A woman stepped in. She wasn't wearing tactical gear. She wore a beige trench coat and carried a grocery bag with a baguette sticking out. She looked like a local coming home from a late shift. But Six recognized the way she shifted her weight—always balanced, always ready to spring. "The drive is wiping, Dani," Six said from the darkness.

The file sat on the encrypted drive like a digital landmine: PROJECT_PALE_HORSE .

Court Gentry, known to the CIA as Sierra Six, watched the cursor blink in the corner of his laptop. He was in a safehouse in Prague—a drafty apartment that smelled of old wallpaper and boiled cabbage. Outside, the trams rattled the windowpane, a rhythmic sound that usually helped him sleep. But tonight, sleep was an impossibility.