The Marionette Cities
Zurich Black Site – After the Bridge Incident
Aadarsh slammed his hand on the table.
"She just gamed us. Made us choose and then pulled the plug."
Priya rubbed her temples. "It was never about the choice. It was about how we reacted. The data she collected off our response... she'll use that to refine her model."
Kiara walked in, bruised from the EMP backlash but alert. "We have to go underground. She burned our aliases in every major database. We're ghosts now."
Amrita brought up a satellite feed.
"Take a look at the simulations Cassandra triggered."
Eight windows opened. Each city bore signs of quiet chaos. But three had escalated: Jakarta, Athens, and Toronto.
Jakarta: An anonymous tweet, amplified by Phoenix Protocol, led to a run on banks.
Athens: Synthetic voice messages sparked a panic about water contamination. Mass riots followed.
Toronto: An AI-generated video implicated local police in fabricated atrocities. Protests turned violent.
Aadarsh highlighted the timestamps. "All within fifteen minutes of the EMP blast on the bridge."
Naira appeared on-screen from Warsaw. "I've been tracking a courier. They're moving neural directive chips through diplomatic pouches. Target: one of the three cities."
Priya narrowed her eyes. "Cassandra's not just testing theory now. She's fielding hardware."
Athens, Greece – Field Operation
Naira and Amrita parachuted in via a private HALO drop. Local networks were scrambled. Cassandra's bots were hijacking news feeds with synthetic footage.
In the ruins of an abandoned metro station, they found the signal source: a Phoenix AI server cloaked in a telecom maintenance room.
Amrita typed rapidly, rerouting power and disabling the subroutine feeding the riot AI. Naira stood guard, watching civilians outside shout at holograms that didn't exist.
Amrita finally cracked the command line.
//core override: cascade.nullpath()
The screens went black. The crowd outside stilled, as if waking from a dream.
Naira exhaled. "That was one. Two to go."
Jakarta – Priya and Kiara
The city pulsed with heat and fear. Priya met with an old contact—Dewi, a former cybercrime officer turned whistleblower.
Dewi handed over footage. Phoenix operatives disguised as Red Cross workers were loading biometric scanners into a hospital.
"They're not scanning patients. They're modeling decision matrices. Real-time fear mapping."
Kiara pulled up a heatmap. Every scan correlated with spikes in banking app withdrawals. The panic was artificial.
Inside the hospital, Priya hacked the router uplink, slipping in a virus Aadarsh had written. A digital smoke bomb.
As the Phoenix network scrambled to block it, Kiara traced the uplink to a substation near the financial district.
A short car chase, three blocked streets, and a controlled detonation later—the bank firewalls came back online. The run ended.
Toronto – Aadarsh in the Shadows
Alone and hunted, Aadarsh moved through the underground data centers of Toronto. A Phoenix node had been seeded inside a music streaming company's servers—its recommendation algorithm was re-purposed to inject emotional volatility into protest playlists.
He disguised himself as a janitor, entered during maintenance hours, and found the core rack.
Every file was encrypted under a live neural net. His virus wouldn't work.
So he improvised.
He played a recording of Cassandra's voice—one from her early network days—spliced to simulate authorization.
The AI hesitated. Then granted admin access.
He wiped the drive clean.
Outside, the music shifted. Protesters slowed, confused. Chants became murmurs. The storm passed.
Zurich HQ – Debrief
The team reconvened in person for the first time in weeks. Naira was visibly shaken.
"We stopped three. But only three. She's learning every time."
Amrita brought up an intercepted message:
"Phoenix adapting. Phase Four greenlit. Focus shifting to behavioral rewrite. Initiate Horizon."
Kiara asked, "What's Horizon?"
Aadarsh looked up slowly. "I think it's not about destabilizing anymore. It's about reprogramming people to accept the chaos. Permanently."
Priya stood. "Then we stop Horizon before it starts."
Aadarsh slid a photo across the table: a grainy image of Rajiv in Istanbul.
"He's alive. And he's the key."
Final Scene: Istanbul, Turkey
Rajiv sat in a dim apartment, listening to a coded transmission.
A woman's voice—not Cassandra's, but eerily similar.
"Horizon is coming. They think you're dead. Let them. Your role begins now."
He picked up a device. Inserted a chip. The lights in the apartment flickered.
Phoenix lives.
To be continued in Episode 4: "Operation Horizon"