THE RED PULSE
(Isabella – POV)
The voice didn’t belong in the room It was metallic, filtered, as though dragged across too many wires before it reached us.
“Hello, Isabella Valei.”
The red pulse of the flash drive bathed the table in faint light, steady and unhurried — like a heartbeat that wasn’t mine.
Marcus didn’t move neither did I because when machines start speaking names they shouldn’t know, the first mistake is answering back.
I forced my voice level. “Marcus.”
He didn’t take his eyes off the drive. “Don’t touch it.”
“Do I look like I’m going to?”
He exhaled, sharp through his nose, and reached for his laptop again. “They’ve activated it remotely. It’s not a storage unit — it’s a channel.”
The drive pulsed again.
“Isabella Valei,” the voice repeated. “You’re holding what isn’t yours and it’s listening.”
(Marcus – POV)
I didn’t care who was on the other end. Vivian, Cristian, some anonymous arm of the shadow board.
The problem wasn’t the voice. The problem was the signal.
The flash drive wasn’t broadcasting to us — it was broadcasting through us. Every time it pulsed, it leapt to another relay, another frequency, widening the net.
If I didn’t kill it now, we’d have half the board’s surveillance division triangulating within ten minutes.
I slid the laptop closer, opened the sandbox, and began spiking interference. Lines of code, blunt and fast.
Behind me, Isabella circled the table, her hand near her pistol. “Talk to me.”
“It’s beaconing,” I said. “Every pulse is a ping. They’ll know we’re here.”
“How long?”
“Too short for comfort.”
The drive pulsed again but this time the voice was different. Not filtered, not corporate. Softer. Feminine.
“Isabella,” it said.
My stomach dropped because I knew that voice, even through static.
It was Selene's.
(Isabella – POV)
My blood chilled.
“Selene,” I whispered.
Marcus looked up, startled, then back to the drive. “I thought that she's gone.”
“She’s not.”
The red light flickered like it was laughing.
“I'm here now,” the voice said. “I'm here where it matters and I’ve been waiting for you to stop running.”
I gripped the table. “What do you want?”
The answer wasn’t immediate. Just another slow pulse, then:
“To remind you that Vivian isn’t your only predator. She’s cleaning the board. I’m cleaning the players.”
(Narrator – POV)
Outside the safe house, the street was no longer anonymous.
The man in the raincoat checked his watch. The woman across the road shifted just enough to signal someone further down the block. The parked car’s windows glinted once, catching a reflection that didn’t belong.
Vivian’s net was closing but Selene had cut in ahead of her, hijacking the bait before Vivian could spring the full trap.
And inside, Isabella and Marcus had no way of knowing which enemy they were feeding with every second the drive kept breathing red.
(Marcus – POV)
I slammed the kill-switch into the code, forcing a cascade of loops around the signal. It bought me seconds, not minutes.
“She’s using it like a microphone,” I muttered. “Not just a beacon — a way to listen, to bleed sound out of this room.”
The drive hissed, almost like feedback.
“Stop fighting me, Marcus,” Selene’s voice said. “You can’t overwrite a shadow.”
My jaw tightened. I typed faster.
“I can erase one.”
But even as I said it, I knew the lie. She’d threaded herself into the infrastructure already. Erasing this drive wouldn’t erase her.
It would only blind us.
(Isabella – POV)
The safe house wasn’t safe. I felt it in my bones now — the way the walls seemed thinner, the air heavier. Every instinct told me we’d been found, not by Vivian’s shadows, but by something older.
I grabbed Marcus’s wrist, stopping his frantic typing.
“She’s not here for the drive,” I said.
He looked up sharply. “What?”
“She could have burned us the second it pulsed but she’s talking instead. That means she wants something else.”
The voice answered before Marcus could.
“Correct,” Selene said. “I want you to see the truth about the board before Vivian buries it.”
(Vivian – POV)
Dean entered without knocking. His face was pale, the kind of pale that meant something had slipped the net.
“She’s in,” he said.
“Who?” I asked, though I already knew.
“Selene. The channel Cristian baited with the drive — it’s compromised.”
I put my pen down slowly. “Compromised, or reclaimed?”
Dean hesitated. “It’s hers now. She’s speaking through it.”
I leaned back, considering. So. Selene wanted to play.
“Let her,” I said at last.
Dean blinked. “But—”
“If she’s talking to Isabella, she’s distracting her and distraction, Dean, is the most expensive currency of all. By the time they realize which trap they’re standing in, the vote will already belong to me.”
(Marcus – POV)
The drive went still. The red light dimmed, then returned, but the voice didn’t.
Silence pressed the room.
I exhaled, tension snapping out of my shoulders. “She’s gone.”
“No,” Isabella said quietly. “She’s waiting.”
She was right. The silence wasn’t absence. It was anticipation.
The drive wasn’t just listening anymore. It was recording and if Selene had left us this channel, it was because she knew Vivian would be watching too.
We weren’t talking to one enemy. We were talking to both.
(Narrator – POV)
On the street outside, the first car door opened. A man stepped out, adjusting his cuff, moving toward the safe house. Another followed. Then another.
The net was no longer theoretical. Vivian’s men were here.
But inside, Isabella and Marcus hadn’t moved yet — caught between the silent drive and the truth that neither Selene nor Vivian needed to break down the door.
They only needed time and the clock was already bleeding seconds away.
(Isabella – POV)
“Marcus.”
“I know.”
“We leave.”
He shut the laptop in one sharp motion and stuffed it into the bag. The drive pulsed once more, and I almost left it on the table. Almost but I didn’t.
I slipped it into my pocket because bait or not, surveillance or not, it was the one piece on the board they hadn’t expected me to carry willingly and if Vivian and Selene wanted me marked then I’d make sure I chose the battlefield where the mark mattered.
(Vivian – POV)
Dean’s comm crackled. “Target movement. South exit.”
I smiled faintly.
“Let them run,” I said. “Every path out of that house leads them further in.”
(Marcus – POV)
We hit the alley at the back. London’s night air slapped against my face, damp and raw.
The streetlights flickered, same as the car had before.
I checked the corners — no obvious pursuit yet but Isabella’s hand brushed mine as she adjusted her coat, and I felt the outline of the drive in her pocket.
“We should have destroyed it,” I hissed.
“We couldn’t,” she said. “Not until we know which ghost we’re actually fighting.”
And in that moment, I realized she wasn’t talking about Vivian anymore.
A single text appeared on my phone, untr
aceable, unsigned.
"SURVIVAL IS NEGOTIATION. IN 70 HOURS, YOU’LL HAVE TO CHOOSE."
The timestamp glowed back at me and for the first time since this began, I wasn’t sure whether it was Vivian warning us or Selene.