The incident had ended with applause, headlines, and hashtags - but for Julian Cross, the memory didn't fade.
Every night since the fall, he replayed it in his mind:
The snap of the harness.
The flash of her movement.
Her hand catching him midair - steady, certain, impossibly fast.
He hadn't seen fear in her eyes that day.
Only calculation.
Precision.
Training.
And he knew what that kind of calm looked like.
Julian wasn't just a movie king. Before the fame, before the awards, he'd been a military brat.
He knew combat reflexes when he saw them.
The tabloids called her brave.
He called her trained.
Two days after the rescue, he knocked on Aria's trailer door between takes.
She looked up from her laptop, a half-eaten muffin in one hand, a smudge of flour on her cheek.
"Movie King," she greeted lazily. "Survived gravity again?"
He smiled faintly. "Barely. Thanks to you."
"Don't mention it." She bit her muffin. "Or do. It helps my PR."
He stepped closer. "Tell me something, Aria. When you grabbed me that day - how did you know exactly where to pivot? How to absorb the fall?"
She blinked, expression blank. "Yoga."
He stared. "Yoga?"
She nodded. "Hot yoga."
💬 "'Hot yoga' - I can't breathe 😭😭😭"
💬 "That man is trying to uncover international espionage and she said yoga."
💬 "She's allergic to confession 😭"
Julian smirked. "Right. And the way you intercepted that falling camera crane yesterday - was that yoga too?"
Aria took another bite. "Advanced yoga."
He laughed softly, but his eyes stayed serious. "You're not who they think you are, are you?"
Her gaze flickered just briefly before she smiled again. "No one is."
Then her phone buzzed.
She picked it up, frowning. No sender. No ID. Just one photo.
Her own face.
Pre-fame.
Shorter hair.
Combat gear.
A gun holstered to her leg.
For a split second, the entire world around her froze.
Then she smiled, slid the phone face-down, and said evenly,
"You were saying?"
Later that evening, as the crew wrapped, Aria sat alone in her trailer, the screen of her phone still glowing faintly with that image.
There was no caption, no threat, no traceable signature.
Just coordinates embedded in the file's metadata.
Coordinates she knew.
Her pulse stayed steady.
She typed a single reply into her encrypted comms line:
Message received. Not the time.
Meanwhile, Julian was sitting in his car outside the studio, unable to shake the feeling that he'd just seen a ghost.
He'd watched her joke, smirk, and smile like nothing fazed her.
But something had changed behind her eyes that day - a split-second of stillness he couldn't unsee.
And in his inbox, an anonymous email blinked open.
It contained the same photo Aria had received.
The message below read:
"You almost died because of her.
Ask who she really works for."
Julian froze.
The next morning, Aria arrived on set before dawn, sunglasses on, coffee in hand.
Her assistant trailed behind her, whispering about new contracts and talk shows.
Aria nodded absently, scanning the rooftops out of habit.
"Security's tighter today," the assistant noted.
Aria smiled. "Good. Means someone's nervous."
Julian approached her again during a break, holding his phone.
"Aria. I got a message. About you."
She didn't even look. "Don't open strange emails."
"It had a photo."
She froze just slightly.
He continued, "It looked… military."
She smiled thinly. "Deepfake's getting better every year."
He didn't push further, but something about her tone felt rehearsed.
That night, tabloids released a new headline:
"ARlA LANE & JULIAN CROSS: CHEMISTRY ON AND OFF SET?"
The internet exploded, spinning romance theories.
💬 "They're SO dating."
💬 "She literally saved his life - let them be."
💬 "He's falling for her, and she's falling for the wrong file format."
But behind the glitter of paparazzi and flashing lights, another kind of game had begun.
Because the coordinates in that photo led to a decommissioned airstrip outside the city.
And whoever sent it wasn't an enemy.
They were baiting her.
Testing her.
Trying to confirm what the Agency still refused to believe:
that Agent A-01 had not died in that explosion years ago.
Aria watched the storm clouds gather over the skyline.
Somewhere out there, someone was pulling strings.
She smirked faintly, whispering to herself,
"Careful what you dig for, Julian. You might just find me."