Return Protocol

The scent of rain clung to the streets, the pavement still damp from an afternoon storm. Mexico City pulsed around them, alive in a way that never truly stopped. Cars wove through the congestion with practiced impatience, neon signs flickered against the haze of pollution, and the scent of roasted corn and diesel blended into something uniquely urban.

Jessica moved quickly, keeping her posture loose, natural, but her pulse remained steady. The gunmen at the club hadn’t been amateurs. They hadn’t come to kill her. They had come to take her, and that was worse.

Olivia walked beside her, silent, her mind no doubt racing through possibilities the same way Jessica’s was. They needed a secure location, somewhere untraceable. Olivia led them away from the main avenues, down into Colonia Roma, where the streets narrowed, and the night swallowed them whole.

They reached a quiet café, its windows darkened for the night, the metal shutters pulled halfway down. Olivia produced a key and led them inside. The upstairs apartment was small. It was barely furnished beyond a couch, a desk, and a bed in the back room, but it was safe. For now.

Jessica locked the door behind them and exhaled.

“Tell me,” she said.

Olivia didn’t need clarification. She sat on the edge of the desk, pulling out her tablet, her fingers moving fast over the screen.

“The search on your name wasn’t random,” Olivia murmured. “Someone accessed a secure intelligence database, a physical system. Not something that can be done remotely.” She turned the screen toward Jessica. “That means someone inside a facility pulled your file.”

Jessica stepped closer, her eyes narrowing. The screen displayed a security log, lines of text running in neat columns, the most recent entry standing out in bold. A timestamp. A data retrieval request. The name attached to it: G. Aragon.

Jessica exhaled. “The man from the club.”

Olivia nodded. “He was pulling Vanguard records. That’s why I started tracking him.” She hesitated. “And that’s why we need to talk about this.”

She tapped the screen again. Another document loaded. Jessica leaned in, scanning the contents. It was a security profile, the kind intelligence agencies used to flag individuals as assets or threats.

Jessica’s name was there. So were every alias she had ever used.

But that wasn’t what made her stomach tighten. At the top of the file, under Access Requestor, was a name that should not have existed anymore.

M. Black.

The breath left Jessica’s lungs. The world around her seemed to press in, the weight of the name curling around her ribs like a vice. That wasn’t possible. Mr. Black was dead. She had put a bullet in his chest. She had watched him fall. She had burned that part of her life.

And yet… He still stood. The bullet hadn’t ended him. It had only started the next move. Her move. Or maybe his.

“Jessica,” Olivia said carefully. “If this is real—”

Jessica’s hand tightened into a fist. “It’s real.”

The silence stretched between them, thick and heavy. Jessica turned away, pacing toward the window, staring out at the city without really seeing it. The night pressed against the glass, distorted by raindrops clinging to the surface.

Mr. Black wasn’t just alive. He was looking for her. And she had no idea why. No, take that back. She knew exactly why. She was his missing asset. The one who got away.

Olivia’s voice was quieter now. “What do we do?”

Jessica inhaled, slow and measured, “We find him first.”

* * *

The encrypted email arrived just after midnight. No sender. No metadata. It was a ghost message. Jessica opened it without hesitation. There was no text. Just a single image.

A grainy security still. A man standing outside a compound. Black suit. Hands in his pockets. Expression unreadable. His stance hadn’t changed. There was the same tilt of the head. Same distance in the eyes. It was as if the photo had been taken years ago, or like he hadn’t aged at all. Either way, Mr. Black was alive and waiting.

Jessica closed her eyes, the old instincts returning. The same quiet calculation. The same familiar burn of a puzzle begging to be solved. She should have felt anger. Maybe even fear. Instead, she felt something colder. She felt resolve.

Olivia’s voice was barely above a whisper, “He’s setting a trap.”

Jessica exhaled, “I know.”

She picked up her gun and checked the magazine. “Let him set the trap,” she said, sliding the gun home. “We’re done hiding.”