Chapter 65 Zurich Option
Eli’s POV
We left Berlin with a Polaroid in my wallet and a new target on Mila’s map.
“Switzerland,” she said on the call, screen split between her and Alina. “Some of the Lattice’s favorite piggy banks are clustered there. Shell companies, trusts, slush funds. If you want to hurt them without blowing up half the grid, their wallets are a good start.”
“Tell me there is a conference we can crash,” Sloane said. “I am getting bored of summits.”
“There is always a conference in Zurich,” Alina replied dryly. “Fintech innovation this week. Panels on blockchain and responsible AI. Perfect cover for a woman trying to set fire to the surveillance industrial complex.”
So that was that. London to Zurich. One more city whose skyline would now mean something different.
Zurich was clean in a way that made me suspicious. Trains on time. Airport silent and efficient. No trash on the streets. Lakes and mountains in the distance like a postcard.
“Feels like being inside a well maintained database,” Sloane muttered as we stepped into arrivals.
“Do not start licking the code,” I said.
She gave me a look. “Bad metaphor. You are jet lagged.”
We both were. Days of shifting time zones and adrenaline had stacked up. It came out sideways.
At the hotel, she ordered the darkest coffee on the menu. I raised a brow.
“You are already vibrating,” I said. “Maybe go decaf.”
“I will sleep when we are not standing on a financial fault line,” she snapped, then winced. “Sorry. I just hate this place.”
“You have been here twenty minutes,” I said.
“I hate what it represents,” she corrected. “Happy.”
We sniped like that all the way up in the elevator. Over coffee. Over meeting schedules. Over whether she needed three different outfits for one summit. Underneath it was not anger. It was exhaustion and fear and the fact that if one more city tried to sell me on its neutrality, I might laugh.
The fintech summit itself was a circus. Polished staging. LED screens. Buzzwords floating on banners. Ethical infrastructure, one of them read, in a font that made me want to break things.
Sloane sat on stage again, back straight, voice calm, talking about systems that did not turn people into data points. In the audience, I saw bankers in suits, tech bros in sneakers, and at least one Avalon Ridge rep in the second row, face smooth, eyes calculating.
I watched from the aisle, half my attention on exits, half on her profile. She looked untouchable up there. I knew better.
Later, in a side room reserved for “bilateral conversations,” we met Jonas Keller.
Mid forties, tidy beard, suit that was a little too worn at the cuffs to be top tier, eyes that skittered to the corners every time a door opened.
He shook Sloane’s hand like he could not believe he was actually here. “Ms Mercer,” he said. “Thank you for seeing me.”
He explained quickly. Risk officer at a private bank that had, unknowingly, handled some of the Council’s money. Patterns of suspicious transfers. Off book accounts. Clients who insisted on special routing and anonymity that stank of more than tax optimization.
“I started flagging them internally,” he said, fidgeting with his pen. “Quietly. Patterns did not make sense. Too much obfuscation for simple tax avoidance. Next month my brakes fail on the motorway. Mechanic says they were tampered with. Then a power surge fries only my home computer. My wife tells me to stop asking questions.”
He looked at Sloane like he already knew the answer and hated that he still wanted to hear it.
I saw myself in him. Different field. Same moral itch that would not go away when the numbers did not add up.
“We appreciate the risk you are taking,” Sloane said. “And we will not make it worse by being sloppy.”
We had planned to meet him at a café, but halfway through his story I cut in.
“This room is not secure,” I said. “Too many passersby. Too many eyes on that door. We move.”
He blinked. “Where.”
“Our hotel,” I said. “Private suite. Closed circuit. No one but us and whatever ghosts Mila is wrangling.”
Sloane shot me a look that said, You are rearranging my social calendar again. I ignored it.
Back at the hotel, I swept the suite twice while Jonas perched on the sofa, hands white around his briefcase. No unusual signals. Mila confirmed the floor was clean for the moment.
He showed us spreadsheets, email trails, shell company diagrams. Accounts that smelled exactly like Council money, routed through Swiss discretion.
“They will notice these gaps,” he warned. “They will know someone has looked.”
“They already suspect you,” I said. “You may as well make it count.”
He swallowed. “My family.”
“We will do everything we can,” Sloane said. “We are not here to make you a martyr.”
When he left, shoulders hunched, I walked him to the elevator, watched until the doors closed. Some part of me wanted to order him onto a plane to somewhere tropical with no internet. Another part knew he would not go. People like him stayed and tried to fix things until they broke or someone broke them.
Back in the suite, Sloane dropped onto the bed face first.
“We are basically a traveling coup against the surveillance industrial complex,” she said into the duvet.
“With benefits,” I said, sitting down beside her.
She rolled onto her back and glared half heartedly. “Do not make me laugh. I am trying to wallow.”
“Wallow for fifteen minutes,” I said. “Then we sleep. Jet lag wins this round.”
We did not make it even that far.
We collapsed side by side on the bed, shoes kicked off, clothes still on. She curled into me without ceremony, her head finding its usual place under my chin like it had lived there before we ever met.
For a while I lay awake, the unfamiliar quiet of Swiss nights pressing at my ears. No sirens. No street shouting. Just the distant hum of a city that prided itself on hiding things well.
Her breathing evened out. My arm tightened around her on instinct.
I told myself I would get up and do one more sweep. Check the door. The locks. The hallway.
Instead, my eyes closed.
Down the hall, a soft click. A door easing shut. Footsteps that did not match Jonas’s gait or Ash’s. I half surfaced, brain clocking it as hotel noise, cataloguing it onto the ever growing list of things to worry about in the morning.
I did not see the small dark dome in the ceiling pivot, lens adjusting.
I just tightened my hold on Sloane and let sleep drag me under again, knowing that whatever waited outside that room, we would face it the way we had faced everything else.
Together, even when the walls had cameras.