Wallace slid silently back into the murky water, the shock of the cold making him wince. He used the cover of the dense cattails, moving parallel to the bank but a little further out in the deeper channel. The water was up to his chest, the current pulling gently toward the open bay. He kept the Pelican case held high above the water line.
He moved inch by inch, fighting the suction of the mud beneath his feet and the need to breathe noisily. His military training from twenty years ago, long since gathering dust under layers of civilian complacency, kicked in. Keep low. Move slow. Listen.
He could hear the searcher closer now, a heavy grunt of effort as he hauled himself onto the very bank Wallace had just vacated.
"Nothing here, moving up toward the creek," the man shouted to his partner near the boat.
"Hurry up! Boss wants that case!" the second man yelled back.
Wallace used the moment of communication to submerge his head entirely, holding his breath and pushing himself forward with a strong kick. He moved underwater for as long as he could, his lungs screaming for air.
When he finally surfaced, gasping quietly, he was around a bend in the channel. He couldn't see the light anymore, only the dark, looming shapes of the low-country trees and the vast, starry canvas of the sky.
He had bought himself a few minutes. Maybe five.
He reached a section of the bank where an old, half-collapsed dock jutted into the water—a remnant of an old crab shack. He hauled himself out of the water, shaking violently from the cold and adrenaline. His fingers were numb.
He checked the Pelican case. It was perfectly sealed, dry as a bone. The Ouroboros symbol seemed to mock him, the snake swallowing its tail in an eternal, cryptic loop.
He needed to get home. He was a half-hour jog from the secondary access road, where he’d parked his reliable, anonymous sedan. The jog through the swampy woods was miserable, filled with tripping roots and stinging insects, but the fear of the men behind him was a potent motivator.
He made it to the car dripping mud and salt water. His hands shook so much he could barely get the key into the ignition. The engine turned over on the second try, and he tore out onto the deserted county road, glancing nervously in the rearview mirror until Seabrook Island was miles behind him.
By the time he got back to his isolated home on the mainland, it was nearly 3 AM. The house was a smart, minimalist structure of glass and dark wood, built to keep the chaotic world out and the organized data in.
He stripped off his ruined clothes at the door and headed straight for his lab in the basement. He didn't turn on lights, navigating by the ambient blue glow of his server racks.
He placed the Pelican case on his stainless steel work table. It had a heavy, satisfying thunk. He sat down, the exhaustion hitting him like a physical blow, but the adrenaline kept his mind buzzing.
He took a deep breath and focused on the case. There were no visible screws or latches, just the solid, seamless plastic and the strange, engraved symbol. He ran his numb fingers over the surface. It was a pressure-sealed, biometric lock system, likely built to survive a depth of thousands of feet.
"Okay, you beautiful nightmare," he whispered. "Let's see what you’re hiding."
He began by scanning the case with an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer, analyzing its material composition. The outer shell was a standard, high-density polymer, but there was a thin layer of something else embedded in it: a highly advanced alloy of titanium and something heavy and rare. It was expensive, military-grade protection.
He moved on to the lock mechanism. Biometrics implied a fingerprint or perhaps a retinal scan. He didn’t have the original owner's eyeball, but he had skills that could bypass standard security protocols.
He brought out a small, specialized laptop and a set of jumper cables designed to trick sensors. He carefully attached a microscopic probe to the edge of the biometric plate. The laptop whirred to life, running a brute-force script against the lock’s firmware.
Access Denied. Access Denied. Access Denied.
The system was sophisticated. It wasn't just a stored template; it was likely a dynamic security key tied to a specific individual’s unique biometrics and maybe even a passphrase only known by the intended recipient.
He paused the script. He had to be smarter. He thought back to the numbers sequence from the original signal: 4-1-9-dash-7-7-2-dash-8-9-9-dash-ALPHA-BRAVO-NINE. It had to be the key, or part of it.
He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. The numbers were too specific. They meant something local, maybe a location. A glance at his marine charts confirmed it: those numbers corresponded precisely to the coordinates of the buoy itself. The signal wasn't the key; the location was the message. The case was meant to be retrieved there.
He returned his attention to the lock. The Ouroboros symbol. Eternity. Secrets.
He remembered a small, faint indentation on the base of the symbol that he’d missed earlier. It was designed to look like a manufacturing defect, but his fingers, still sensitive from the cold, registered a slight give. It was a manual release, a failsafe bypass hidden in plain sight.
He pressed hard. A faint click resonated from within the mechanism.
The case hissed as the vacuum seal broke. Wallace’s heart pounded in his chest as he slowly, carefully lifted the lid.
Inside, nestled in custom grey foam, were three items:
A sleek, black satellite phone, dead silent.
A small, military-grade USB drive.
A single, yellowed photograph of five men standing in front of the old Seabrook listening post from the 1990s.
Wallace recognized the man in the center instantly. He was younger, leaner, but the eyes were the same. It was Robert Thorne, the man who owned the consulting firm Wallace worked for—the man who was supposed to be in Geneva this week.
The photograph held a chilling secret, a look shared between the five men that spoke of shared burdens and dangerous promises. The game had just changed. Wallace wasn't dealing with government ghosts anymore; he was dealing with people he knew, and one of them was his boss.
He reached for the USB drive, his reflection staring back at him from the dark surface of the lab bench, a look of grim realization hardening his face. The data on this drive could either clear his name or get him killed. The thriller had truly begun.
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