The Chip Burns

They come out of the dark between one heartbeat and the next — four of them, moving with the quiet efficiency of professionals. You don't even get a shot off. By the time the dust settles, your weapons are gone and your wrists are bound, and you're being marched through the desert toward a cluster of portable lights that shouldn't be out here at all.

Harlan Voss looks exactly as you remember him: silver-haired, unhurried, wearing his authority like a second skin. He takes the data chip from your vest pocket without a word, holds it up to the light for a moment, then drops it onto a flat rock and crushes it under his heel. The sound is barely anything. A small, dry click.

"Three years," he says, almost gently. "You should have stayed gone, Mara." He studies you the way a man studies a problem he's already solved. But he hasn't asked about Eli — which means he doesn't know where Eli is. That silence is the only card you have left.