Page 11 of Cipher: Lethal Algorithm

I’m nobody. A guest heading nowhere specific at an hour when nobody cares enough to look twice.

The circuit checks clean on every pass.

I adjust the go-bag strap. Hair up, new jacket—black, not the charcoal from the hotel. Different silhouette. The rental is three days old under Mireille Fontaine, a French national I assembled from scratch: birth certificate ghost, two utility bills, library card in the 12th arrondissement, and a consistent preference for compact vehicles.

The vehicle: silver Mitsubishi Outlander, Level B-4, bay 114.

I scope it from the stairwell entrance. The column beside bay 114 has a camera bracket and no camera—removed or broken, either way, a blind spot. I chose this bay for the bracket twelve days ago, under a different name, during a job I didn’t bill to anyone.

I’m good at this.

I cross to 114. The fob in my pocket clicks. The Outlander unlocks as I close the distance. I pull the driver’s door open, swing the go-bag into the back, and drop into the driver’s seat—right in front of the barrel of a gun.

Adrenaline punches through my chest—a physical strike of cold, sharp terror. Three years of running. Three years ofbuilding ghosts and turning into smoke. All of it gone in a rental car way too early in the morning.

Caught.

The animal instinct to bolt spikes, but I’m trapped in a closed box with a weapon on my heart. Survival takes over. It crushes the panic flat. Everything goes dead still.

My lungs lock. The world narrows to the two feet of open space between us.

“Hello, Ivy.”

Nobody calls me that. Nobody who finds me knows that name. They know Mireille Fontaine. They know the water-taxi woman. They know the screen names. Not the one name underneath them all.

He fills the space.

Dark circles below his eyes. Dark eyes themselves, not moving, taking the same inventory I’m running. His right hand holds his weapon steady. Barrel level. Index finger flat along the frame, not inside the guard. Wrist loose.

The corner of his mouth kicks up into an unapologetically cheeky grin.

He lets the barrel dip. A smooth flick of his wrist, and the weapon spins backward over his palm, stopping instantly with the grip extended toward me.

“Go ahead and take it.” The cadence is perfectly even. A statement of fact. “You’re going to need it.”

I don’t move. It’s a power play so flawlessly arrogant it takes a second to process. He held the threat long enough to prove he could, then offered me the advantage.

My pulse is loud in my throat. I reach over the console to take the weapon. As my fingers close over the grip, his index finger sweeps in a slow, deliberate drag across my knuckles.

A single line of heat against the cold metal. Completely unnecessary. Completely intentional.

Then he opens his hand and lets me take it.

He’s unarmed now, his hands resting loose on his thighs. He watches me, entirely comfortable.

“We have eight minutes before the hit team taking the stairs clears the fourteenth floor.” His grin fades into pure operational focus. “Six more before they trace your phone down here. You need to drive.”

I keep my face neutral.

“Who the fuck are you?” My voice is rougher than I intended.

He stays silent for a long moment. He waits for me to draw a full breath. Then the grin returns, smaller this time.

“Julian Rhodes. Deputy US Marshal. Task Force 9.” A beat. “I’ve been following your vine.”

The vine.

Not the malware—the vine. My signature. The thing I leave at the close of every session, forty seconds of animation on a dying server.