The room did not feel real anymore.
Lena stared at the dark tablet screen long after it went black, waiting for the image to return — for logic to correct what her eyes had just seen.
It didn’t.
Silence stretched across the underground level, thick and suffocating.
Alex stepped in front of her instinctively, his body forming a barrier between Lena and the empty space, as if danger could still emerge from the shadows.
“Marcus,” he said into his comm, voice low and lethal. “Seal every internal corridor. Nobody enters or exits without my authorization.”
Static crackled back with confirmation.
Lena barely heard it.
Her mind replayed the image again and again.
The woman.
Her face.
Her eyes.
Her expression.
Not similar.
Not close.
Identical.
“That’s not possible,” she whispered.
