The jungle screamed.
A stealth chopper sliced through the mist.Black blades. Black hull. No insignia.
It landed hard on the northern ridge of Rostovia, the island fortress believed to be the final auction point.
Inside, the covert team known as Whispers Zero deployed—cloaked in Kai Ren's tech, trained in ways even governments didn't understand.
Their objective: Lisa.
They moved like shadows.No mercy.No sound.
They breached the perimeter.Cleared the outer walls.Neutralized guards with silent darts and knives that never missed.
And then they found her.
A girl.Chained.Pale.Barely conscious.
Eyes fluttering beneath bruised lids.Heart monitor ticking slow and faint.
They scanned her biometrics.
"It's her."
Meanwhile, on the opposite cliff, Kai Ren adjusted the lens of a high-powered sniper scope.
He had eyes on the extraction.Wind howled past him like prophecy.
He watched as the medics checked her pulse, loaded her onto the evac gurney, and signaled success.
He lowered the scope, the tension in his shoulders finally loosening.
She was alive.
He stepped forward through the jungle mist.
The evac team placed the girl down, hands still trembling from the firefight.
Kai Ren approached.
His boots hit the dirt slowly.
He leaned over her.
His breath caught.
His heart dropped like a guillotine.
"That's not her."
The medics froze.
He grabbed one of the remaining gang lieutenants by the collar—bloodied, dazed, barely conscious.
"Where is she?" he growled, voice colder than death.
The man blinked. Stammered.
"We… we don't know. We got a call… a voice…"
Kai Ren's mask tilted, eerily still.
"Go on."
"They said to protect this girl… We were paid thirty million in crypto… told she'd be picked up later…"
Kai Ren leaned closer.
"And?"
The man swallowed hard.
"And… they said if we survived… we'd receive a second transfer…"
"Another hundred million…"
Silence.
The kind that meant someone had played him.Played all of them.
Smoke drifted through the jungle.Bodies still burned.The girl they'd rescued… was a decoy.
Lisa had been moved.
By someone who knew everything.Her location.The auction's fail-safes.Even Kai Ren's plan.
Someone was watching both Jin and Kai Ren.Someone ten steps ahead.
In the sky above, Detective Jin reviewed drone footage of the evac.
His comms buzzed.
"Sir… it wasn't her."
Jin's blood went cold.
He leaned back, fists tightening.
"Then someone's playing a longer game than we thought."