The building didn’t look like a secret.
It looked like a bank.
Polished steel framing. Tinted glass. A quiet plaque beside the door that simply read: Holland House. No logos. No flags. No indication that three floors underground, behind biometric scanners and buried fiber lines, sat the coordination hub of MI6’s internal review division.
Officially, it didn’t exist.
Unofficially, it kept the world from setting itself on fire, by ensuring no one on the inside struck the first match.
Alon and Nora walked through the lobby like they belonged there. Because they did.
Alon wore a charcoal coat, collar turned up, shadowed stubble across his jaw. Nora moved beside him, silent and exact, her eyes scanning reflections, doors, glass, metal.
The receptionist didn’t look up.
They passed through two layers of quiet security: first a retinal scanner, then a pattern-matched gate linked to decades of movement data. The deeper they went, the colder the air became. The lighting changed too, no longer soft or ambient, but sterile and flat.
By the time they reached Sub-Level Three, the silence was engineered.
They were led, without words, into a room of glass and stone. A boardroom, but one without identity. No clocks. No paintings. Just ten black chairs and a long table polished to a mirror sheen.
A man waited at the far end. Crisp suit. Pale blue tie. The kind of stillness that only came from absolute control.
He didn’t rise when they entered.
He simply said, “Alon.”
“Director Mercer.”
The voice was cool. Neutral. Not unfriendly.
But far from kind.
Nora remained standing near the door, hands folded, eyes fixed on the angles of the room.
Mercer gestured to a seat. Alon didn’t move.
The Director spoke again. “You’ve crossed borders without clearance. You’ve made contact with ghosted assets. You’ve entered restricted MI6 archive infrastructure.”
Alon didn’t blink. “I’ve also identified a live black operation running off dead protocol with no parliamentary oversight.”
Mercer looked down, shuffled a file. Opened it. Inside: printed photographs, grainy, timestamped.
Yael. Dead on the rooftop.
Hadrian. Marked at the Akamas site.
Alon, holding the activation key.
Mercer placed one photo gently on the table.
The Sable chamber.
“You opened it,” Mercer said.
“It was already open,” Alon replied.
“Don’t play semantic chess with me, Regev. You found the echo files. You listened to them.”
“I listened,” Alon said, voice flat. “I heard what was done in our name.”
Mercer closed the file. “We do what’s required.”
“And when required becomes personal?” Nora asked, stepping forward. “When the directive becomes a weapon turned inward?”
Mercer’s eyes flicked toward her. “That’s not your jurisdiction.”
“It is now.”
She tossed a small encrypted key drive on the table.
“Yael’s final dump. All of it. Names. Transfers. Codenames. Backdoor accounts. Including Shemesh Protocol and the shadow signatories who reactivated it.”
Mercer stared at the drive. Said nothing.
Alon spoke. Quietly. Deliberately.
“We’re not asking for permission, Director.”
A long silence.
Then Mercer smiled.
But there was no warmth in it.
“You’re in over your head, Regev. You think pulling threads will unravel the sweater. But you don’t understand, you’re wearing it. Always have been.”
He stood slowly. Straightened his cuffs. Picked up the drive.
Then looked directly at Alon.
“You’ve made yourself a liability.”
Alon stepped forward, just once. Close enough that Mercer could see the sharp edge behind his eyes.
“Then you’ll know what happens when you corner one.”
They left without being stopped.
Which was more dangerous than if they had been.
Outside, the sky had turned white. No clouds. Just an overexposed dome of light like the world was trying to bleach itself clean.
Nora spoke first.
“You think he’ll bury it?”
“No,” Alon said. “He’ll use it.”
“As leverage?”
“As fire.”
She looked at him. “So what now?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper. It hadn’t been in the file. It had been slipped into his coat during the walk out.
On it, in clean, looping script:
Vienna. Gate 7. Four days.
Bring the tape. Come alone.
He showed it to her.
She nodded.
“Leah.”
And far below London, in a terminal that no longer served any known route, a light flickered on.
A server activated.
And a name blinked across a screen.
ALON REGEV – OBSERVATION STATUS: REACTIVATED.