The smoke still clung to the air like a ghost refusing to leave.
Natalia stumbled against the concrete wall, coughing, her palms smeared with soot. Somewhere behind her, the car that had exploded was still hissing, its metal ribs curling inward like a dying animal.
"Keep moving," Dimitri's voice cut through the static in her ears, it was rough, commanding, but threaded with concern he did not bother hiding anymore. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her into a narrow alley. His jacket was torn, blood tracing a line down his temple, but his grip never wavered.
They ducked behind a row of dumpsters as sirens wailed in the distance.
"What was that" she began, her breath trembling.
"A message," he said darkly. "Specter is letting us know he is closer than we thought. He wanted us to think that he had lost us before he could sabotage us. "
Natalia tried to steady her breathing. Her heart hammered against her ribs, not just from the near-death rush but from the way Dimitri's hand stayed on her arm, grounding her. He looked at her for a long second, the world burning around them before he let go.
"Come on," he said. "We can not stay here longer than we already have."
They moved through the backstreets of Palermo, sticking to shadows. By the time they reached an abandoned chapel at the edge of the district, dawn was beginning to bleed into the sky.
The building was hollow and cracked, the sunlight filtering through stained glass that had long since lost its color. Dimitri pushed the door open, gun raised. When he was sure it was clear, he nodded. "We will rest here for now."
Natalia sank onto one of the wooden pews, rubbing her arms to fight off the cold. The silence pressed heavily. She could feel his gaze on her, sharp, assessing, and she hated that part of her felt safer because of it.
He paced, checking the windows. "That blast was too precise. Someone gave them our location."
She looked up, startled. "Do you think it is someone from the inside?"
"I don't think," he said quietly. "I know."
For a moment, the weight of his words sank in. If there was a mole, it meant they were already surrounded.
Dimitri holstered his weapon and crouched in front of her, close enough that she could see the faint scar along his jaw, the one he had never explained.
"Tell me," he said, voice low. "When your father talked about the Phoenix Protocol before he was murdered… did he ever say who created it?"
Natalia frowned, shaking her head. "Only that it was not meant to exist anymore. He was killed while trying to keep it buried forever"
Dimitri's eyes flickered with something unreadable passing behind them.
"It didn't die," he murmured. "It evolved."
He pulled a small black flash drive from his pocket. It was scorched along one edge. "I recovered this from one of Specter's men before the blast. It's coded with your family's encryption."
"My family, what do you mean?" she whispered, reaching for it. Their fingers brushed, a spark, a quiet jolt that neither acknowledged but both felt.
He withdrew his hand slowly. "You should rest. I will try to decode it."
But she didn't move. "No. I want to see what's on it."
For a long second, they stared at each other, the tension between control and dominance. Finally, Dimitri sighed and connected the drive to a battered laptop from his bag. The screen flickered.
A single file appeared.
He clicked play.
A shaky, blurry video filled the screen, it was a video taken in an underground lab, dimly lit. A voice narrated in Russian-accented English.
> "Project Phoenix — initiated under the Volkov directive. Objective: to resurrect genetic markers lost in Subject N's lineage."
Natalia froze. "Subject N?"
Dimitri's expression turned to stone. "Natalia."
The footage showed a woman strapped to a medical chair, blurred, but the shape of her face was unmistakable. She was Natalia's mother.
The file ended abruptly with a flash of static.
She sat back, shaking. "He used her… my father...he—"
Dimitri closed the laptop. "It is actually worse than that. If Specter has the rest of these files, he knows exactly what is in there."
"What is really in there?" she echoed.
Before he could answer, a faint metallic click echoed through the chapel, the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked.
Dimitri moved instinctively, pushing her behind the pews just as a bullet shattered the stained glass. Sunlight scattered into blood-red fragments as he returned fire.
"Run!" he barked, pulling her toward the side exit.
They sprinted through the chapel as another shot ripped through the wooden door. Outside, a black SUV screeched to a halt, Specter's men spilling out, masked and armed.
Natalia ducked behind a pillar. "They found us already...how did they find us?"
"They never lost us," Dimitri said grimly. "The tracker is not in our phones. It's in something else."
Her eyes widened. "The drive..."
But before she could finish, the flash drive sparked and hissed, the faint red light at its base pulsing faster.
Dimitri's face went cold. "The drive was rigged."
He grabbed her arm, yanking her toward the back door, but the chapel was too old, too narrow. The explosion hit before they could reach the exit.
The blast threw them apart, stone and dust collapsing from the ceiling. Natalia's vision blurred, her ears ringing.
Through the haze, she saw Dimitri dragging himself across the floor toward her, bleeding but moving with sheer will.
"Natalia!" he shouted, voice distant. "Don't move!"
And then she saw it, through the gaping hole in the wall, the outline of a figure standing in the smoke. A tall man, dressed in black, his mask reflecting the firelight.
Specter.
He raised his weapon, aiming straight at Dimitri.
Natalia's scream tore through the whole vicinity.
The gun fired. Bang.
The sound echoed through the ruined chapel, and everything went silent.