"They're here," Marcus whispered, a strange, calm resolve washing over his face. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small flare gun. "I’ll buy you five minutes. Take the old fisherman's trail down the south face of the cliff. My boat is tied to the low buoy. Don't look back, Elias. Just go."

Elias hadn't seen Marcus in three years. Marcus had gone deep into private intelligence, chasing ghosts in the corporate sector.

"Aden" was not a person. It was an old fishing outpost on the jagged northern coast, abandoned fifteen years ago after the Great Surge. It was also the codename for a contingency they all swore they would never have to use.

Twenty minutes later, Elias was pushing his rusted truck through the dense coastal fog. The headlights barely punched through the grey soup, reflecting off the skeletal pine trees that lined the cliffside road. His mind raced back to the academy, to the four of them—Elias, Marcus, Silas, and Clara. They had promised to look out for each other, no matter where life scattered them. Marcus was the one who came up with the emergency protocol.

Through the receiver came a heavy, panicked inhale, followed by a voice that sounded like gravel being crushed. "Aden... Aden... Aden." The line went dead.

"There's no time!" Marcus snapped, flinching as a gull shrieked overhead. He thrust the briefcase toward Elias. "They traced my signal. They knew I'd call someone. Take it. Clara is in the city, she has the encryption key. You have to get it to her."