In the heart of London – Surveillance at a glance…

The successful raid on Seamus Ryan’s command node provided Emma and Jake with a victory, but the real prize was the intelligence locked within the captured data drives. Back at the MI5 digital forensics lab, Jake, despite his bruised ribs, worked through the night, decrypting the highly secured server contents.

The Successor: “The Curator”

The IRA’s communication logs were clear: the weapons, the SVR link, and the operational boldness all pointed to a single orchestrator, a shadow figure who had stepped into the vacuum left by The Alchemist’s capture. This figure was not a terrorist commander or a seasoned spy, but an information broker who charged a high price for actionable strategic data.

The code name that appeared repeatedly in Ryan’s most sensitive files was “The Curator.”

“She’s worse than The Alchemist,” Jake said, gesturing to a flow chart he’d compiled. “The Alchemist designed the game; The Curator sells the rulebook. She’s monetised vulnerability.”

The data revealed that The Curator had supplied Ryan with:

MI5 Agent Profiles: Highly accurate personal and professional profiles, including Emma and Jake’s current movements and tactical signatures—the source of the Fulham ambush.

Targeted Infrastructure Exploits: Specific software flaws in London’s CCTV and transport systems, allowing the IRA to move unseen.

The Alchemist’s Archives: Most alarmingly, The Curator had somehow gained access to a vast archive of The Alchemist’s unexecuted plans and tradecraft—a terrifying inventory of potential future attacks.

The Curator’s business model was simple: acquire sensitive data from multiple sources (SVR, corporate espionage, former contacts of The Alchemist) and sell it to the highest bidder—whether they were terrorists, hostile states, or organised crime syndicates. She was a mercenary of intelligence.

The Personal Threat: Payback

The intelligence Jake recovered wasn’t purely academic. A final, heavily encrypted message within Ryan’s inbox—sent just hours before the raid—provided the starkest warning.

“Failure is costly. Payback is due. The price for this cleanup is the two central assets: Soft Strike Executors.”

The message confirmed that The Curator was now personally focused on Emma and Jake. Their disruption of The Alchemist’s plans, the dismantling of Soft Strike, and the capture of the IRA cell had made them primary targets. They weren’t just threats to her operation; they were obstacles to her revenue stream, and their elimination was a contractual necessity.

“She put a bounty on us,” Emma stated flatly, running a hand through her hair. “She’s not just running from us; she’s hunting us.”

The Curator’s Lair: The Digital Footprint

The team now shifted the focus of the investigation to The Curator’s single most significant weakness: her reliance on a single, secure digital platform to conduct all her transactions and communications.

Jake identified a pattern in her communication bursts: they all routed through a complex, decentralised network—a “ghost node” that periodically anchored itself to a physical location to refresh its power and connection.

“It moves,” Jake explained, pointing to a flickering point on a global map. “But every 48 hours, it has to touch down for a few hours in a secure environment with high-bandwidth access to push out updates and finalise deals.”

The most recent anchor point was traced to London, specifically a cluster of high-security data storage units near Heathrow Airport—a location offering perfect anonymity and seamless international access.

“She’s here, she’s vulnerable, and she’s closing a deal. We have a five-hour window before she disappears back into the digital ether,” Emma decided. “And she knows we’re coming, which means she’s expecting us.”

The mission was no longer a simple arrest; it was a race against time and a high-risk entry into what was undoubtedly a fully trapped lair, designed by a mind even more meticulous and cold than The Alchemist herself. They weren’t just facing an intelligence broker; they were walking into a contract hit, with themselves as the targets.