In the heart of London – Surveillance at a glance…

The air in the Black Archive vestibule was so thick with tension it felt physical. Grit and Wren, their faces illuminated by the glow of their monitors, worked in synchronised silence, the custom-built parabolic dish now aimed like a sniper’s rifle at The Collective Canvas. Every cable and every connection was double-checked. Loom, positioned across from the E4A van, was a statue of stillness in the darkened London alley, his gaze fixed, his comms a low, static whisper in the vast city night. Emma watched the multi-layered map, her heart beating steadily against the frantic rhythm of the operation.

“Pulse is ready for activation.” Grit’s voice was a low hum, his hands hovering over the final command. “Full power. Localized. Max dispersion radius is five hundred feet, centred on the bell tower.”

Wren’s eyes were locked on a separate screen, a spectral analyser tracking the E4A harmonic signature. “Standing by to reverse the harmonic. The moment the pulse hits, I’m going to flood the local airwaves with their frequency. A digital echo.”

“Loom, report on the van,” Emma instructed.

“Movement inside,” Loom’s voice was as calm as ever. Two figures are talking, using hand gestures. Looks like they’re waiting for something.”

Emma nodded, a grim smile touching her lips. “They’re waiting for Thorne’s next broadcast. The ‘window closing’ Grit found in their log. We’re going to give them a very different kind of show.”

“Five… four… three… two… one…” Grit counted down, his voice clipped and precise. “Initiating pulse.”

In a silent flash of pure, contained energy, the auxiliary power in the Black Archive vestibule dipped. The parabolic dish emitted an invisible torrent of highly focused electromagnetic energy, aimed directly at the bell tower of The Collective Canvas.

Miles away, Loom saw the immediate effect. For a split second, all the digital billboards and streetlights on that block flickered and died. A momentary, localised blackout, so brief that most people wouldn’t even register it. But inside the E4A van, the reaction was anything but momentary. Lights flashed. A torrent of encrypted, panicked comms burst onto Wren’s spectral analyser. Wren, poised for this exact moment, slammed a command. The air around the E4A van was immediately filled with a cacophony of their harmonic signature, a relentless, deafening digital scream that Wren was projecting from a mobile directional emitter a few blocks away.

The chaos inside the van was palpable even from Loom’s vantage point. He saw the two figures inside frantically scrambling, their comms now compromised by the feedback loop. Their signal was in utter disarray.

Meanwhile, Grit’s sensors, still aimed at the church, painted a different picture. Thorne’s core network of low-power bursts, though momentarily disrupted, almost immediately began to self-correct, their autonomous algorithms finding new pathways, new relays. It was a testament to the sophistication of Aris Thorne’s work. The cognitive network was resilient.

But the gambit wasn’t about disrupting Thorne. It was about E4A.

Inside The Collective Canvas, Emma’s gamble had paid off with chilling precision. Miko Kobayashi, standing guard at a side entrance, had been plunged into a world of sudden silence and broken data feeds. His comms, finely tuned to E4A’s frequency, had gone dead. He froze, his head snapping up, scanning for the source of the disruption. He saw nothing. He was a blind spot in the heart of the chaos, a ghost in the wire.

Wren, now tracking the frantic E4A signals, locked onto something new. A high-energy, high-priority burst, originating from within The Collective Canvas itself. It was the primary asset. The one coordinating. The ghost within a ghost.

“I’ve got it, Emma! A signal burst, highly focused, from inside the church. It’s an emergency protocol. An attempt to warn Miko and the van. It’s originating from the second-floor mezzanine… near Aris Thorne’s private workshop!”

Emma’s mind raced. Aris. The brilliant, cold cryptographer. The engineer of the cognitive network. The one person who would have both the technical skill to operate E4A’s hardware and the motive to ensure her infrastructure remained intact.

“Grit, cross-reference that signal burst with Aris Thorne’s known biometrics, anything we have on her. Fable’s research, her online profiles. Anything.”

“Running it now,” Grit said, his voice tense.

Loom, still watching the van, saw the two operatives inside, now regaining some semblance of control, their frantic comms settling into a new, more aggressive pattern. They were initiating a retrieval protocol. They were coming for their asset.

“Emma, the E4A van is on the move. Fast. They’re heading straight for the church. It looks like an extraction.”

Grit’s voice broke the comms’ silence, a mix of disbelief and cold fury. “Emma… I have a match. The signal profile, the encryption protocols, the harmonic… It’s all a match for Aris Thorne’s research, files from her time at Cambridge. It’s not a coincidence. Aris Thorne is the E4A operative. She’s the ‘Conductor.’ And she’s likely waiting for her team now.”

The realisation hit Emma with the force of a physical blow. Aris wasn’t just a follower of her brother’s vision. She was an agent of a foreign power, using Thorne’s ideological movement as a Trojan horse. She was the one who engineered the network, the one who left the beacon for them to find, the one who orchestrated the nanite attack on Fable. She was using her brother, his idealism, and his followers, all for a separate, more sinister agenda. Project Chimaera.

“Loom, disengage from the van. Do not pursue. Wren, get to the church. I need eyes and ears on Aris Thorne. Confirm the visual and her location. Grit, prep every available asset we have on standby. This is a full extraction. We are going in.”

The gambit had worked. Emma had forced the hand of a ghost. The looking glass had not only shown them the truth, but it had provided a name, a location, and a chillingly clear understanding of the true threat. The psychological war was about to become a very physical one, and the architect of the cognitive network was now at the centre of the crosshairs.