POV: Zane

The name surfaces on the third cross-check.

I am alone in the intercept room when the match locks into place—one of the partial entries from the later pages of Sera’s ledger against a low-level coastal contact that has been quiet for months and then quietly active again in the last two weeks. The ledger gives a physical description, a preferred dead-drop window, and a short note that the man handled mid-tier relay traffic and never met the inner circle directly. The current intercept gives us a location within a day’s reach.

I sit with it for a full minute before I call the others.

Caius arrives first. Ryker...