The coordinates in the decrypted file led her to the docks.
A warehouse.
Abandoned on the surface. But the radiation detector Silas had slipped her days ago—back when they were still pretending not to trust each other—buzzed to life the moment her boots hit the concrete.
K wanted her to come here.
And she came alone.
The air reeked of salt and rot. Her breath steamed in the night. The water slapped lazily at the pylons, unaware of the war boiling above it.
She entered the building through a side door half-hinged with rust. Inside: dark.
Too dark.
But then a flame flared.
A single oil lantern.
Set upon a surgical table.
And beside it, a man sat—unmoving. Cloaked. Bronze half-mask glinting.
He didn't stand. Didn't speak.
He waited.
Sienna stepped forward slowly, hand at her waist, where her knife lay sheathed in its holster.
"K," she said.
A pause.
Then he spoke—voice like silk dragging over stone.
"I was beginning to think you wouldn't come."
"I almost didn't," she replied.
"I knew you would," he said. "You can't help it. You want answers more than you want safety."
She said nothing.
"You should know," K continued, "I didn't poison Silas. Not this time."
She laughed—bitter. "That's the closest thing to kindness I've heard from you."
He stood then, and the lantern caught his silhouette fully for the first time.
Tall. Precise. Familiar.
Too familiar.
"You look like him," she said quietly. "Like my master."
He nodded once.
"Because I was meant to be him."
The words hit her harder than she expected.
"What do you mean?"
K slowly reached up and removed one glove. Then another. His hands were scarred—not from time, but from needles.
Intravenous scars.
Implant ports.
She knew those too well.
He stepped forward, one pace at a time, until they were three feet apart. Then he lifted a hand to his face, gripped the mask, and—
Removed it.
Her breath caught.
It wasn't his features that stunned her.
It was the mark.
A small crescent-shaped birthmark just below his left ear. Faint, but identical.
Her master had had the same one.
She stared.
"I don't understand."
"You're not supposed to yet," K said. "But soon, you will."
"What are you?" she asked, voice cracking. "A clone? A brother? A hallucination?"
"I'm the one they left behind," he said. "When your precious Dr. Chen decided one of us deserved a name."
He stepped closer.
"I wasn't the lucky one."
Suddenly—gunfire.
A shot cracked through the air.
The bullet shattered K's mask in half, bronze fragments slicing through the lantern flame and into his cheek.
He spun, bleeding.
Sienna dove aside, instinctively rolling behind a rusted crate.
Footsteps pounded behind her.
Silas.
Still pale. Still weak.
But holding a smoking gun in one hand.
And fury in the other.
"Step away from her!" he shouted.
K stumbled back, blood running down his face. One shard of the mask had embedded itself near his eye.
He didn't flee.
He smiled.
Even with blood on his teeth.
"Hello, brother," he said.
Silas froze.
"What?"
"You didn't think you were the only one, did you?" K whispered. "They made us in pairs. Twins. Two of everything."
He gestured at his own face.
And then at Silas's.
"The perfect heir… and the control."
Sienna's hands shook.
This wasn't just about poison.
It was blood.
She saw it now—in their bone structure. Their posture. The way they both tilted their heads when calculating something.
Silas raised the gun again.
But K was already moving.
He vanished through the side door, footsteps echoing down the dock.
Silas ran to chase him—but Sienna grabbed his wrist.
"No."
His voice was tight. "He's getting away—"
"No," she repeated, stronger. "Not tonight. You're still bleeding. And I think… he wanted us to see that."
Silas stared at her, jaw clenched. Then slowly—he lowered the gun.
The storm outside had broken. Again.
But inside her, the hurricane had only begun.
She picked up the shattered half-mask from the floor. Still warm.
The jagged edge glinted like bone.
Silas touched her shoulder.
"You okay?"
Sienna stared at the blood on her hands.
Her master's birthmark.
K's face.
Silas's name.
"No," she whispered. "But I will be."