Chapter 70. A Poisoned Inheritance

The courtyard held the echo of violence like a held breath. The assassin’s knife lay between them on the damp cobbles, a sliver of death under the indifferent moon. The chase had ended not in capture, but in a vanished ghost and a missing brother.

“Marcus won’t surface again tonight,” Sabe said, his voice tight with frustration and pain as he straightened, favoring his shoulder. “He’s a rabbit in its hole. But the cleaner… he failed. He’ll report that. The operation will accelerate.”

He nudged the knife with the toe of his boot, then knelt, using a scrap of cloth from his pocket to pick it up without touching the hilt. It was a custom piece, no serial numbers, the steel matte black to avoid reflection. Professional, but impersonal. A tool. He slipped it into his own pocket, a grim trophy.

“We need to get off the street,” Anton said, the adrenaline crash making him feel brittle and exposed. The ancient walls seemed to lean in, every shadow a potential return of the featureless face.

Sabe gave a curt nod, his eyes still scanning the arches and rooftops. “Back to the safehouse. We regroup. The villa is our only play now.”

They moved through the labyrinthine Old Town with a new, heightened paranoia. Every footstep behind them was a threat, every shifting shadow a potential ambush. The silent efficiency of the killer had rewritten the rules of the game; this was no longer corporate intrigue, but a shadow war with a body count.

The safehouse, when they finally bolted the door behind them, felt less like a refuge and more like the last cell before execution. The suitcase sat on the table, a silent, malevolent oracle.

Sabe went immediately to the window, adjusting the blind to a different angle, creating a new sight line. “He saw us. He knows our faces, our style. He’ll be expecting a direct assault on the villa now. We need to be smarter. We need to be a ghost he can’t predict.”

“How?” Anton asked, sinking into one of the rickety chairs, the weariness bone-deep.

“By using the one advantage we have that he doesn’t.” Sabe turned from the window, his gaze landing on the data slate. “My mind. In his machine. The cleaner is a tactician, a surgeon. He’s removing variables. But the prototype… it’s a variable he doesn’t fully understand. He didn’t write its new teeth. I did.”

He powered on the slate, the glow illuminating his face with a determined light. “There’s a vulnerability in the Cerberus Gate logic. A paradox loop. If we can introduce a specific data packet into the villa’s network—a packet that mimics the authentication signal for a system-wide diagnostic—it will trigger the Gate. It’ll see the diagnostic as a foreign intrusion and turn the chip’s defensive aggression inward. It should, in theory, cause a cascading failure in any system the prototype is integrated with. Lights, security, communications. A localized, digital blackout.”

“A virus,” Anton said, understanding dawn.

“A self-cannibalizing antibody,” Sabe corrected. “Only I know how to craft.” He began to work, his fingers flying over the slate’s surface, pulling lines of code from the stolen schematics and rewriting them with swift, brutal strokes. This was no longer analysis; this was creation. A digital scalpel.

Anton watched him, the focus so absolute it was like a physical force in the room. This was Sabe unchained, not by duty, but by necessity, using the very genius that had been turned against him as a weapon. It was the most compelling thing Anton had ever seen.

The work took hours. The sliver of moon had traversed the sky by the time Sabe leaned back, his eyes bloodshot but burning with a fierce light. “It’s ready. We need a delivery system. Something that can get this code into the villa’s secure server room. The blueprints show a hardened data port in the service corridor behind the main kitchen. It’s isolated, but it’s a physical access point.”

“We can’t just walk in the front door,” Anton said.

“No. We create a diversion. A big one. Something that draws all security to the opposite side of the estate.” Sabe zoomed in on the villa model. “The lakeside. The jetty. We make them think an assault is coming from the water.”

“With what? We’re two men, not a navy.”

A grim smile touched Sabe’s lips. “We have a suitcase of secrets and a city full of expensive boats. We can create a very convincing, very loud distraction.”

The plan was insane. It was brazen. It relied on precision, luck, and the hope that the killer’s cold logic wouldn’t anticipate their reckless audacity.

Dawn was a faint suggestion in the sky when they moved again. They left the safehouse for what they knew would be the last time, carrying only the data slate, a modified universal drive containing Sabe’s paradox code, and the assassin’s knife.

The waterfront in the pre-dawn gloom was a world of sleeping wealth. Sabe identified a powerful speedboat moored at a private dock not far from the public promenade. It was the work of two minutes to bypass the simple alarm and hot-wire the engine. The throaty roar as it came to life felt like announcing their presence to the entire city.

“Go,” Sabe said, handing Anton the drive. “The service gate coordinates are in your phone. Get to the port. I’ll give you ten minutes once I’m in position.”

Anton grabbed his arm. “Sabe—”

“No time.” Sabe’s eyes held his, and in them, Anton saw not a farewell, but a promise. “We end this. Now.”

Anton vanished into the network of streets leading up to the villa’s landward side. Sabe gunned the speedboat’s engine, the craft leaping across the black water like a skipping stone, heading directly for the villa’s private jetty, lights blazing.

He didn’t bother with stealth. He wanted a spectacle. Fifty meters from the dock, he cut the engine, letting the boat drift noisily. He fired three shots from his pistol into the air—not aimed at anything, just sound and fury. Then he dove overboard into the icy, shocking embrace of the lake.

From his position in the water, clinging to the boat’s ladder, he watched as lights blazed on in the villa. Figures, armed and alert, poured onto the jetty and the lakeside terrace, scanning the water, their attention fully consumed by the noisy, abandoned boat.

Ten minutes, he thought, the cold leaching into his bones. Run, Anton.

---

Anton moved like a ghost through the manicured woods on the villa’s eastern border. The service gate was exactly where the blueprint said it would be, a simple keypad lock. Using a code derived from the villa’s architectural plans, he gained entry, slipping into the utilitarian corridor behind the kitchens. The air smelled of bleach and stale grease. Distantly, he could hear shouts from the lakeside.

He found the data port, a sealed unit in the wall. Using a multi-tool, he pried the cover off and plugged in the drive. A small LED on the drive blinked once, then began a rapid, rhythmic pulse. Sabe’s code was transmitting, seeking the Cerberus Gate, whispering its poisonous paradox into the villa’s digital veins.

A soft click sounded behind him.

Anton froze, then slowly turned.

The cleaner stood in the corridor, ten feet away. He had not been drawn to the lake. He had been waiting. His featureless face was calm, his hands empty, but his posture was that of a man who knew the fight was already over.

“Mr. Rogers,” the man said, his voice a bland, neutral tenor. “A valiant, predictable effort. The aquatic distraction. The service entrance. Mr. Stalker’s signature is all over it.”

Anton’s heart hammered against his ribs. The drive continued to pulse, a tiny, hopeful heartbeat in the face of the killer’s void.

“He miscalculated,” the killer continued, taking a step forward. “He thinks like an operative. I think like a custodian. I clean the house. I don’t guard the front door.”

He took another step. Anton backed against the wall, the driver's port at his back. He had nowhere to go.

Then, from the shadows at the far end of the corridor, a voice spoke, cold and clear.

“You always did think you were the smartest man in the room, Darius.”

The killer—Darius—stiffened. His head turned, just slightly. It was the first crack in his perfect composure.

Sabe stepped into the dim light, dripping lake water onto the concrete floor. He held the assassin’s own knife loosely in his hand. He looked pale, frozen, but his eyes were like chips of flint. “But you were always just a janitor. A very good one. But still, just a janitor.”

Darius turned fully to face him, a slow, deliberate movement. The mask of anonymity was gone, replaced by a faint, professional curiosity. “Sabatine. I heard you’d gone private. I didn’t expect to find you playing bodyguard to a spoiled CEO.”

“And I didn’t expect to find you doing webwork for corporate raiders,” Sabe replied, his voice a low hum of controlled fury. “MI6 pays not enough for your expensive tastes?”

Darius gave a slight, almost imperceptible shrug. “The private sector appreciates a clean finish. Something our old masters never understood.” His eyes flicked to Anton, then back to Sabe. “He’s a loose end, Sabatine. You know the protocol. You're at a loose end now, too.”

“The protocol,” Sabe spat, taking a step forward. “The protocol that says a three-second delay is a fatal flaw? The protocol that turns soldiers into accountants and humans into variables?”

“The protocol keeps us alive,” Darius said, his voice hardening. “It keeps the world orderly. You never understood that. You cared. And look where it got you. Disgraced. Wanted. Standing in a puddle for a man who’ll be dead in sixty seconds.”

At that moment, Anton saw it. The history. The rivalry. This wasn't just a random assassin. This was a ghost from Sabe’s past, a living embodiment of the cold, calculating philosophy that had condemned him. This was the “colleague” who had sat in on the interrogation after Bakhmar, who had nodded along as they dissected Sabe’s humanity as a liability.

Sabe’s knuckles were white on the knife hilt. “You don’t get to touch him.”

“Sentiment,” Darius sighed, as if disappointed. “Your fatal flaw.” He moved.

It was not a charge, but a glide. He was on Sabe in two strides, his hands empty but deadly. Sabe parried with the knife, but Darius caught his wrist, twisting with brutal efficiency. The knife clattered to the floor. Sabe cried out as his injured shoulder was wrenched.

Anton didn’t think. He lunged away from the wall, not at Darius, but for the knife. His fingers closed around the cold hilt as Darius slammed Sabe against the wall, his forearm pressed to his throat.

Anton rose, the knife held before him, a weapon he had no idea how to use. “Let him go!”

Darius glanced over, a flicker of annoyance crossing his impassive face. He applied more pressure. Sabe’s eyes bulged, his feet scrambling for purchase on the slick floor.

“Drop it, Mr. Rogers, or I crush his trachea.”

Anton hesitated, the world narrowing to Sabe’s struggling form.

And in that moment of hesitation, Sabe’s good hand shot up, not to Darius’s arm, but to his own mouth. He bit down on something on his ring finger—a fake tooth, a hollow cap.

Darius saw it. His eyes, for the first time, showed real alarm. “No—!”

Sabe spat a tiny, gelatin capsule into his palm and, with his last ounce of strength, smashed it against Darius’s face.

It wasn't acidic. It was a fast-acting, concentrated aerosol sedative—a last-resort tool from his intelligence days. A cloud of bitter mist engulfed Darius’s nose and mouth.

The cleaner gasped, stumbling back, his hands flying to his face. He choked, his eyes rolling back. He staggered against the opposite wall, then slid down it, his body going limp, consciousness fleeing.

Sabe slumped to the floor, gagging, rubbing his throat. Anton was at his side in an instant, the knife forgotten. “Sabe! God, are you—”

“I’m okay,” Sabe croaked, his voice raw. He looked at Darius’s slumped form, then at Anton, a wild, desperate hope in his eyes. “The drive. Did it work?”

As if in answer, the lights in the corridor flickered violently. Then, with a deep, groaning sigh from within the walls, every light in the service wing died. A moment later, from the main part of the villa, came the sound of shouts, crashing glass, and the rising wail of multiple security alarms short-circuiting into a single, deafening shriek of overloaded systems.

Sabe’s paradox had found its target. The Cerberus Gate had turned. The villa was blind.

In the sudden, profound darkness of the corridor, lit only by the erratic pulse of the data drive, they heard a final, wet gurgle from Darius’s form. Anton pointed his phone’s flashlight.

Darius was convulsing slightly, a thin line of foam tracing from his lips. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling with empty finality. As they watched, the convulsions stopped.

“Cyanide capsule,” Sabe whispered, his voice filled with a weary, bitter understanding. “Standard issue for a ‘clean finish’. He’d rather be a dead variable than a captured one.”

The killer was unmasked, and then erased by his own ruthless protocol. The colleague from the past was gone, leaving only the chilling confirmation of the enemy’s reach and their absolute commitment to silence.

The villa was in chaos. The prototype was vulnerable. And they were in the dark, with a body at their feet and the truth finally within their grasp.

Sabe reached for Anton’s hand in the darkness, his grip fierce and sure. “It’s time,” he said. “Let’s go get our future back.”

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