Chapter 205: Kaine’s Warning

The Zurich safe house was a different animal altogether. Smaller and dingier, with a quiet apartment perched above a view of the river Limmat and lace curtains and the hint of lemon polish. It was almost ludicrously normal compared to the buzzing cleanliness of the data farm. The burden of leadership had passed from Anton’s broad shoulders to a collective plan, and with it came a fragile, pointed calm. They were ironing out the specifics of the Marcus leak when the world shifted again.

It was Leon who spotted it first. A flicker on the security screen from the ancient lobby. Not a person. An object. A young messenger man wearing a standard-issue red jacket had entered and set down a small, silver rectangle on the mail table, taken a scan with his device, and left. No attempt to enter the apartment. No signature required. Boring.

But Leon froze the picture, zooming in on it. “No company logo. No waybill. The scanner is just a prop. That man is military or ex-military. Notice the haircut, the stance.”

But then he was there, and Sabatine could feel the chill running through his own veins. He didn’t need the zoom. The package itself served as a message enough. The silver foil packaging had sharp corners, like an envelope made of metal. It was a calling card that he had whispers of but never seen before. “The Librarian” had a taste for symbols. Paper was for earthly things. Silver was for specters and reflections, things that would show you something about yourself.

“Don’t touch it,” Sabatine ordered, his voice tight. “It’s for Anton.”

Anton, who had been perusing schedules on trains to Geneva on a burner device, looked up. “What is?”

“It’s a message. From Kaine.” Sabatine was already reaching for a pair of latex gloves from their medical kit. “He knows we’re here. He knows this location. The message begins with the package delivery: your secret hideouts are transparent to me.”

“Could be tracked,” Leon replied, his hand inching toward the gun holstered beneath his jacket.

“It isn’t,” Sabatine declared with a certain grim knowledge. “He doesn’t have to. It isn’t about tracking. It’s about theater. It’s about proof of penetration. That’s what he’s saying: that the game really isn’t over yet. We just don’t know about it yet.”

He looked at Anton. “You don't have to see it.”

Anton carefully put down the tablet. The colour had drained from his face, but instead, he looked determined. The man who had broken down in the server room no longer existed, and instead, there was the man who had determined he would carry on with a faulty foundation. “If it’s for me, I’ll see it. Bring it up.”

Leon went down. He came back five minutes later with the silver package carefully contained within an evidence bag. It had been swept for explosives, chemicals, and tracking. It was clean. “It’s just the object,” he confirmed, putting it on the wooden dining table, its surface scratched.

The three men gathered around it. It appeared to suck any light from that sunny Zurich afternoon. It stood as a cold, alien presence in that warm room.

“Open it,” Anton said.

Sabatine, gloved, carefully slits the package open with a utility knife. Inside, there was no device, no data chip. Only a single page of thick, cream-colored parchment. His eyes screwed up, and he pulled it out.

The words were set in a strict, beautiful font. The black ink was so strong it appeared to rest on top of the page instead of sinking into it.

You will not leave Geneva alive.

It came with no signature. No explanation. It was no warning cry of rage; it was a diagnosis. A pronouncement of fact, made with all the detachment of a specialist announcing a terminal illness.

The silence in the room was total. The gentle lapping of the river against the window seemed to mock them.

Anton's eyes were fixed on the words, and he had a blank expression on his face. But Sabatine could see him working it out. It was all calculation and exit strategy and odds. That’s what he wanted. But Sabatine knew better. It’s not information. It’s mind warfare at a very sophisticated level. It’s a seed. It’s planted in a man's mind. It sprouts into a forest of fear, hesitation, and crazy decisions. Kaine isn’t forecasting. Kaine is trying to generate an outcome by undermining will.

Leon spoke up. “It’s a bluff. He’s just trying to get us to make a wrong move and make a dash for an area he’s already protected.”

“Is it?” Anton’s voice was low. “He knew we were in London. He knew we would have come here. He has Evelyn and Marcus feeding him intel, and who knows who else inside my business, my life. He could have snipers on all possible extraction routes out of Geneva. He could have paid off people at border control. He could have plans we haven’t even dreamed of.” At last, he looked up at Sabatine. “He’s telling the truth, isn’t he? As he sees it.”

Sabatine kept staring at him, saying no more. “He believes it. He only speaks about things he can promise will happen. That shows he has control of the city. The villa isn’t just an auction house. It’s at the center of a spider web. To get into Geneva, you enter his crossfire.”

“So we don’t go,” Leon said bluntly. “Weabort. We pick up the evidence you have, and then Anton goes public with it from afar—and then we leave Durand and Kaine for Interpol and a dozen intelligence services to raid.”

It was the sane option. The safe option. Anton's eyes flicked back to the parchment. The words seemed to pulse.

You will not leave Geneva alive.

Whether he ran or hid, it would still be true. Anton Rogers, the leader, the man who stood up against his father’s ghost, would be dead. He would be a fugitive, with a business brought low and a reputation for cowardice. Kaine would emerge victorious. The prototype would be sold. Evelyn and Marcus might be captured, but the Librarian would be gone, waiting to pen another tragedy for someone else.

“No,” Anton said. The word was gentle but definitive. “We go. He’s issued a constraint. We operate within it.”

“Anton—” Sabatine began, a protest born of pure, primal fear.

“He said I won’t leave Geneva alive,” Anton broke in, an unusual, almost feverish glint seeping into his eyes. “He didn’t say I’d die there.”

“Semantics. A word game,” Sabatine stared at him.

“It’s the only game we have,” Anton’s control broke for a moment, a flash of raw energy. “He deals in stories, yeah? Clean stories. So we foul it up. We alter the ending. ‘Anton Rogers didn’t leave Geneva alive’… because he never arrived.”

It hit Sabatine. It took time. It chilled. A false identity. A digital ghost.

“Right. And he’s looking for Anton Rogers. So, Anton Rogers evaporates. Now. Before we cross the border into the canton. We assume another identity. We let his snipers scan the trains, the private airports, the highways, someone with a face we no longer have.” Anton’s thoughts were racing ahead, spinning a tale out of the danger. “He’s offered us our premise. We supply the punchline.”

It was brilliant. And it was completely insane. It would have required perfect execution, and they barely had the resources for it. Not to mention a degree of stealth that would make them completely invisible.

“And the note?” Leon pointed at the parchment. “What’s the play?”

Before he could even think about it, Anton reached out with bare hands and took hold of the cream parchment. Holding it with a gentleness that suggested he might be handling a poisonous leaf, he read it with a sort of chilly contempt.

“This is a psychological anchor,” Anton continued. “He wants us to carry it with us. To let these words ring in our heads with every step we take. To let fear be his ally.” Anton walked towards the small tiled stove that stood in the corner of the apartment. It was old and unused but still served its purpose. Anton opened the iron door, and inside, the clean black grate smiled at him.

“Anton,” said Sabatine, with warning in his voice. To destroy it was an insult, an act of juvenile rebellion.

Anton disregarded him. He reached for the box of matches on the mantle. He took one and struck it. The flame burst forth, a small but valiant sun in the dark room. He touched it to the corner of the parchment.

For an instant, there was no reaction. And then the expensive paper caught, the flame dancing ravenously around the edge, devouring the black typescript. You won’t… The words blackened and curled and reduced to ember. …leave Geneva… The flames ate the prediction, the certainty. …alive. The final word blew away in a flash of brightness.

Anton threw the flaming page into the grate. It blackened and fell apart into ash. The silver-foiled envelope sat empty on the table, like a discarded cocoon.

“He doesn’t get to write my ending,” Anton said quietly but with a ring of steel. He closed the door on the stove with a soft but emphatic click. “He doesn’t get to plant his anchors among my thoughts. And his message will be received—and disregarded.”

It caused a ripple of feelings so strong that it made Sabatine's chest tighten. It had nothing to do with boastfulness. It had everything to do with an act of deeply expressive defiance. Anton had reached out and set the seed of fear on fire before it had a chance to sprout.

The air in the room seemed different. It seemed lighter. The heavy presence of the silver package had been replaced, not with security, but with a sharpened and deliberate intention. The danger no longer lurked as a spectral presence but as an obstacle to be cleverly outwit.

“Becoming ghosts… it’s not simple,” Sabatine continued, moving on. “We need new identities. Digital footprints. Backgrounds that will hold up to a cursory check by Kaine’s people, if not a deep dive.”

“I have resources,” Anton said. “Accounts, connections my father set up for. delicate purchases. Untraceable. We can use them.”

Leon nodded slowly. “I know a forger in Basel. The best. He does work for… well, for people who need to disappear from people like Kaine. It’ll cost.”

“Money is not an object,” Anton said. It was the first time since the penthouse that he had spoken like a billionaire, and it made his words all the more eloquent because they were said not in a cry for indulgence but for survival.

“We need a story,” Sabatine said, reaching for a new mental gear. “An excuse to be in Geneva, in the area, near the villa. Not about the auction. Something dull. Something invisible.”

“Tech conference,” Anton suggested. “There’s always one. We’re minor investors from… Estonia. Fintech. It’s boring, it accounts for us, and it allows us to have a presence within certain circles.”

They labored for hours, the burned ash still visible in the stove. Plans were abandoned and rebuilt and streamlined. The Marcus leak was adjusted to factor in their new anonymity. They would be just two more anonymous faces in a city full of diplomats and bankers, with their target unaware they had already discarded their disguises. 

As night began to fall on Zurich, the rest fell into place. Leon would leave before dawn to acquire the new identities. They would make their separate ways to Geneva via unexceptional means: local trains, a rental car—and meet at an unassuming hotel.

Standing at the window, watching the lights flicker on the black river, Anton spoke without turning. "He believes he's working with a wounded animal, cornered. He expects fear, or ferocious desperation.” 

Sabatine positioned herself beside him. “What does he have going on?"

 Anton fell silent for an uncomfortably long period. “A man with no more to lose but that which he’s just discovered.” Only then did he look at Sabatine, and within his grey eyes, the city lights were nothing short of the burned warning sign’s embers. “I am more deadly than a billionaire, and I am more deadly than a victim. And I am unpredictable.”

 Sabatine understood. The note Kaine had written had been intended to freeze, to isolate, to terrorize. But with it gone, burned, Anton had made a move Kaine, for all his calculation, might not have counted on: he was fighting not just for survival, but for the fragile, horrible possibility that had flickered into life between them in the back of an armored car. 

The warning had failed. But instead, there was a promise, unspoken and fierce, hanging between them: We will leave Geneva together. And we will be alive.

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