Location; Quito, Ecuador – Blackwood Safehouse
The mountainous dusk rolled in over Quito like a velvet curtain, cloaking the city in deepening shades of shadow. Damien stood by the wide glass window of the safehouse, Aelira asleep in the adjacent room, her body still adjusting to the world outside the cryo-chamber. Cassandra sat silently beside the entrance, eyes on her encrypted tablet, tracking every surveillance thread around their location.
Emory's voice came through the secure comms. "The ship housing Archer's central server is real. Deep-sea station. Coordinates match what Nora uncovered. But Damien… there's something else."
Damien turned. "What is it?"
"There's a leak. A deliberate pattern in the intel drops. Someone's been feeding Archer access codes—days before any mission launch. They're not just lucky. They're plugged in."
Damien's voice dropped. "Someone close."
Emory hesitated. "Yes. And they were with us in Tavara… in London… even Ulaanbaatar."
Cassandra stood slowly. "You think it's me?"
"No," Emory replied. "We think it might be someone in your extended network. Possibly a family member of the Blackwood bloodline."
The implication sank in like ice.
Damien's mind raced: His father had left behind more secrets than answers. The family tree was vast. Uncles, cousins, nieces—all deeply embedded in finance, diplomacy, and global infrastructure. But betrayal? That ran deeper than business.
Cassandra spoke. "We should question everyone. Start from the last known access points—who had login privileges, who handled the signal jammers."
Damien agreed, but before they could proceed, the front door's biometric lock hissed open.
In walked Arianna Blackwood—Damien's cousin, a tech prodigy known for her fierce loyalty and elusive movements.
She smiled, too casually. "Heard you were back in the Americas. Quito's not your usual scene, Damien."
He narrowed his eyes. "Didn't expect you here, Ari. What brings you across continents?"
"I was in Bogota. Hacked into a Colombian defense node. Found traces of Archer's cyberprints." She held up a flash drive. "Thought you might want this."
Cassandra took the drive, plugged it into the scanner. "It's real," she whispered. "Archer's encryption. Three layers deep."
But Damien wasn't convinced.
That night, as the others rested, he sifted through old communication logs. A pattern emerged—hidden inside timestamps, code lags, and bounce locations. The traitor wasn't sloppy. They were clever. Strategic. Each leak had a digital fingerprint… and it matched someone's old backup system.
Arianna's.
He confronted her alone in the observation room.
"You want to tell me why Archer's spy key matches your encrypted logs?"
Arianna didn't flinch. "Because I planted it."
"What?"
"I've been feeding him junk intel. Misleading data. It bought us time."
Damien's eyes narrowed. "Then why do his troops keep arriving ahead of us?"
Arianna's expression hardened. "Because someone else is piggybacking my misleads. Someone even I didn't notice until recently."
"Who?"
She hesitated. "Uncle Jerome."
Damien felt the ground shift beneath him. Jerome Blackwood—the diplomat, the patriarch of the South African branch, and one of the founders of the Blackwood global trust.
"No," Damien said softly.
"Yes. I traced the bouncebacks to his private server. He's been Archer's silent financier. Feeding him data, money, access."
Damien's fists clenched. "Then he chose the wrong side."