It started as a ping.Then twenty.Then a hundred.Isolde’s phone vibrated so violently across her nightstand it rolled off the edge and hit the floor.She blinked awake, heart already pounding.The room was dark. Not cold but charged. Like the air before a storm.Dorian wasn’t beside her.She grabbed the phone.Her notifications blurred into one headline.EXCLUSIVE: Velvet Caught in Sex Scandal – Dominic Wade Named in Leaked Club FootagePosted: 4:06 AM | Author: Cassandra Holt, Veritas MediaIsolde’s throat tightened.Her fingers trembled as she opened the link.The video was grainy. Intentional.Vivienne’s figure masked, backlit by stage lights. But the voice? Hers.And Wade… in the front row.Leaning forward.Mouth open.Applauding.Then the clip ended.The page exploded with commentary:“Holy f , is this real??”“That’s Wade. That’s definitely him.”“Velvet always looked sus. Told y’all.”“Why’s the girl crying at the end?”“Dorian Blackthorn owns Velvet. This guy has political t
Velvet’s surveillance hub lay two levels beneath the wine bar’s glinting marble. Concrete bones. Cold steel racks. Red diode lights blinking like nervous pulses.Isolde stood beside Dorian at the control terminal, arms crossed.Penelope’s file had arrived via encrypted bounce: Vivienne’s voice. A spike in audio resonance. The moment of reclamation.But when Dorian pulled the new archive threads, something else appeared.STATIC.Then: PLAYBACK 05-21 / ROOM 17 / UNAUTHORIZED VIEW.Isolde squinted. “Room 17? That’s your ”“My office,” Dorian finished. “But this angle’s wrong. That camera was never active.”He tapped a key. Feed jumped again.PLAYBACK 05-22 / PRIVATE QUARTERS / ENTRYWAY / UNAUTHORIZED VIEW.Isolde’s stomach dropped.It was her. Entering his penthouse the night after Wade’s takedown. She wasn’t masked. She wasn’t undercover. She was herself.Another feed triggered on its own.05-18 / KITCHEN / AUDIO ENHANCED / PHRASE MATCH DETECTED: “I trust him. That’s the problem.”The c
Lisbon, 3:04 AM.Rain tapped glass like fingers with nowhere else to go.Penelope stood in the hallway outside Vivienne’s room, thumb hovering over the encrypted playback unit.One file.No timestamp.Just a title embedded in metadata: Subject 7B – Vocal Loop Initiation.She knocked softly.Vivienne opened the door before the second tap.She hadn’t been sleeping.She wore a faded sweater. Bare feet. Eyes that looked like they’d been somewhere else for hours.Penelope didn’t ask if she was ready.She just held out the device.And said, “It’s you. From then on. I don’t know where this was taken. Somewhere before Manhattan. Maybe inside Stage 7.”Vivienne took it gently.Sat on the edge of her bed.She pressed PLAY.At first, it was just breathing.Then her own voice only not quite hers.“Do you understand?”“Yes.”“What is your name?”“Subject 7B.”“What do you desire?”“To serve.”“What must you forget?”“Everything.”Penelope’s throat went dry.She reached out “You don’t have to ”Viv
The jet landed just after dusk on a private strip outside Marseille with no lights, no greeting. Just the scrape of wheels across forgotten asphalt.Penelope slipped down the steps first, coat caught in the wind, eyes already scanning for anything that looked like surveillance.“Coordinates line up with the coast,” she muttered, half to herself, half to Dorian. “Old wine estate, burned out in the ‘80s. Public records show it was condemned.”“Velvet’s first satellite,” Dorian replied, adjusting the signal scrambler on his wrist. “Prototype club. Never opened officially.”Isolde didn’t speak.She stood at the top of the stairs, watching the moon throw silver across the hillside.Something about this place pulled at her chest like a wire strung tight.They drove in silence through winding cliffs and rust-colored trees, past shuttered wineries and broken villas. The road narrowed, then split. The car stopped at the edge of a gravel path covered in ash and moss.Beyond it: a structure sunk
The villa had the hush of somewhere that had heard things it couldn’t forget.The gates creaked open under soft tires.Isolde didn’t wait for the car to fully stop.She was out and moving before the engine finished humming down.Penelope met them at the door.No wit. No raised eyebrows. Just a clipboard clutched too tightly, her usual deflective charm nowhere in sight.“You’re early,” she said.“You’re worried,” Dorian answered.Penelope stepped back. “Come inside.”The air in the villa felt different, cleaned, but not safe. Like something had passed through.Vivienne wasn’t in the kitchen.Or the study.“She’s asleep,” Penelope said. “Again.”“She’s been tired,” Isolde offered.“Not like this.” Penelope’s jaw tensed. “Three nights in a row. Sleepwalking.”Dorian frowned. “How far?”“Only a few feet each time. Same motion. She sits up, stands still, walks to the window, whispers something.”Isolde’s pulse quickened. “You recorded it?”Penelope nodded. “But that’s not the part that wor
The cold hit like a slap, no wind, just pressure.A kind of silence that tasted like gunmetal and unfinished prayers.Dorian stepped off the skiff first. Isolde followed, boots crunching against hoarfrost that coated the ruined pier.Dock 14 lay ahead a rusted grid of cranes, hollow hangars, and the crumbling bones of Soviet ambition. Somewhere beneath all of it: the coordinates.“Who builds a rendezvous in a place like this?” she asked, adjusting the scarf tight against her throat.“No one is trying to be found,” Dorian said.He held a thermal map black and blue, one red blot pulsing faintly from the warehouse ahead.The dock was abandoned.No motion.No power.Only the distant sound of ice groaning beneath weight that had long since forgotten what heat felt like.They walked in silence.Halfway to the main structure, a crow skittered across a rusted crane.Too still.Too staged.Isolde scanned the rooftops.“No cameras.”“No guards,” Dorian added.They reached the bay doors flaked r