The heavy vault door to the safe room slid open with a hiss of pressurized air. The moment of intimacy between Caspian and Linnea was shattered as Julian Thorne stumbled in.
The Vice-Commander, usually the picture of cold, military perfection, looked uncharacteristically disheveled. His tie was loose, his gold-rimmed glasses were cracked across the left lens, and he was clutching a blood-stained tablet to his chest as if it were a shield. He stopped short, his breath coming in ragged hitches as he saw the Commander and his wife. He noted the way Caspian's hand was still anchored on Linnea's waist, but the usual snarky comment from Julian didn't come. His expression was one of grim, bone-deep urgency.
"Caspian," Julian panted, his voice cracking. He held up the tablet, the screen flickering with lines of scrolling code. "I did it. I got past the mirror-link the hit squad used to mask their trail. I found the origin of the kill-order."
Caspian broke the kiss, his eyes snapping back to his Vice-Commander with the sharpness of a closing trap. He didn't release his hold on Linnea's waist, however; if anything, his grip tightened, keeping her anchored to him as the tactical reality of the room shifted.
"Who is it?" Caspian demanded, his voice returning to the cold, authoritative tone of the Iron Hand. "Which Council member authorized Silas to bypass the estate's grid? Was it the Minister of Defense? Or the Chancellor himself?"
Julian shook his head slowly, his face pale under the flickering light of the desk lamp. "It wasn't a Council member, Caspian. That's the problem. The codes… the specific authorization for the remote-trigger in the waiter's tooth… they didn't come from the capital. They weren't even generated on Federation soil."
Linnea felt a cold, oily dread sink into her stomach, curdling the adrenaline that had been keeping her upright. She looked at the tablet in Julian's shaking hands. "Then where? If the Council didn't send them, then who has the clearance to access the Vane Estate's internal frequencies?"
Julian looked directly at Linnea. For the first time, his eyes weren't filled with his usual intellectual arrogance. Instead, they were filled with a mixture of pity and a sharp, stinging accusation.
"The signal was routed through your father's old estate, Linnea," Julian whispered. "But the signature on the authorization wasn't your father's. He's been dead for years, and his accounts were supposedly frozen."
He swiped the screen of the tablet, projecting a high-resolution digital document onto the reinforced library wall. It was a military-grade execution order, the kind used for high-value assassinations. At the bottom was a digital signature—a complex, encrypted string of characters that resolved into a name that made Linnea's breath catch in her throat.
"The mole isn't in the Council," Julian said, his voice dropping to a low, lethal tone that vibrated in the small room. "The person who orchestrated this entire 'assassination'—the person who tried to frame Linnea as a traitor to get to you, Caspian—is Elias Song."
Linnea staggered back, her knees hitting the edge of the leather chair. Her heart felt as though it had stopped mid-beat, leaving a hollow, echoing void in her chest.
"Elias?" she gasped, her voice barely a whisper. "My brother? But… that's impossible. Elias is dead. He died in the same transport accident as my father. I saw the wreckage. I saw the casualty reports."
"According to these logs," Julian said, stepping closer and highlighting a series of bank transfers and communication bursts, "Elias Song has been very much alive for the last three years. He didn't die in that crash; he used it to disappear. He's been the silent partner of the Eastern Bloc, selling Federation secrets to the highest bidder. He didn't send you here to be a wife to protect the family name, Linnea. He sent you here to be the 'fall girl.' You were the perfect distraction. While Caspian was busy watching you, Elias was planning to take the Commander out and blame it on 'The Ghost.'"
Caspian stood up, the movement slow and predatory. The air around him seemed to vibrate with a new, terrifying level of rage—a rage that went beyond military betrayal. It was personal now. He looked at the signature on the wall, the name of the man who had used Linnea as a pawn, then he looked back at her.
"Your brother," Caspian said, his voice a low, vibrating growl of thunder that promised a storm the world wouldn't survive. "Is he a ghost, too? Or do I need to make him one?"
Linnea looked at the name of the brother she had mourned, the brother she had thought was a hero. The small, fragile part of her heart that had been grieving for her lost family finally turned to cold, uncompromising steel. The betrayal was a blade, and she was the one holding the hilt now.
She reached for her pulse-pistol on the desk, checking the power cell with a cold, mechanical snap that echoed like a death knell in the safe room.
"He's not a ghost," Linnea said, her eyes turning as gray and stormy as Caspian's, her voice devoid of any warmth. "He's a target. And he's mine."
Caspian walked over to her, his hand covering hers on the grip of the weapon. "He's ours, Linnea. If he wants a war, we'll give him one. But we do it my way. We don't just kill him. We dismantle everything he's built."
Julian looked between the two of them—the Commander and the Ghost—and realized that the High Council and Elias Song had made a fatal mistake. They had tried to tear them apart, but instead, they had forged the most dangerous alliance the Empire had ever seen.
"The Eastern Bloc relay is active," Julian noted, his fingers returning to the tablet. "He's at the border fortress. He thinks he's safe behind the neutral zone."
"He's wrong," Caspian said, his eyes fixed on Linnea. "Pack the heavy gear. We're going hunting."