Elias leaned forward slightly, his gaze settling on her.“It's good to meet you,” he said.No flourish.No softness.Just fact.“I’m glad you’re safe.”
Mateo glanced up from his screens, giving her a brief nod.“Line’s locked down.No one’s listening in.Good to see you again, Eliza.”
Rafael shifted in his chair, uncrossing his arms.“Hey.You're looking a lot better.”
Dominic’s mouth twitched into something that might have been a smile.“I'm Dominic.”
Luca tipped his chin toward her.“Hi Eliza.I'm Luca.Mara and I will handle anything you need on the logistics side.”
Mara met Eliza’s eyes through the screen and held them.“You’re safe with these guys.”
The subtle shift rippled again—this time warmer, more grounded—as the Covenant acknowledged her presence not as an asset, but as a person who had survived.
Eliza drew in a steadying breath.“I have an eidetic memory,” she said, voice calm despite the weight of attention.“Numbers, systems, patterns.I don’t forget them.”
Silence fell—dense and absolute.
Mateo was the first to speak.“That explains the access anomalies.We saw legitimate credentials touching dead systems—accounts that should’ve been dark suddenly authenticating, making changes that looked clean on the surface but didn’t line up with any authorized workflow.Someone was forcing access through you, not logging in as you.”
“That’s why they took you,” Elias added, understanding settling into his expression.
He didn’t pause to sit with the horror of it.Strategy displaced reaction the way it always did with him.
“Okay,” Elias said, already shifting.“That means everything we’ve been treating as a hostile breach is actually a coerced internal vector.We stop hunting ghosts and start mapping pressure points.”His gaze flicked to Mateo.“I want every system she touched isolated and mirrored.No more burn protocols.We preserve.”
Mateo was already nodding.“On it.”
Elias continued, voice calm, decisive.“Rafael, Dominic—pivot from cleanup to deterrence.Anyone watching those accounts needs to believe we’re still blind.”
He looked back at Eliza then, deliberately.“You don’t talk unless you want to.When you do, we’ll build the operation around what you remember, not what they think they erased.”
“Yes,” Eliza replied.“Not just for what I can do.For what I retain.I know accounts that don’t exist on paper anymore.Routes that were never logged.Names that were scrubbed.”
Luca swore softly under his breath.Mara’s jaw tightened.
“And the buyer?”Elias asked.
“He wanted all of it,” Eliza said.“Me.My skills.My memory.Owning me meant owning everything I carry.”
Something inside Kol snapped.
“I will find them,” he said flatly.“Every one of them.I’ll dismantle their networks, burn their money, and put them down.”
The vow was iron-clad.
Eliza inhaled slowly and turned in her chair to face him.
“Not without me,” she said.
The words were quiet.
Unyielding.
They cut through the room sharper than any threat.
The team went silent again, but this time it wasn’t shock—it was recognition.Respect.A recalibration of how this operation would move forward.
Nikolai met her gaze, saw the resolve there, the refusal to be erased or sidelined.
