The stillness of the Carpathian night was a palette upon which the pack deposited their most vital and dangerous work. The research in the long Aethelred laboratory was a voracious beast, consuming reagents, specialized gear, and rare earth metals by the ton. They could not rely on the occasional, questionable buyouts from the market. They needed bulk. They needed specificity. And they needed it to seem as if out of nothing.
This was the domain of logistics, a fight fought not with tooth or code but with shipping manifests, truck routes, and strategic management of human bureaucracy. It was a game of misdirection played by Selene and guided from the dark.
It began with a lie. With their identities and tax identification numbers for their thousands of shell firms—"Balkan Geological Survey
