laughing over mass surveillance tests.
And finally—
Valeria Strand's own voice.
"Control is peace. Let them believe they're free — so they never fight back."
The world burned brighter.
Nations rose.Tens of thousands in the streets of Berlin, Delhi, Johannesburg, Rio.Military units went rogue.Journalists defected from corporate media.
And the Wolves — the ones still alive — began to turn on each other.
The order was unraveling faster than it could bleed.
Back inside the Node,
Mara stitched Koslov's wound. "He'll live," she said.
Damien stood over a console, breath heavy, eyes locked on the global feed.
Asher walked up beside him. "So what now? We won. Right?"
Damien's voice was flat.
"No. We started."
Meanwhile. Across the city.
Valeria Strand stood before a mirror in a steel-core panic room beneath the Shard.
She poured herself a drink. Took a measured sip. Smiled.
"So be it," she whispered.
And turned the key.
Protocol V initiated.
Half the city went black.
Markets collapsed in real time.
Weapons satellites changed trajectory.
And across twelve war rooms in twelve countries, AI failsafes blinked online — with one order:
Wipe everything.