Page 24 of Cipher: Lethal Algorithm

“You have twenty-four. Don’t make me bury you, Cipher.”

The line clicks dead.

I toss the phone onto the desk.

“Your handler.” Ivy tilts her head. It’s an assessment, not a question.

“My director.”

“And your callsign is Cipher.” She leans back in her chair, crossing her arms. The hostility is back, mixed with something sharp and amused. “That’s incredibly dramatic.”

“It’s functional.” I pick up my coffee mug, taking a slow drink. “It was assigned, not chosen. Though I happen to like it.”

“It’s arrogant.”

“Arrogance requires an overestimation of ability.” I let the silence hang for a second. The tension in the room shifts. It isn’t the frantic adrenaline of the ferry terminal anymore. It’s something heavier. “His name is Hutch. He runs Task Force 9.”

“You said Task Force 9 was a federal unit.” She narrows her eyes, processing the conversation. “But he wanted to know if I had the HSM, and you didn’t secure it. You covered for me. You told him you were ‘working on it’. And you just launched a freeze order without his permission.”

She leans forward, resting her elbows on her desk. The physical space between us shrinks again.

“You guys aren’t federal.” The certainty snaps into place. “You’re off-books. You’re operating completely outside the chain of command.”

I don’t lie to her. Lying is inefficient, and worse, it’s insulting.

“Task Force 9 was created to dismantle the Consortium.” I keep my voice very level. “The Consortium owns judges. They own regional directors. They own the people who sign the warrants. If we operated inside the chain of command, we would be compromised before we deployed.”

“So you’re rogue.”

“We’re protected.” I meet her gaze. “Hutch answers to one person. We exist to do the things the DOJ can’t legally authorize but desperately requires.”

Ivy stares at me. The ambient light of the dual monitors illuminates the slow, calculating shift in her expression. Thehostility—the defensive ‘foster kid’ wall she threw up when we entered the apartment—cracks.

She isn’t looking at a federal agent anymore. She’s looking at an operative who admitted he doesn’t answer to the system.

“Same thing.” Her voice is quiet. “Different paperwork.”

I don’t respond. I just watch her.

She holds my gaze for three seconds. The chemistry in the room is a dense, physical weight. It is entirely unmanaged.

“I respect that.”

She turns back to her monitor, resuming her audit of the Zurich directory files. Her hands go back to the keyboard.

I stay exactly where I am and listen to the steady, metric cadence of her typing. I look at the dark skyline of Macau through the gap in the blackout curtains.

06:52 local.

For eleven weeks, being the hunter was a mathematical certainty. Finding the target was the only variable that mattered.

I watch the reflection of the terminal light shift across her face.

This is the first time since I walked into that server room in Singapore that hunting doesn’t feel like work. It feels like something else entirely. Something sharp. Something infinitely dangerous.

I take a breath, letting the realization settle into the architecture of my chest.

I prefer the chase, but I’m enjoying the capture.