The fog hadn't lifted by morning.

Frank stood at the edge of the abandoned industrial yard, his boots scraping against the gravel, the echo of last night's confrontation still hanging in the air. The place was dead silent — just the slow hum of the wind whistling through rusted cranes and hollow containers.

A shell casing glinted in the dirt. He crouched, picked it up, turned it between his fingers.One of his own. Precise, measured — like the shot that sent the cartel running.

Near the tire tracks, he noticed something half-buried in mud. He brushed off the dirt — it was Zoey's ID badge. The corner was cracked, the photograph half-faded, but her eyes in it still carried the same stubborn light. He stared at it for a long moment before tucking it into his coat pocket.

His comm crackled faintly. He thumbed the switch.

Frank: "Miller to Command. Operation breached. Parker compromised. Requesting data containment."

Static. Then Colonel Ricky's voice, calm but cold.

Ricky: "Copy that. Containment already in motion. Get back to base. Alone."

Frank: "Understood."

He turned toward the empty road, the city's skyline barely visible through the smog. For the first time in a long time, Frank Miller felt something heavier than anger — disappointment.

The debriefing room smelled of metal and disinfectant — one table, two chairs, and a flickering fluorescent light that buzzed like an insect. Frank sat straight-backed, the exhaustion barely visible in his expression. Three officers faced him across the table, notebooks open, eyes clinical.

Officer 1: "How long had Parker been displaying irregular behavior?"

Frank: "Define irregular."

Officer 2: "Evasive. Emotional. Secretive."

Frank's tone stayed flat.

"Zoey's always been evasive. Comes with intelligence work."

Officer 3: "You didn't notice any signs of deception?"

Frank: "Not the kind I could prove."

A pause. Pens scratched paper.

Officer 1: "So you're telling us a trained field agent managed to deceive her partner for weeks without raising your suspicion?"

Frank: "No. I'm telling you I don't make accusations without evidence."

Silence. One of the officers leaned forward.

Officer 2: "Colonel Ricky will debrief you personally. Until then, you're off rotation."

Frank didn't respond. He just stared at the wall clock — 11:43 a.m. — and the faint tick sounded louder than anything else in the room.

The door opened behind him. Colonel Ricky walked in, closing it softly. He dismissed the others with a look, then leaned against the table.

Ricky: "You look like you haven't slept."

Frank: "Sleep's a luxury."

Ricky crossed his arms.

"She had you fooled."

Frank's eyes flicked up.

"She fooled all of us."

Ricky studied him, expression unreadable.

"Not all. I still think she's not done."

Frank: "You think she's alive."

Ricky: "I know she is."

Frank's jaw tightened. "If she surfaces again, I'll finish it."

Ricky's gaze softened slightly.

"Or maybe you'll save her. Either way, we're not done with Zoey Parker."

Frank stood, grabbed his coat, and left without another word. The mission closure form sat unsigned on the desk — a quiet refusal that Ricky noticed but didn't comment on.

Across the city, Zoey sat hunched in a rundown motel room, the kind where the walls were thin enough to hear other people breathe. Her hands trembled as she cleaned a shallow cut on her arm, the blood crusted dark against her sleeve.

On the bed lay the decoy access key Frank had used — still blinking red.A cruel reminder that he'd outplayed her.

She turned on her phone, opened the encrypted comms app, but no connection. The cartel handler's last voice message still echoed in her mind:

"You failed the drop! You compromised us! You're on your own now."

Her throat tightened. She hurled the comms device into the sink, grabbed her pistol, and smashed it into pieces until only fragments remained. The sound of breaking plastic filled the silence.

I wanted out, she thought. I just didn't realize there was no out.

She caught her reflection in the cracked mirror — pale, bruised, eyes hollow. The woman staring back wasn't the confident agent who'd joined the DPD years ago. This was someone cornered by her own lies.

She unlocked her phone again, hesitated, and typed:

To: Col. R. Rickleton"Need to talk. Off record. I can fix what I broke."

Her finger hovered over the send button.

Then she locked the screen instead and buried her face in her hands.

Frank's room at the barracks looked nothing like it used to — half the lights were off, files scattered across the desk. The air reeked of cigarettes and stale coffee.

He poured a drink but didn't touch it. Instead, he laid out what little evidence he had: Zoey's cracked badge, the access ID, and a sealed folder marked VERTEX INTERNAL.

He stared at them as if the papers might start talking.

The silence pressed in, heavy and suffocating.

He remembered Ricky's words — "Maybe you'll save her."

Save her? The same woman who'd handed his mission to a cartel? Who'd lied straight to his face while sleeping under the same roof? Frank almost laughed — a sharp, humorless sound.

He muttered under his breath,

"You wanted redemption, Zoey? Then bring me a reason not to destroy you."

He powered on his terminal and began running data traces, filtering digital breadcrumbs from her old access logs. A faint trace appeared — a short-range encrypted ping, registered twelve hours ago. The source: a rural motel outside Northvale.

Meanwhile, Colonel Ricky stood in the ops control room, staring at a wall of screens. Northvale's map was covered in red pings — locations of Vertex's suspected shell companies and cartel-linked data nodes.

An officer spoke quietly beside him.

"Sir, public coverage of the leak's spreading. Media's connecting Vertex to the black-market recordings."

Ricky: "Let them connect it. It'll make the cleanup easier."

Another officer frowned.

"What about Parker? She's a liability."

Ricky's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Traitors die fast. Survivors get useful."

He dismissed the officers, then unlocked a hidden terminal.A secure window blinked to life: "Shadow Contact: ZP."

He typed:

"You want a second chance? Meet me. 0200 hours. No surveillance."

He hesitated before sending it — then hit "Transmit."

The soft glow of the screen reflected in his eyes as he murmured,

"Let's see how bad you really want to live."

Night draped the city in its usual neon haze.Frank sat on his bed, cigarette burning low between his fingers. His terminal beeped once — a faint, unstable signal flashing on the map.

Zoey's badge.It was alive.

The ping came from just outside Northvale, same coordinates as the motel. The signal was weak, intermittent — either damaged hardware or deliberate interference.

Frank watched it blink for a while, jaw tight.

Either she's trying to come back, he thought, or she's leading me into the dark.

He stubbed the cigarette, holstered his weapon, and grabbed his jacket.As he stepped outside, the cold air hit him — sharp, metallic, biting.

The hum of the base behind him faded as he walked toward his car, headlights cutting through the mist. The city skyline glimmered like a broken promise ahead.

He started the engine, the dashboard glowing faint red. The blinking dot on the GPS kept pulsing — slow, steady, alive.

Frank shifted into gear.

Whatever waited on the other end of that signal — forgiveness, trap, or truth — he was going to face it head-on.

And this time, he wasn't going to flinch.

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