Intro. The white lights of the operations center blinked as if they were also exhausted. Outside, the dawn was just beginning to leak between armored windows of the Epsilon complex, hidden under an unnamed mountain at some point in Eastern Europe. The air smelled of metal, cold coffee and overheated cables.
There, where most agents did not lift their voice, Ethan Kael moved like a shadow. Accurate. Silent. Every step, every gesture, each word had a definite purpose. It was the type of man who did not waste time with explanations or apologies. In the language of espionage, it was a machine: exact, reliable, impossible to decipher.
In front of him, April Prescot reviewed the files of the last operation. Their fingers trembled slightly on the keyboard, not by nerves, but by contained rage. The mission had been a success in official reports, but for her, it had been a controlled disaster. A poorly anticipated trap, a movement that almost cost them