Chapter 3

Amber didn’t sleep that night.

The name on the screen—Project Nyx—kept echoing in her mind like a whisper behind glass. She'd seen that term once before, buried deep in an abandoned database Mira flagged years ago. No details. No files. Just the warning written beside it in red:

> Not for public access. Flagged as Black File. Immediate erasure if traced.

And now... it was sitting on her stolen drive, waiting to be opened.

She stared at the encrypted layers, fingers unmoving.

If she broke through, there’d be no turning back.

And if she didn’t, Zohaib would come for her anyway.

At this point, it wasn’t about what she had done. It was about what she knew—and knowledge in Zohaib’s world was more dangerous than bullets.

The drive was unplugged again, wrapped in foil, and sealed back under the floorboard. She couldn’t touch it—not yet. Not until she figured out how far the damage went.

Amber changed quickly and stepped outside just before dawn. The fog hung low over the water, thick as smoke, curling around the city’s narrow bones. Venice felt timeless this way, like it existed in its own secret hour.

She needed space. Noise. Crowds. Something to blur the weight in her chest.

Her steps took her toward Rialto Market, where the boats unloaded crates of fish, fruit, and gossip with equal intensity. She moved through the crowd like a ghost, blending into the rush of locals and vendors. The smell of citrus and seawater clung to the air.

But something shifted.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t obvious. Just... a shadow that moved the wrong way.

She turned her head slightly. Nothing.

Still, her pulse quickened.

Someone was watching.

Again.

Across the water, Zohaib stood in the stone archway of a closed jewelry shop, hands in the pockets of his charcoal coat. His eyes never left her.

She was good at hiding. She wore other people’s faces like armor. But he’d learned every line of her posture—how her chin tilted when she was nervous, how her fingers tugged her sleeve when she was thinking too hard.

She had no idea he was this close.

Not yet.

Rayaan’s voice crackled in his ear. “Want me to send Nico in?”

Zohaib didn’t answer right away. His gaze narrowed as Amber turned toward the water, lips slightly parted, sensing something.

“No,” Zohaib said. “Let her feel it first. Let her wonder.”

Amber didn’t stop walking until she reached the Libreria Acqua Alta—a strange, half-drowned bookshop hidden in a side canal. She stepped inside, heart still pounding.

Stacks of books leaned at impossible angles. Cats slept on the higher piles. It smelled of ink and old paper—safe.

She sat in the corner between two overflowing shelves and pulled out her burner phone.

> Amber: Mira, tell me everything you know about Nyx.

XGhost: You don’t want to know.

Amber: I don’t have a choice.

XGhost: Nyx isn’t a code. It’s a weapon.

And it was never supposed to leave Zohaib’s hands.

Amber’s fingers froze. Around her, the city moved like nothing had changed.

But everything had.

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