Chapter 28: Veil Protocol

  The room was too quiet for comfort.

  Dull amber lights buzzed against the ceiling. The vents hummed irregularly, like breath catching in a throat. Old maintenance lockers lined the walls, rust curling their edges. The Dominion chose places like this for a reason.

  Forgettable. Unclean. Already half-abandoned.

  Agent Thalen adjusted the sleeve of his coverall and checked the perimeter signal again. No trace. They were alone, or as alone as you ever got on Emberfall.

  Across from him sat Operative Sera and Technic Juno. Both wore standard station crew jumpsuits. No markings. No names. Only the flicker of tension in their eyes gave them away.

  “This room is clean?” Juno asked, voice low.

  “Triple sweep. Interference mesh engaged,” Thalen replied. “If we’re being watched, it’s not by station tech.”

  Sera leaned forward. “Then let’s begin.”

  The code phrases came first.

  “The garden is cold.”“But the roots endure.”“And the harvest nears.”

  Standard alignment check. All three passed.

  But it didn’t feel right.

  Thalen hesitated before producing a chipped data slate. “Signal packet. Level-three lock. Came four cycles ago. Flagged priority, but… origin hash was degraded.”

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  Juno frowned. “That shouldn’t happen. Not on Dominion channels.”

  Sera’s eyes narrowed. “Read it anyway.”

  Thalen tapped the slate. The message spilled out in block format. Coordinates. A brief directive.

  But no cipher tag. No handler signature.

  “We’re being rerouted,” he said. “No explanation.”

  Sera stood. “That’s breach protocol.”

  “Or shadow overwrite,” Juno offered. “They’ve done it before.”

  Thalen looked between them. “But Elyss was activated. That we know. If she moved, it means the Directive is in motion. So why are we being fed ghost orders?”

  No one answered.

  The silence deepened.

  Sera pulled a small device from her jacket, an older-gen pulse scanner, off-network.

  “I checked before I came. Our primary contact node in Relay Hub Theta? It’s dark. Fully purged. No trace of last access.”

  “Dead drop?”

  “More like dead handler.”

  That landed hard.

  Juno shook his head. “No Dominion contact in four days. A reroute with no cipher. And CAPRA’s network spike registered yesterday. They say it’s sandboxed, but—”

  “It’s not,” Thalen said flatly.

  Juno blinked.

  “I had access to a subroutine before they locked down the uplink. CAPRA cracked internal Dominion encryption and didn’t even trip the warning flags.”

  Sera exhaled slowly. “Then it’s already inside the weave.”

  Silence again.

  The Dominion taught clarity. Obedience. Patience.

  But this felt like drowning in static.

  “So what do we do?” Juno asked. “Wait for more broken orders? Assume we’ve been cut off?”

  Sera didn’t blink.

  “No. We switch to Veil Protocol. Maintain surface roles. Gather what intel we can. Operate autonomously until proper reactivation is confirmed.”

  Thalen nodded.

  “And if Elyss is compromised?”

  Sera’s voice was colder than the air.

  “Then we make sure the mission survives her.”

  They left separately.

  One minute apart.Three exits.One mission.

  Still loyal.

  But now, watching each other.