---
I stared at the flash drive long after the message disappeared.
The Queen never dies.
It wasn’t a warning.
It was a promise.
Jace sat beside me, his fingers laced with mine. Neither of us spoke. The silence in the safehouse was no longer peace—it was anticipation. Like the air itself knew we were only between battles, not past them.
"Argentina," Theo said, breaking the quiet. "There’s a small research site in Patagonia, under an abandoned biogenetics firm. Been flagged in black files twice. Nothing solid until now."
"Coordinates?" I asked.
He nodded. "And there’s more. Surveillance caught a delivery last night. Crates labeled only with one word: Eclipse."
Jace looked up. "Roman’s deep-phase code. The one he shelved after the Eden incident. It wasn’t just for cloning. It was ab
