THE INFORMANT

THE INFORMANT
The night swallowed sound.

Adrian and I sat in a borrowed SUV parked a block away from Pier 47, where the wind howled through the alleyways like an omen. The pier itself stretched out into the bay like a broken rib, lit by sparse flickering lights and a corroded neon sign that blinked DOCK STORAGE in uneven intervals. The air was damp with salt, and every shadow felt too still.

Ethan’s voice crackled in my earpiece. “Signal’s clean. No untagged devices near the drop zone. But stay sharp. If this guy’s who he says he is, Orbis probably knows too.”

Adrian stared at the pier, then at me. “You sure you want to be out there?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Yes. We need this. All of it.”

We stepped out into the cold. The wind bit into our coats as we approached the far end of the pier. The water below lapped against the rotting beams with a rhythm that made my skin crawl.

A lone figure stood near the edge, motionless. Hooded. Gloved. His stance rigid, back straight like he was bracing himself for something.

“Adrian Blackwell?” the man rasped, voice rough like broken glass.

“That depends. You the one who reached out?” Adrian asked calmly.

The man gave a slight nod. “Used to head international assets under Victoria. I was in charge of routing capital for Project Citrine.”

I stepped forward, my breath clouding in the air. “Then you know what Orbis really is.”

“I do. And I know they’ll kill me for talking to you.”

He pulled a flash drive from his coat and held it out—but didn’t release it. “Everything’s on here. Names, shadow accounts, routes through Vanheim Trust. Even Addington’s next target. But if I hand this over, I need your word. Protection. Relocation. I disappear, or this stays in my pocket.”

Ethan’s voice buzzed in my ear again. “Sophie, tell him we’ll make it happen. I’ve got a contact in Denmark. Safe identity. If the drive’s real, we’ll keep him alive.”

I nodded. “You’ll be safe. But we need the truth.”

The man hesitated. Then his hand trembled as he placed the drive into mine.

“Move fast,” he whispered. “I haven’t used a phone in a week, but they know. They always know.”

That’s when Ethan’s tone changed.

“Abort. Sophie—Adrian—get out. Inbound vehicle, no plates, black SUV. ETA forty seconds.”

Adrian didn’t waste a second. He grabbed my hand and yanked me behind a row of rusted containers.

Gunfire shattered the silence.

The informant screamed. I looked back and saw him fall. His body crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut.

Adrian shoved me to the ground and covered me with his body as bullets zipped through the air, splintering wood and pinging off metal.

“Ethan, we need eyes!” Adrian yelled.

“Tracking heat signatures now! Hold tight—extraction en route, thirty seconds!”

Everything became a blur. Shadows moved across the pier. Footsteps pounded against wood. A second round of shots cut through the night.

Adrian pulled me up. “Go!”

We sprinted back toward the alley, weaving between containers. A flashbang exploded somewhere behind us, lighting the air white. My ears rang, my vision swam.

Then headlights.

Ethan’s backup team—two black sedans—screeched to a halt at the edge of the dock. One door flung open.

“Inside! Now!”

Adrian pushed me into the backseat as more shots rang out behind us.

The driver hit the gas.

As we sped away, I clutched the flash drive like it was my own heartbeat. My fingers wouldn’t release it.

“Status?” Ethan asked.

“Informant’s down,” Adrian said, breathing hard. “Unconfirmed if he’s alive.”

“I’ll scrub the camera feeds. But we need to assume they know we have the files.”

Back at the safehouse—another of Ethan’s well-hidden bunkers—the atmosphere was brittle. Quiet. Tense.

Ethan had already set up the drive in an isolated sandbox terminal. He sat with headphones in, eyes darting across lines of code, decrypting, verifying, searching.

Adrian paced.

I watched them both, still trembling from the adrenaline.

Ethan exhaled. “It’s real.”

“What’s on it?” I asked.

“Everything. Offshore accounts. Shell companies. Secret shareholders. They’ve built a spiderweb—Blackwell Holdings was just one leg of the system.”

He clicked through folders.

“Here’s a list of subsidiaries that feed into Orbis. Energy grids. Pharmaceutical labs. Media licensing arms. But more than that… they’re moving to go legitimate. A global launch under a new name: The Vanguard Consortium.”

Adrian’s face twisted. “A rebrand.”

“Exactly,” Ethan said. “Addington plans to turn Orbis into a public innovation think tank. White papers. International forums. Academic partnerships. They’ll hide behind legitimacy. Once that happens, no court will touch them.”

I leaned forward. “What’s their timeline?”

“Seventy-two hours. It’s all in here. The launch is happening at a tech summit in Berlin. Addington is scheduled to deliver the keynote address. The drive has the speech draft. He’s painting Orbis as the cure for global inefficiency. A ‘coalition of innovation.’”

Adrian’s voice was low. “They’re laundering corruption into credibility.”

Ethan turned the screen again. “Look at this.”

He pointed at a folder labeled: Media Compromise. Inside were emails. Memos. Payoffs. Bribes to major outlets, threats to independent journalists, blackmail on whistleblowers.

“They’ve erased critics before they could speak. That’s how they’ve stayed invisible for so long.”

Adrian sat down, slowly.

“They weren’t just covering their tracks,” he muttered. “They’ve been building a future where they never need to.”

A long silence fell.

Then my phone buzzed.

Unknown number. No message.

Then Ethan’s terminal beeped.

A single line of code appeared on his monitor.

You got the truth. But truth without power is noise.

We froze.

“They’re watching us,” Ethan whispered.

I stared at the screen. At the map of the world dotted with pins of power. Cities, companies, people who had no idea they were dancing on strings.

“We can’t let them rewrite this,” I said. “We go to Berlin.”

Adrian looked at me. “And do what?”

“Burn it all down,” I said. “On a stage they can’t ignore.”

Ethan nodded slowly. “We have the data. The proof. But we’ll need a way in. A broadcast point. Live. Global.”

I stood. My fear had hollowed into something colder. Something clearer.

“They wanted to bury the past,” I said. “Let’s remind them we still own the future.”