Chapter 29: Meeting in the Dark

The Blackfriars Bridge was a sword of light and darkness slicing across the Thames. Under Victorian ironwork, the world was diminished to a dripping cavern of rock and the troubled slap of water off oily pillars. The air clung to the reek of river silt, diesel oil, and damp cold that permeates bone. It was a place for things unseen: lost tides, lost secrets, and desperate rendezvous.

Anton was in the deepest corner of darkness, the rolled-up collar of his jacket to the chill. He was a man out of a poor thriller, and the absurdity of it all was almost within reach of making him smile. Anton Rogers, the man who held meetings in penthouse suites and corporate jets, bending to cower under a bridge, awaiting a ghost.

The Luxwing pilot, a grizzled man with the cynic's gaze of one who had seen too many clandestine pickups, had simply pushed the note into his hand as he'd boarded the jet at Basel. No explanation. Just a grim nod. The message was as threatening as it was chilling. TRUST THE PILOT. He did. And here he was, in the very heart of London, the city from which his downfall had been announced, waiting for the one person who could save him or finally finish him off.

Every sound was a warning. The groan of the bridge above, the distant wail of a siren, the scratch of a shoe on rock—each sent his heart pounding wildly. He was a fool. This was an ambush. Evelyn had him outsmarted once again. She knew he would make Sabe, and she had brought him to this perfect, remote spot for a quiet, final conclusion.

Then, a figure separated from the greater darkness near the center pillar. It moved quietly, a shadow formation into a man. Lean, his posture defined with hurt even in the gloom. The fine angles of his face were sculpted by starvation and fatigue, his eyes twin wells of reflected city light, burning with a creepy intensity.

Sabatine.

He picked him up a few feet away, within range that Anton could notice the grime ingrained in the folds of his jacket, the way he stood with his weight on his right side. He was something the river had vomited up, something raw and dangerous.

They stood there for an eternity, staring. The space between them was charged with it all: the fire, the accusations, the rain-filled confession, the destruction.

Anton broke the silence, his words bursting from him in a cruel, angry whisper. "You shouldn't have come."

It was fear talking. Fear of the perceived snipers on the bridge, the police boats cutting through the water so quietly. Fear of this man, shattered and hunted for him.

Sabe did not waver. His eyes were resolute, absolute. "I didn't come to ask permission."

The proclamation was a granite wall. It was not disobedience. It was an unyielding fact. He had made up his mind, and the risk, the consequence, didn't matter. He was there.

He strode among them, his step stiff but determined. He did not offer his hand. Instead, he produced the flash drive from his pocket, the metal flashing with a thread of light far away.

"Evelyn and Marcus," Sabe said, his gravelly voice dropping low. "They recorded themselves. The client is 'Rogers.' It's a company clique. They're not stealing from you, Anton. They're in the process of a hostile takeover with your technology. The set-up, the psychiatric evaluation… it's all to discredit and remove you so they can install their own people and own the prototype legally."

He shoved the drive into Anton's hand. The metal was warm from his body temperature. "It's all there. The video. The Aegis Zero documents. The money trail to Janus. It's the truth."

Anton curled his fingers around the little thing. It was nothing, but it could upend his world. The evidence. The exoneration. It was everything he'd ever required.

And looking at Sabe, seeing the brutal cost of obtaining it, the weight of it was crushing.

“They’ve petitioned for stewardship,” Anton said, the corporate term tasting like ash. “They’re claiming I’m incapacitated. My own board.”

“I know,” Sabe said. There was no surprise in his voice, only a grim confirmation. “We’re out of time.”

“We?” The word burst from Anton, laced with a bitter, helpless fury. “Look at you, Sabe! You’re half-dead. You’re public enemy number one. I’m a step away from being committed or arrested. There is no ‘we’. There’s just… this.” He gestured at the dark, filthy space around them. “This is the end of the line.”

Sabe moved further in, pushing into Anton's space. His scent. River dampness, sweat, and the faint, metallic tang of dried blood clung around him in ghostly waves.

"It's not the end," Sabe said, his voice faltering, dropping precariously low. "It's the only place we had to start. They're the ones who have the power out there." He nodded towards the brilliant cityscape. "In the light. In the boardrooms. In the headlines. But here? In the dark?" He shook his head slowly. "Here, it's just us. And they don't know what we are."

The resolve in his voice was a physical shove. Anton wished to argue, count the thousand ways this was a hopeless, suicidal fantasy. But words would not come. He was so tired of running. So tired of being the CEO, the planner, the man who must always have the next move anticipated.

Now, in the shadows, there was just one calculation that mattered.

Why?" Anton drew in a breath, the question ripped from the heart of him. "Why are you doing this? You have the proof. You could have leaked it. You could have saved yourself. Why risk everything to give it to me?"

Sabe didn't say anything for a long time, his gaze scouring Anton's face as though tracing a map to somewhere he never thought he'd arrive.

"You asked me that during a fire," he said at last. "You asked me how our agreement was going to go down." He breathed slowly, in pain. "There is no agreement, Anton. Not any longer."

He reached out, his gesture hesitant, and his cold, rough fingers brushed against Anton's hand that gripped the flash drive. The touch was like electricity, a spark that stopped the world.

"I'm not here for the work," Sabe answered, his voice raw, stripped of all its professional scaffolding. "I'm not here for redemption. I'm here because you looked at a pile of evidence that told you I was a monster, and you saw the man instead. I'm here because when I had nothing, not even my own name, you gave me your trust."

His curled fingers, not holding Anton's hand, but stretched over it, a bridge between them.

"So I didn't come to ask permission," he said again, his eyes locking with Anton's, stormy and unguarded. "I came to stand with you. Whatever this turns out to be."

It was more intimate than any kiss. It was a promise.

Anton's defenses finally broke down. The walls of control so meticulously constructed, the fear of weakness, the lifetime assumption that trust was a flaw—all demolished with a wave of his arm. The great Anton Rogers, vanquished not by corporate espionage, but by the unshakeable loyalty of a shattered man.

He turned his hand, his fingers closing over Sabe's. The movement was awkward, tentative, but it was real. The flash drive rested on their palms, a cold, firm impression on their pact.

"Then we stand together," Anton said, the words loaded with an emotion he no longer feared.

In the hushed stillness under the bridge, with the city's indifferent rumble above them, they stood. Two men, one wearing a frayed coat, the other in a suit that had cost more than most cars, holding on to each other in the darkness. The past was a burned-out hulk behind them. The future was a looming battle. But for this suspended instant, there was only the solid, unbreakable reality of the man beside him.

A sudden, jolting vibration buzzed against Anton's chest, breaking the trance. He yanked back, pulling his hand away to reach for his other phone, the one only his top pilot knew about.

There was one automated message displayed on the screen.

Perimeter alert activated. Asset 200 meters and closing.

They had run out of time. The trap was shutting.

Sabe's eyes met his, all softness gone, to be replaced with the chilling ferocity of the operative. "We have to leave. Now."

The covert meeting in darkness came to an end. The war was set to begin.

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