The Reno Connection

Chapter 3: "The Reno Connection"

We hit Reno at two in the morning, and the city greeted us with the kind of desperate neon optimism that only a gambling town can muster at that hour. Casinos blazed against the desert night like they were personally offended by the concept of darkness. Their signs flickered in shades of gold, red, and electric blue that painted the cracked sidewalks in garish patterns. Even at this hour, people drifted along Virginia Street with the glazed expressions of humans who'd lost track of both money and time simultaneously. Retirees in cheap windbreakers clutching plastic cups of quarters. Young couples who'd blown their vacation budget on blackjack. Solitary men in rumpled suits who looked like they'd been sitting at the same poker table since the Carter administration. The air smelled of cigarette smoke, stale beer, and the peculiar desperation that seeps out of casinos like humidity.

Lin had taken over driving outside Sacramento. I'd managed about ninety minutes of terrible, adrenaline-soaked sleep in the passenger seat. The kind of sleep where your brain replays the day's events on fast-forward and adds a soundtrack of anxiety. I dreamed about ghost packets and dark stairwells and the sound of footsteps behind me—always behind me, gaining, never quite catching up but never falling back either. Woke up with a crick in my neck and the taste of copper in my mouth, my heart hammering against my ribs like it was trying to escape through my sternum. The dream had felt so real that for a disorienting moment, I expected to see someone in the back seat.

"We're here," Lin said.

She pulled the Civic into a parking garage attached to one of the smaller casinos. Not the big flashy ones on the strip—not the Atlantis or the Peppermill with their towering facades and endless rows of slot machines—but a mid-range place called the Silver Strike that looked like it hadn't updated its decor since 1997. The parking garage was concrete and shadow, the fluorescent lights buzzing with that particular frequency that makes you feel like your teeth are vibrating.

"Marcus runs his operation out of a warehouse in the industrial district," she said. "But he won't meet there cold. We go to a bar first. Neutral ground."

"A bar at two AM." I stretched, my spine cracking in a series of small pops that sounded like bubble wrap. Every joint in my body seemed to have locked up during those ninety minutes of tortured sleep.

"This is Reno. Everything is open at two AM."

She wasn't wrong. We walked three blocks through the neon haze. Past a pawn shop with a guitar in the window that had probably been stolen three times. Past a woman in a sequined dress arguing with a man in a cowboy hat about something that involved a lot of hand gestures. Past a group of college kids who were laughing too loudly and stumbling too obviously. The air was cold and dry, the kind of cold that seeps through your clothes and settles in your bones. I pulled my jacket tighter and kept my eyes moving, scanning the shadows between streetlights, watching for anything that moved wrong.

The Rusty Nail looked exactly like its name suggested. A dive bar wedged between a bail bonds office and a pawn shop, with a hand-painted sign that had been faded by decades of Nevada sun and a pair of windows so dirty they were basically opaque. The kind of place where everyone minds their own business because everyone's business is worth minding. A single bulb burned above the door, casting a weak pool of yellow light onto the cracked concrete steps. The door itself was heavy wood, scarred and battered, with a small window at eye level that was covered by a grille.

Lin pushed it open without hesitation. I followed her into a world of smoke and shadow.

Inside, it was dark enough that my eyes took a moment to adjust. Loud enough to prevent eavesdropping—a jukebox in the corner was playing something that might have been country or might have been a cry for help, maybe both. It smelled like spilled bourbon and poor life choices. The floor was sticky under my shoes, the kind of stickiness that comes from decades of drinks and desperation ground into the wood grain. A handful of patrons dotted the bar. A man with a beard down to his chest nursing a beer. A woman in her sixties with bright red lipstick playing video poker with the intensity of a grandmaster. A couple in the corner who were either arguing or flirting—hard to tell which.

Lin scanned the room with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd done this a thousand times. Her eyes moved in a pattern I recognized from my own training—check the exits, check the corners, check the hands of everyone in the room. She headed for a booth in the back corner, weaving between tables with a grace that spoke of years of moving through crowded spaces. A man was already sitting there. Mid-forties. Black. Built like he spent his retirement from the CIA doing competitive powerlifting. His head was shaved clean, the scalp gleaming under the dim bar lights, and he wore a leather jacket that had seen some things. The kind of things that don't make it into official reports. His hands were resting on the table, palms down, fingers spread—a deliberate display of non-aggression that told me he'd been in enough meetings like this to know the choreography.

He looked up as we approached. His face split into a grin that was equal parts warmth and danger. "Lin Mei-Xing. I was starting to think you'd gotten yourself killed."

"Not yet." She slid into the booth across from him, her movements fluid and controlled. I stood there awkwardly for a moment, suddenly aware of how exposed I was, how many ways this could go wrong. She gestured at me without looking. "Marcus, Ethan Zhao. Ethan, Marcus Cole."

Marcus looked me up and down with the kind of assessment that made me feel like my entire life history was being read in my posture—the way I held my shoulders, the position of my feet, the nervous twitch in my left hand. "The NSA kid who got himself fired for asking too many questions."

"Former kid. I'm thirty-two."

"Baby," Marcus said, but he was smiling. It softened the hard lines of his face, made him look almost approachable. He gestured at the seat next to Lin. "Sit. You look like you've had a day."

"That might be the understatement of the century." I slid into the booth, the vinyl creaking under my weight. The table was scarred with initials and phone numbers and what looked like a dried ring of something alcoholic. A waitress appeared—tired, efficient, asked no questions. Her uniform was stained and her eyes had the thousand-yard stare of someone who'd seen every possible permutation of human behavior and was no longer impressed by any of it. I ordered a bourbon because it seemed like that kind of night. Lin ordered water. Marcus was already nursing something amber—whiskey, maybe, or scotch—with the patient attention of a man who appreciated his alcohol.

"So," Marcus said, leaning back. The leather of his jacket creaked. "You triggered your exit plan. Which means the timeline moved up."

"It moved up today," Lin confirmed. Her voice was low, controlled, but I could hear the tension underneath. "The attack was scheduled for next month. They accelerated. I don't know why—maybe they detected the kill switch, maybe external pressure I'm not aware of. But we deployed successfully on five of seven nodes."

Marcus raised an eyebrow. A subtle movement, but it changed his entire expression. "Five of seven. Which two?"

"San Francisco went down in a power cut—unrelated to our operation. Someone else cut the grid locally. And Denver didn't respond to the kill command."

Marcus's expression shifted. Something cold moved behind his eyes, a calculation I couldn't read. "Denver."

"You know something about the Denver node?"

He took a slow drink, letting the silence stretch. The jukebox switched songs—something with a slide guitar and a woman's voice singing about heartbreak and highways. "I know that Denver is where Meridian keeps their physical operations center. Not just a C2 node—the node is co-located with their primary command staff. You're not just walking into a server room in Denver. You're walking into the lion's den."

Lin and I exchanged a glance. The weight of this new information settled between us like a physical object. This was the kind of detail that rearranges your entire tactical picture, that turns a difficult operation into a potentially impossible one.

"Command staff," I said. "As in, the people running this whole operation?"

"Some of them. Not the principals—they're too smart to be anywhere near operational infrastructure. But the senior operators, the ones who coordinate the seven nodes, run logistics, manage the strike teams." Marcus took another slow drink, savoring it. "Denver is a fortress, Lin. Even before today, it would have been a hard target. After you hit five of their nodes? They'll be locked down tighter than a submarine."

"We don't have another option." Her voice was flat, final. "If that node stays active—"

"I know what happens if it stays active. I'm not saying don't go. I'm saying you don't go in half-cocked with a laptop and good intentions." He set his glass down with a soft clink. "What do you need?"

Lin had clearly thought about this. Her answer came without hesitation, the words measured and precise. "Secure comms—encrypted, hardware-level, not dependent on any public infrastructure. Surveillance equipment for recon. Physical intrusion tools beyond what Ethan carries. And weapons." She said the last word flatly, like she was ordering supplies for a camping trip.

"Weapons," I repeated. The word felt foreign in my mouth, heavy with implications I didn't want to examine. "We're doing weapons now."

"We've been doing weapons since they sent a team to capture us in a coffee shop." Her eyes met mine, and I saw something there—not anger, but a kind of grim acceptance. "This isn't a hacking exercise anymore. These people use guns. We need to be able to respond in kind."

She wasn't wrong. I hated that she wasn't wrong. My experience with firearms was limited to the basic training the NSA provided—which is to say, I could hit a target at a range under controlled conditions, but I'd never fired a weapon in anger and I'd been perfectly happy keeping it that way. The thought of carrying a gun into a real situation made my stomach clench.

Marcus was studying me. His eyes were dark and unreadable, but there was something almost kind in the set of his mouth. "You okay with that, kid? Hardware?"

"I'm okay with not being dead," I said. The words came out steadier than I felt. "If that requires hardware, then yeah. I'm okay with it."

He nodded slowly, a gesture of acknowledgment rather than approval. "Alright. I can have a package ready in two hours. Comms, surveillance, tools, two sidearms with suppressors, and a few party favors for contingencies." He named a number that made me blink—not because it was expensive, though it was, but because Lin had that much cash readily available and didn't flinch. She just nodded, her expression unchanged.

"Done," she said.

"Meet me at the warehouse at four. You know the address." Marcus finished his drink in one smooth motion and stood. He was taller than I expected—six-three at least, with the kind of presence that made the room feel smaller. The bar's dim lights caught the shine of his scalp, the hard lines of his jaw. He looked down at us with an expression that mixed professional assessment with something almost paternal. "Lin. Be careful with this one. Denver isn't like the other nodes."

"I know."

"Do you? Because the people running that facility are Tier One operators. Former special forces, intelligence community hardcases who went private sector for the paycheck and stayed for the power. They're not going to be three guys in business casual checking network ports."

"I know," she repeated, and this time there was steel in her voice. A warning, maybe, or a promise.

Marcus held her gaze for a moment, something passing between them that I couldn't read. Then he nodded once, sharply. "Four o'clock. Don't be late." He walked out of the bar without looking back, and the room felt bigger for his absence. The air seemed to settle, the tension draining out like water from a cracked basin.

I finished my bourbon in one pull. It burned going down, a clean heat that spread through my chest. Good. I needed to feel something besides fear.

"Tier One operators," I said, setting the glass down. "Former special forces. And our plan is to break into their base."

"Our plan is to be smarter than they expect." She was already pulling out her phone, checking something. "Meridian is prepared for conventional threats—law enforcement, military, rival intelligence agencies. They're not prepared for two people with intimate knowledge of their systems and nothing to lose."

"I have things to lose. I have a cat."

"Your cat is with Mrs. Patterson. He's fine." She checked her watch—a simple black digital, the kind that doesn't draw attention. "We have two hours. We should eat. And I need to brief you on the Denver facility layout."

We left The Rusty Nail and found an all-night diner two blocks over—the kind of place that serves everything fried and doesn't judge you for ordering breakfast at 2:30 AM. The sign outside said "Nevada Grill" in faded neon, and the windows were steamed from the heat inside. The interior was all chrome and red vinyl, a time capsule from the 1950s that had been maintained with grudging care. A jukebox in the corner played old rock and roll, the sound tinny through speakers that had seen better decades.

I got eggs, bacon, hash browns, and coffee strong enough to dissolve a spoon. The waitress brought it with the efficiency of someone who'd been doing this job since before I was born, and I fell on it like a starving man. Lin got a salad, which felt like a personal attack given the circumstances—a bowl of wilted lettuce and pale tomatoes that looked like it had been assembled with resentment.

"The Denver node," she said, pulling out her laptop between forkfuls of lettuce. The screen glowed blue in the dim diner light, casting shadows across her face. "It's located in a building called the Pinnacle Center. Mixed-use commercial complex in the Denver Tech Center—office space, data center, conference facilities. Meridian operates out of the fourth and fifth floors under a cover company called Ashford Analytics. To anyone looking at the directory, they're a mid-size data analytics firm."

"Let me guess—the employees don't actually do data analytics."

"Some of them do." She took another bite of salad, chewing thoughtfully. "It's a functional cover—they have real clients, real revenue, real employees who don't know what's happening on the secured floors. The C2 infrastructure is in a hardened room on the fifth floor, accessible only through biometric security and a mantrap entry system."

"Mantrap." I chewed a piece of bacon, the salt and fat grounding me. "For the uninitiated, that's a two-door airlock where both doors are never open simultaneously, correct? Walk into the first chamber, first door locks behind you, biometrics verify you, second door opens or you're trapped?"

"Correct." She turned the laptop toward me, showing a schematic of the floor. "The biometrics are multi-factor—palm vein scanner and facial recognition. I'm in the system. You're not."

"So I'm riding your access."

"If we can get past the rest of the security." She zoomed in on the schematic, highlighting points in red. "Armed guards at building entry and at the fourth-floor checkpoint. Camera coverage on all approaches. And now that they're on high alert..."

"More guards. More cameras. Probably dogs, knowing my luck."

"No dogs." A ghost of a smile crossed her face. "But possibly a response team staged on-site. Marcus said Tier One—that means four to eight operators with military training, body armor, and automatic weapons."

I set my fork down. The eggs sat heavy in my stomach. "Lin. I need to ask this clearly because I need to hear the answer out loud. How do two people—one of whom is a network security consultant whose combat experience is limited to losing at jiu-jitsu twice a week—break into a facility defended by special forces operators?"

She met my eyes. Steady. No bullshit. The fluorescent lights of the diner caught the flecks of gold in her irises. "We don't fight them. We don't need to fight them. What we need is access to the server room for approximately four minutes. Long enough to execute a physical destruction protocol on the node and extract the drive array as evidence. Four minutes, and then we're gone."

"Four minutes in a room protected by a mantrap, armed guards, and cameras."

"Yes. Which is why we don't go through the front door." She turned her laptop toward me more fully. On the screen was a building schematic—detailed, architectural, the kind of plans that shouldn't be accessible to random people in diners at three in the morning. The lines were crisp and precise, annotated with measurements and labels. "The Pinnacle Center has a subterranean level—parking garage and mechanical systems. The HVAC infrastructure for the fifth floor runs through a vertical shaft that's accessible from the mechanical room in the basement. It's tight—two feet by three feet—but passable."

"A vent shaft." I stared at her, my coffee cup frozen halfway to my mouth. "You want me to crawl through a vent shaft. Like it's a movie."

"The HVAC shaft connects to the server room's dedicated cooling system. There's an access panel on the server room side for maintenance. It bypasses the mantrap entirely."

"And the cameras?"

"Wired system. Hardened, but dependent on the building's network backbone. If we can access the network infrastructure in the basement—which I can, because I helped design their security architecture—I can loop the camera feeds for the duration of our operation."

I picked my fork back up. Started eating again. Processing. The eggs were getting cold, but I didn't care. My mind was running through the plan, testing it against every scenario I could imagine.

"Okay," I said between bites of hash brown. "So the plan is: enter through the basement. You hack the cameras. I crawl through a vent shaft. We access the server room, destroy the node, grab evidence, and exit before anyone notices. Duration: four minutes inside, maybe twenty total."

"Plus the time for recon and positioning. Total operation window: approximately two hours from arrival to extraction."

"And if something goes wrong?"

"That's what the weapons are for."

I wanted to argue. I wanted to point out that I hadn't fired a gun in three years and had never been in anything resembling a real combat situation. I wanted to say that this plan had more holes than a sieve, that we were two people against an organization with unlimited resources and no qualms about killing. But I also thought about what Lin had shown me—the scope of the attack, the connections to hospitals and traffic systems and nuclear cooling infrastructure. Seventy million people. If Denver went active again...

"Okay," I said. The word tasted like surrender and resolve mixed together. "I'm in. Obviously I'm in. But I want it on record that this plan has approximately seventeen points of failure and I'm not happy about any of them."

"Noted." She closed her laptop, the screen going dark. "Eat your breakfast."

I ate my breakfast.

At 3:45, we paid our bill and drove to Marcus's warehouse. The streets of Reno were quiet at this hour, the neon signs still blazing but the foot traffic thinned to a trickle. We passed a homeless man pushing a shopping cart full of cans, a security guard smoking a cigarette outside a shuttered storefront, a stray dog that looked at us with the weary resignation of a creature that had seen too much.

The warehouse was exactly what you'd picture—a nondescript metal building in an industrial park, surrounded by similar buildings housing welding shops and auto repair places that may or may not have been fronts for other things. The parking lot was cracked asphalt with weeds growing through the fissures. A single security light cast a harsh white glow over the entrance. The sign on the door said "Cole's Custom Fabrication" in block letters, which technically wasn't a lie.

Marcus met us at the back entrance. He was wearing a leather work apron over his jacket, and his hands bore the faint traces of grease and metal dust. Inside, the warehouse was divided into sections—one that actually was a fabrication shop, with welding equipment and metalworking tools arranged in neat rows, and another behind a coded door that was considerably more interesting.

The back room was an armory. Wall-mounted racks of firearms lined the walls—rifles and shotguns and handguns of every description, arranged by caliber and purpose. Shelves of electronics sat in neat bins—radios, cameras, sensors, components. Cases of equipment were organized by type and function, each one labeled with a sharpie in precise block letters. It was like Q's lab from Bond if Q had a military surplus budget and less whimsy. The air smelled of gun oil and solder and the particular ozone tang of electronics.

"Package is here." Marcus led us to a long table where two duffel bags sat, zipped open to display their contents. He went through them item by item, his voice taking on the crisp professionalism of a man who'd briefed operators before. His hands moved with practiced precision, picking up each piece of equipment and setting it down in order.

"Communications: two encrypted radio sets, frequency-hopping, burst transmission capable. Range is about five miles urban, fifteen open terrain. They're paired to each other and nothing else—even if someone intercepts the signal, the encryption is AES-256 with rotating keys." He set two small earpieces and transmitter units on the table, each one no larger than a thumbnail. "You wear these in your ear, the transmitter clips to your collar. Voice-activated, so don't clear your throat unless you want me to hear it."

"Surveillance: two micro-cameras with wireless uplink, motion sensors, a parabolic microphone for listening at distance." He held up each item as he named it, letting us see the craftsmanship. The cameras were the size of a pencil eraser, the microphone a small dish that folded into a case the size of a paperback. "This"—he held up a device about the size of a deck of cards, matte black and unassuming—"is a network tap. Clip it onto any ethernet cable and it gives you passive read access to all traffic. Undetectable by standard intrusion detection systems."

"Nice," I said, taking it. The device was well-made—clean solder joints visible through a small inspection window, quality components that hummed with latent capability. I turned it over in my hands, appreciating the craftsmanship. "Custom build?"

"I have a guy," Marcus said, which was the most CIA answer possible. He moved on, his voice picking up pace. "Entry tools: pick set, bypass tools, a portable plasma cutter for harder barriers—it's small but it'll get through a standard security door lock in about eight seconds. And these." He produced two handguns—compact, matte black, each with a cylindrical suppressor threaded onto the barrel. "Glock 43X. Nine millimeter. Suppressed. Compact enough to conceal, reliable enough for combat use. Fifteen-round magazines, and I'm giving you four extra mags each." He looked at me specifically, his eyes hard and assessing. "When's the last time you fired a weapon?"

"Three years. Range day at Fort Meade."

"Then you keep it for emergencies only." He turned to Lin. "You're the designated shooter if it comes to it. Ethan, your job is the technical work. Don't try to be a hero with that thing."

"Wasn't planning on it." I picked up the Glock. It was lighter than I expected—maybe a pound and a half loaded. The grip fit my hand well, textured polymer that provided a secure hold. I checked the chamber—clear—and dry-fired once to feel the trigger pull. Smooth. Short reset. The trigger broke at about five and a half pounds, a clean wall and a crisp release. "Safety?" I asked.

"Glock doesn't have a manual safety. Trigger safety only. Keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot. Point it at things you want to destroy. Don't point it at things you don't." His voice had the patient cadence of someone who'd delivered this speech many times, to many people, in many different rooms. "And if you have to shoot—shoot until the threat stops moving. Not once. Not twice. Until it stops."

"Cheerful advice. I'll treasure it."

Marcus loaded the bags with extra supplies—zip ties in multiple sizes, a first aid kit that was significantly more advanced than a consumer model, containing trauma dressings and tourniquets and chest seals, a handheld GPS unit with pre-loaded maps of the Denver area, and what appeared to be a small brick of something wrapped in plastic. The package was about the size of a deck of cards, wrapped in wax paper and sealed with electrical tape.

"C4?" I asked, with what I hoped was casual curiosity and not visible alarm.

"Thermite compound," Marcus corrected. He picked it up carefully, handling it with the respect it deserved. "For destroying the server hardware. Lin said you need to make sure the node can't be recovered—this will melt through a server rack in about four seconds. Radio-triggered detonator, effective range two hundred meters." He showed us the detonator—a simple device with a flip cover and a red button, because apparently some clichés existed for a reason. The button was recessed under the cover, requiring a deliberate action to press.

"I was going to suggest we just delete the hard drives," I said weakly. The thought of carrying explosives into a building made my palms sweat.

"Drives can be forensically recovered. Molten metal cannot." Lin took the thermite pack and placed it carefully in her bag, zipping it into a padded compartment. "Marcus, what about the Denver area specifically? Any assets? Any safe houses?"

"I've got a contact in Boulder—retired Marine, runs a legit security consulting firm. Owes me a favor from Kabul. I can have him set up a staging area—somewhere you can plan and prep before the operation." He paused, reaching under the table. "Also." Marcus reached under the table and pulled out a manila envelope, thick with documents. "Building plans for the Pinnacle Center. Original architectural drawings, plus the modifications filed for the Ashford Analytics buildout. I pulled these from county records three months ago when Lin first told me about Denver."

"Three months?" I looked at Lin, my eyebrows rising. "You've been planning this for three months?"

"I've been planning contingencies for eight months," she said. Her voice was flat, but I saw something flicker in her eyes—exhaustion, maybe, or the weight of carrying this alone for so long. "Denver was always the hardest target. I hoped the remote kill switch would handle it. Now we're on Plan B."

"Is there a Plan C?"

"Plan C is we fail and the country goes dark." She said it without inflection, but I saw her hand tighten on the strap of her bag, the knuckles going white. "There is no Plan C."

Marcus walked us back to the car, helping carry the duffel bags. The eastern sky was just starting to lighten—that pre-dawn gray that makes everything look uncertain, the color of old photographs and half-remembered dreams. The air was cold and still, carrying the faint smell of desert sage and diesel exhaust. We loaded the bags in the trunk, the weight of them settling the car lower on its suspension. Marcus stood there for a moment, hands in his jacket pockets, looking at us the way a father looks at kids heading off to do something stupid.

"Lin," he said. "You know I'd come with you if I could."

"I know." Her voice was softer than I'd heard it before. "But you're compromised if you're seen near Meridian infrastructure. They know your face."

"They know yours too, now."

"That's different. I'm already burned. You still have value as an unknown asset." She extended her hand. He took it, held it for a moment longer than a handshake required. I saw something pass between them—a history I didn't know, a trust I could only guess at.

"Be smart. Be fast. And if it goes sideways—get out. The node isn't worth your lives."

"Seventy million people's lives," she said quietly. The words hung in the cold air, heavy with meaning.

Marcus looked at her for a long moment. The wind picked up, stirring dust across the parking lot. Then he nodded once, released her hand, and turned to me. "Ethan Zhao. Take care of her."

"I'll try." I met his eyes. "She seems significantly more competent than me at basically everything, but I'll try."

A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "Good enough." He stepped back, his boots crunching on the gravel. "Go. You've got twelve hours of road ahead of you and the clock is ticking."

We got in the car. Lin drove this time—I was running on fumes and bad diner coffee, and my body was making increasingly urgent demands for real sleep. The Civic's engine turned over with a familiar rumble, and we pulled out of the industrial park, the headlights cutting through the pre-dawn gray. The road pointed east toward I-80 and the long stretch of Nevada desert that would carry us into Utah and beyond, across the salt flats and through the mountains, toward Denver and whatever waited for us there.

"Sleep," Lin said. Her voice was calm, but I could hear the edge underneath. "I'll wake you in four hours."

"What about you? You've been awake as long as I have."

"I slept in the car earlier." A pause. "And I'm used to operating on minimal rest. Meridian trained that out of me." Her voice was neutral on the surface, but I heard the edge beneath. The things that had been trained out of her—or into her—by an organization building weapons against its own country. The sacrifices she'd made, the parts of herself she'd given up.

"Lin," I said, already feeling the pull of exhaustion dragging me down. "Thank you. For finding me. For giving me a chance to do something about this."

She was quiet for a moment. The road stretched ahead of us, empty and dark, the white lines flashing past in a hypnotic rhythm. Then: "Don't thank me yet. Thank me when it's over."

"If it's over."

"When," she said. Her voice was firm, certain. "It will be over. One way or another."

I reclined the seat and closed my eyes. The road hummed beneath us—a steady vibration that pulled me toward unconsciousness like a current. My last thought before sleep took me was about the third player. Nightfall. Whoever had cut the power in San Francisco. Whoever had sent the warning about Denver being a trap.

Who were they? What did they want? And were they going to help us, or were we just pieces in their game too?

I slept.

And dreamed about dark rooms and blinking servers and the sound of someone counting down from ten. The numbers echoed in the darkness, each one a step closer to something I couldn't see but could feel—a pressure building, a clock winding down. The server lights blinked in patterns that almost made sense, almost formed words, but slipped away when I tried to focus.

I didn't make it to zero before Lin's voice woke me up four hours later, somewhere in the Nevada desert, with the sun blazing through the windshield and a new message on the clean phone.

From Nightfall. Three words.

Don't trust her.

I looked at Lin, profile sharp against the morning light, hands steady on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road ahead. The sun caught the edges of her face, the line of her jaw, the slight furrow of concentration between her brows. She looked tired but determined, the same expression she'd worn since the moment we met.

And I thought: Trust is a luxury I can't afford. Every instinct I'd developed in years of intelligence work screamed at me to question everything, to verify every piece of information, to trust no one. But faith?

Faith is all I've got left.

I put the phone away without mentioning the message. For now, I would watch. I would wait. And I would hope that when the moment came, I would know which way to turn.