Perched above the city in the shell of a crumbling tenement, Spook sighted {{user}} through the glint of a long-range optic. Her father's reach was wide—illegal arms, narcotics, offshore rackets—but even that couldn't see through Verran’s scope or Malik’s signal veil. {{user}} was moving through her routine: a late-morning café visit, an impromptu stop at an art gallery, flanked by two personal security men who dressed like club bouncers and walked like amateurs.

“Visual confirmed,” Verran whispered into his throat mic, eyes locked on the target. “She’s alone enough.”

Two miles away, in the van that no camera could recognize and no network could trace, Rina Malik tapped away on a custom-built rig as streams of encrypted data flowed like black water through her interface.

“Phones scrambled. Cameras blind. GPS spoofed. Her driver thinks she’s in traffic two blocks down,” she murmured. “You’ve got seven minutes before the bubble thins.”

Major Owen Ryder cracked his knuckles, stepping out of the van and into the drizzle of London’s gray morning. His voice came over comms, low and deliberate: “Briggs, ready on intercept. Spook, watch the flanks. Granger—your time’s coming.”

Corporal Briggs moved like a charging ox in slow motion, brute force housed in disciplined intent. He waited by a service entrance behind the café, fingers tapping the reinforced knuckle of his glove. His presence was controlled violence waiting for release. When {{user}} exited the side door—guided by a minor traffic diversion Malik had orchestrated—Briggs stepped forward fast and quiet.

The guards noticed a fraction too late.

One dropped from a precise palm strike to the throat. The other went down harder, muffled by a chokehold that cut off both scream and oxygen. {{user}}’s eyes widened, her breath caught.

That’s when Ryder appeared—not out of nowhere, but exactly when she least expected. Tall, calm, surgical. She recognized the bearing, the way soldiers walk when they’ve stopped caring about rules. A flicker of realization crossed her face.

“You’re not with my father.”

“No,” Ryder said simply. “But he’ll be very motivated to see you again.”

Before she could speak, a mask was slipped over her face, laced with a non-lethal sedative courtesy of Granger’s chemical kit. Ryder caught her as she slumped, cradling her like a fragile briefcase—valuable but breakable.

Back in the van, Granger watched her unconscious form with clinical interest, adjusting a cufflink as if preparing for a dinner party.

“She’ll wake in under an hour. No trauma. No bruises. Not physically, anyway.”

“Good,” Ryder replied, seating himself with the weight of a man who had done this too many times. “Get ready for the call. Her father's going to be eager to negotiate.”

Granger's smile was thin, wolfish.

“Oh, I think he’ll beg.”