The snow in Vienna was stained black.
Emergency crews clawed through debris at the Grand Regent Hotel, where Magritte was last seen. Elias stood across the street in a tailored black coat, face stoic.
Jude's voice crackled through the earpiece.
"They say no survivors."
"She isn't dead," Elias said, quietly. "Not her."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because if Magritte wanted to disappear, she wouldn't leave a trace… but she left me a trail."
Back in Zurich, Elias decoded a sequence hidden within the NOX vault files. It was a rotating cipher linked to music a track titled "Rêverie."
Buried beneath its waveforms was a set of coordinates.
Casablanca, Morocco.
A place neither Elias nor Magritte had ever visited at least not in this lifetime.
Jude raised an eyebrow. "You're going?"
"I have to."
Casablanca's medina was alive with color and danger.
The coordinates led Elias to an abandoned perfumery.
Inside, a single envelope waited.
It was hand-inked. The scent of bergamot lingered on its edges. Inside, "Elias,
I've never lied about who I was. Only what I needed to do.
The world we're fighting isn't run by men like Landon or Valerie.
It's run by names no one knows because those names rewrite history. Find NOX Protocol 2.The rest… you already know. M"
Meanwhile in Dubai, Valerie Dexter sat in a skybar overlooking the city.
Beside her was a man known only as Mr. Shrike a cold, bald enforcer with NATO credentials and private contracts in six continents.
"Elias is digging," Valerie said, sipping saffron vodka.
Mr. Shrike nodded. "Then let him dig. If he unearths Protocol 2… we kill him and bury it again."
"And Magritte?"
"She'll die too. Like she should have years ago."
Valerie watched the city below.
"No. Let's not kill her. Let's turn her into the villain."
Lewis appeared in Marrakesh, broken but alive.
He met Elias under the cover of night, eyes scanning the alley.
"I've tracked NOX's second base. It's not a vault it's a person."
Elias frowned. "A person?"
Lewis nodded.
"Codenamed,NEMO. A data courier. Flesh and blood. If we find Nemo, we find the final records."
Somewhere near Montenegro, Magritte shaved her head.
She wore a red silk scarf and no expression. A young girl offered her bread at a checkpoint.
Magritte smiled softly, took the loaf, and whispered, "Thank you."
The girl blinked, uncertain.
Magritte disappeared into the crowd.
But before leaving, she slipped a card into the girl's pocket.
When the girl's father found it hours later, it had only one word.
NOX. Begin Again
At a private airfield, Elias stood alone beside his jet.
A message from Sienne pinged.
"Your accounts were flagged. Someone's trying to freeze everything connected to Thorne Holdings."
Jude arrived with two passports.
"One for you. One for Magritte if she ever shows up."
Elias stared out toward the stars.
"She's already ahead of me."