Page 18 of Cipher: Lethal Algorithm
My adrenaline hasn’t crashed. It’s mutating. My pulse is a frantic, irregular drumbeat in the hollow of my throat. Every time I replay the scene at the ferry terminal, my teeth grind together. He manipulated the maritime logs.
He hacked a commercial ferry schedule just to ensure I missed the boat, trapping me on this island with him. Then he stood in the humid Macau morning and practically took a bow for it.
I ensured you stayed in the only environment I can protect.
Arrogant. Infuriating. Reckless.
Player.
My mind supplies the word, clicking it into place like a puzzle piece completing the gap in the code. I spent three years operating in the deep shadows of the digital black market. I know mercenaries. I know cartel hitmen.
They don’t look like Julian Rhodes.
They don’t wear their lethal competence with easy, devastating charm. They don’t hold cab doors open with a mocking flourish or drop their voices into a register that makes the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
He’s a player. He probably has a girl in every city he operates in. Someone he charms, uses for local intelligence or an alibi, and leaves behind with a flawless smile and a ghosted phone number.
I require this to be true. I need him to be a generic, arrogant playboy. If he’s a player, he’s a known quantity. He’s a variable I can isolate and sandbox.
Because if he isn’t—if that terrifying mix of systemic brilliance and intense, focused attention is specifically for me—I have absolutely zero defense mechanisms for him.
I’m twenty-six. I lived in seventeen different foster homes, four group facilities, and twelve temporary countries. I know how to pack a go-bag in under ninety seconds. I know how to salt a routing log so thoroughly that Interpol gives up after a month. I do not know how to handle a man who leans into my personal space, calls me brilliant, and simultaneously dismantles my entire escape plan.
Relationships require static IP addresses. They require trust.
I trust code. Code executes exactly the way you write it. People don’t. The only person I ever trusted was Marta, and the Consortium’s system swallowed her whole.
I don’t do personal ties.
Julian Rhodes won’t be the exception.
“Second floor.” Julian’s voice breaks the spiral.
I blink, refocusing on the street.
We stand in front of a printing shop. The metal grate is pulled down, padlock secured. The smell of ink and old, damp paper bleeds through the seams. To the left of the grate is a narrow wooden door, indistinguishable from the peeling stucco wall around it.
Julian bypasses the keypad entirely. He reaches under the lip of the rusted mail slot, retrieves a physical key, and turns the deadbolt. A mechanical click. He pushes the door open and steps back, offering me the threshold.
He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t goad me. He just waits.
I walk past him. The stairwell is dark, the wooden treads permanently grooved in the center from decades of use. I keep my right hand loose at my side, inches from the Glock, counting the steps. Fourteen. A landing. A steel door painted the same faded green as the exterior.
Julian moves past me on the landing. He runs a thumb over a biometric scanner disguised as a doorbell casing. A heavy, magnetic thunk echoes inside the frame.
He pushes the door open.
I step inside.
The audit is automatic. It’s a reflex built in the third foster home, perfected in the seventh, refined by three years on the run. You learn exactly who people are by looking at what they consider necessary.
The apartment is a single large room, high ceilings, exposed wooden beams. Two large windows overlooking the street, currently covered by heavy blackout curtains. A small, functional kitchen in the corner. A mattress on the floor near the far wall, perfectly made, no frame.
It’s sterile. It isn’t a home; it’s a staging area. No photographs. No books. No clutter. The only thing implying a human being lives here is the smell of expensive, dark-roast coffee coming from a grinder on the counter.
Then my eyes hit the center of the room.
Two desks.
