The air was heavy with foreboding on that dark night as Lucas, Aiden, and Damian sat huddled in the poorly lit safe house. Maps, papers, and encrypted documents littered the table, their information showing the magnitude of the danger they were facing.

  Damian drummed a file with his finger. "These are the major players still pursuing us. Senior operatives, mercenaries, and dirty officials who have everything to lose if the secrets of our past get any further out. And now, courtesy of Aiden's Sentinel AI, they're more paranoid than ever."

  Aiden scowled. "Because my system could reveal them?"

  Lucas nodded. "It's not just that. Sentinel AI is about control. If they can't control security systems the way they want to anymore, they lose their power. And people like them don't react well to that."

  Damian reclined against the chair. "Which means they'll do whatever it takes to get it shut down—and kill anyone who gets in their way."

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  Aiden swallowed hard. "Then we take them out first."

  Lucas and Damian looked at each other, a silent communication between them. Aiden was no fighter, but the flame in his eyes spoke of a man who would not be a victim. He had been forced into a war he did not seek, yet there he stood, unbreakable. Lucas knew that kind of determination—it was the same determination that had once kept him alive.

  Damian took a breath, regarding Aiden with something approaching respect. "Looks like you're in it for the long haul, Carter. You had better be ready."

  Aiden looked back at him without breaking eye contact. "I don't need to be ready. I just need to win."

  The war had started, and the lines were drawn in blood and secrets. There was no going back now—only the battle ahead, where survival was outmaneuvering foes who flourished in the dark. Shadows spoke with the gravity of business left undone, and every step from this point forward would decide not only their destiny, but the destiny of those standing in the way of a reckoning long overdue.