Chapter 82: The Shadow of the Council of Nine

Chapter 82: The Shadow of the Council of Nine

The next day. The conference room.

Sophia insisted on coming to the meeting, leaning back in her wheelchair.

Marcus, Elena, Gunnar, and Heinrich sat around the joined tables. Heinrich connected his tablet to the projection screen and began his briefing:

"Every known Volchatnik stronghold in Scandinavia. The largest one is outside Oslo — the command hub. After Odin's death, the chain of command broke down, and now it's just holding position passively. The other sixteen are operating independently with no unified command. The Arctic battle pulled out nearly all their elite forces. What's left are regular security personnel and a handful of augmented soldiers. Their defensive strength is well below pre-war levels."

Cole leaned over the map, dragging his finger south from Tromsø to Oslo. "We push from north to south. Clear the four northernmost strongholds first."

Marcus stood up. "I'll take the first team to hit the two strongholds in Finnmark. Elena takes the second team to the one in Troms County — the terrain there is complicated, suits her infiltration style. As for the Nordland stronghold, Cole, you lead that one yourself. It's less than twenty kilometers from the relay station where the Heir sent his signal."

Cole turned to Heinrich. "The sweep starts in two days. In these forty-eight hours, I need you to track the exact source of the Heir's signal and figure out whether there's any communication link between the footprints and the signal origin."

"Already on it. I'll have preliminary results by tonight." Heinrich set the tablet in front of Cole. "I've tracked down more. The person using Odin's authorization code did pass through the relay station, but the signal cut out at four in the morning. After that, a new movement signal appeared, heading south along the Norwegian coastline. The pace is slow — not a vehicle. Along the way, it passed through three abandoned Volchatnik contact points. Looks like he's trying to bring old members back into the fold."

Heinrich continued: "I found an abandoned Volchatnik small dock in a fjord south of the coastline. One patrol boat is missing from the berth, and the timing lines up exactly with the window when the footprints reached the relay station. I'm pulling civilian radar records from the Norwegian Coast Guard now. If that patrol boat passed through the port area around the time the Heir was sending signals, it'll show up on radar."

Cole set his radio on the table. "Wait for him to check."

Sophia rested on the couch and pulled the blanket up a little higher. The sunlight outside had begun to shift westward. She closed her eyes, her breathing slowly evening out. Cole didn't disturb her. He picked up a report and kept reading.

Heinrich stood up from his seat, his voice carrying a note of excitement.

"Got it. A crack in the Nine-Member Council. The Heir didn't pick his timing at random — he moved when the council vote was at its most deadlocked, because someone was backing him from the inside. At least one council member has been feeding him intelligence."

He turned the screen around. Two sets of communication records sat side by side: on the left, the Nine-Member Council's internal channel discussing the Third Seat succession; on the right, the command signals sent from the Norwegian coastline relay station. Several key timestamps were connected with red arrows.

"Every time the council hit a deadlock, the relay station would send out a burst of signals within a short window. The time gap never exceeded half an hour. That means he had real-time access to what was being discussed inside the council — or someone in there was actively passing information to him. The Nine-Member Council's internal channel is encrypted and isolated. No outside party could tap into it. He's not bluffing. He has backing. And that backing comes from a faction inside the Nine-Member Council that was never happy with Odin."

Cole stared at the red-marked timestamps on the screen, a trace of concern in his voice. "Can you pin down which council member?"

"Not yet. But whoever is supporting the Heir isn't one of Odin's allies. Odin's standing in the council was built on the chaotic energy from the Arctic Seal. Now that the Seal is gone, the old territory has become a pure resource prize. The council members who resented Odin saw their chance — use the Heir's hand to grab Scandinavia first." Heinrich pushed his glasses up. "The Heir and these council members aren't in a hierarchy. It's mutual use. The council members need someone who can establish a foothold in Scandinavia. The Heir needs an outside backer. Everyone gets what they want."

Cole picked up his radio. "Marcus, push the sweep back one day. Before we move out, we find the council member behind the Heir."

By the time Cole finished the last logistics report of the day, it was past eleven at night. The camp's night watch had rotated once. The searchlight on the breakwater was still on, its beam sweeping slowly back and forth across the water.

He pushed aside the curtain to the intensive care bay. Sophia was still awake, propped up against the headboard, a tablet resting on her knees, the screen's glow falling across her face. Her white hair caught a faint golden shimmer in the dim light, and the new growth at the roots — a soft, pale gold — was slowly spreading downward.

"You should rest," Cole said, sitting down at the edge of the bed.

"I slept this afternoon." Sophia turned the tablet toward him. It was a supplemental analysis Heinrich had just sent — anomalous footprints near the Finnish border. She had circled a detail in the report: on the ridge north of where the tracks disappeared, a discarded fragment of a micro-transmitter had been found. The serial number on the fragment matched the factory batch of equipment from the relay station exactly. "The connection between the footprints and the Heir is basically confirmed. The relay station was him. The Finnish border was him. He was alone — at least in Finland, he had no one with him."

Cole took the tablet, glanced at it, and set it down. "He's alone, he has backing, and he wants the Third Seat. We clear the Scandinavian strongholds first and strip away his outside resources one by one. Once those are gone, it doesn't matter who's backing him — the cards in his hand keep getting fewer."

Sophia nodded and placed the tablet on the nightstand. After a moment of silence, she spoke.

"Cole, for this sweep — I want to stay in Tromsø."

Cole looked at her. "It's not that I don't want to go," she said, her voice steady, without any self-pity. "It's that going wouldn't help, and I'd only slow you down. Before my ancestral fire fully recovers, being in combat would just split your focus. Staying here, working with Heinrich on intelligence analysis, keeping an eye on what's happening in Finland — that's where I'm actually useful."

Cole didn't say "you'll recover" or "you're not slowing us down." He just nodded.

"Tromsø is yours."

The corner of Sophia's mouth curved slightly. She closed her eyes. Her breathing gradually steadied, her fingers resting lightly in Cole's palm.

Cole sat at the edge of the bed, listening to the steady rhythm of the medical monitors.

Outside, the searchlight over Tromsø harbor swept slowly across the water, its beam cutting through the dark, then letting the dark close back in.

To the north, the sky above the Arctic had gone completely black. A new threat was quietly taking shape inside that darkness. But here, in this room, it was quiet.

Cole tightened his hold on Sophia's hand, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.