Chapter 74: A City of Wolves

Section 1: Welcome to Hell

Three heartbeats pulsed across Kasper's neural feed.

Three snipers.

Three different ways to die.

His enhancement system mapped each threat with crystalline clarity:

The first: Bell tower of Iglesia San Miguel. Barrett M98B with black market stabilizers. Shooter's pulse steady at 62 BPM. Cartel professional.

The second: Abandoned hotel's top floor. Combat stims in the bloodstream. Voltage junkie running hot.

The third: Ghost protocols. No signature. Professional.

*Just breathe. Focus. Like the old days at St. Michael's, before the enhancements, when prayer was more than frequency patterns.*

His fingers found the rosary beads in his pocket, then brushed against Sarah's medal. The metal felt cold despite the crushing humidity. Seven people in the world knew the truth about Sarah Blackwood. Seven people carried the weight of turning a traitor into a hero.

A secure message from Valerian flashed across his vision:

"MAINTAIN COVER. LIMITED CIRCLE ONLY. Watch Montero's team - they're good but curious. Old guard, pre-Reformation protocols. -V"

The morning air hit him like a wall of wet cement. His rushed tropical adaptation package screamed warnings:

*Alert: Climate compatibility at 47%*

*Secondary: Local interference detected*

*Tertiary: Enhanced immune response recommended*

He ignored them all. The Association's hasty installations would have to hold.

"¡Café! ¡Café caliente!" 

The street vendor's ancient coffee machine wheezed and sparked, enhancement core finally giving up. The old man's weathered hands – scarred from black market augmentation surgery – slapped the machine with practiced frustration. Each impact released a small cloud of oxidized metal and desperation.

"Third core this week," he muttered in Spanish-accented Mandarin. "Fucking Chinese knockoffs..."

Kasper caught the gleam of sub-dermal circuitry beneath the vendor's rolled sleeves. Bargain-bin enhancements that probably caused more problems than they solved.

But in Costa del Sol, bad tech was better than no tech at all.

A burst of automatic fire erupted three blocks over.

The vendors didn't pause their haggling.

An old woman adjusted her rosary and kept walking, eyes carefully fixed ahead. Her enhancement scars were decades old – military-grade from the Resource Wars, when Costa del Sol was still pretending to be part of civilization.

"Fresh mangoes! Best price!"

The young girl's voice cut through the morning chaos. His enhancement system tagged her instantly: no tech signatures, but fresh needle marks on her arms. Walking pharmacy. The cartels started them young here, using children as mobile drug stores because nobody looked too closely at another poor kid selling fruit.

The sight made his nanobot network spike with rage.

Another message pinged: "Package secured at Academy. M knows nothing. Keep it that way. -Sean"

*Just like Sarah's files showed. Just like the evidence they'd fabricated to support her hero's death.*

The memory hit him like physical pain. His hand went to the scar on his neck – the last place she'd kissed him, right before he'd put a bullet in her heart.

Section 2: The Association's Grasp

The Association's regional headquarters rose through the morning haze: twelve stories of brass and broken promises trying too hard to look important.

Armed guards with last-gen enhancement signatures dotted the perimeter. Show pieces. The real defense lay in the quantum-locked protocols and AI targeting systems that no one could see.

"Agent Kasper." 

The desk officer never looked up from her holographic displays. Data streams swam through her amber irises – post-Reformation enhancement architecture, probably running split-consciousness protocols.

"Level twelve," she continued, fingers dancing through invisible interfaces. "Montero's team."

"I work alone."

Her laugh had the harsh edge of someone who'd seen too many body bags. "Yeah? Seventy percent mortality rate for teams here. Ninety for solos."

She finally looked up, data streams reflecting off her corneal implants. "But hey, your funeral. Just don't come crying when the cartels are selling your enhancement cores to some street kid who'll use them to run better card tricks."

A message from Lucas scrolled past: "Medical records altered. Official cause stays clean. Watch yourself."

The elevator's mirrors showed the hasty surgical scars where they'd installed his tropical adaptations. Not enough time for proper climate modification.

But the ATA wouldn't wait – not when they were using the cartels' greed to build their digital caliphate one stolen child at a time.

Section 3: Broken Soldiers

The doors opened to bare concrete and gun oil.

Three sets of enhanced eyes measured him through the electromagnetic haze, each telling its own story of survival.

Montero's scarred fingers moved over the ancient command module with ritual precision. Each motion matched the cadence of old war songs still encoded in his outdated combat protocols. Military-grade enhancement scars traced patterns up his neck, marking campaigns that most agents only read about in classified files.

"Huh." He didn't look up. "They really sent him."

Quiroga pushed away from her workstation, display screens floating in her wake. Track marks from neural stims dotted her arms – the price of pushing enhancement interfaces beyond their limits. Her hands shook as she adjusted another patch.

"Holy shit," she whispered, her words tumbling out in a mix of street slang and tech-speak. "Those base protocols... Association R&D's been busy. The integration patterns are like nothing in our records."

Her eyes never stopped moving, tracking invisible data streams. "Military grade, but twisted somehow. Who'd you piss off to get experimental tech like that?"

In the corner, Salvaterra cleaned a rifle that cost more than most people made in a year. His enhanced hearing focused on every micro-expression, every subtle tell. A string of wooden prayer beads wrapped around his wrist – Catholic, like the ones Kasper used to carry.

Before everything changed.

"Costa del Sol's an interesting choice for someone of your caliber." Montero's voice carried the precise rhythm of old military enhancements – the kind you kept because they remembered who you used to be. "Local operations don't usually rate top Association assets."

Kasper's nanobot network spiked at the implied question.

On the wall behind them, a memorial screen scrolled with names of fallen agents. Sarah's was there, marked with the Association's highest honors.

The lie in plain sight.

"Been following the tech trafficking cases," Quiroga continued, her fingers dancing through data streams. "Especially that big bust last month. The one that earned Agent Blackwood her posthumous honors."

She frowned at her displays. "Though some of the enhancement signatures from the scene are... weird. Like they were sanitized."

"The official briefing has everything you need to know." Kasper's tone made it clear: some doors stayed closed.

A message from Maria burned in his neural cache: "Remember the story. Remember what matters."

"I'm here because the Association's too paralyzed to act." His words carried years of frustration. "Too many bought politicians. Too many corporate interests. Too many 'diplomatic considerations' while children disappear into cartel labs."

"And that's the only reason?" Salvaterra spoke without looking up from his rifle. Prayer beads clicked against carbon fiber.

The question carried weight beyond its words.

Before anyone could push further, Kasper's enhancement feed crackled with priority alerts.

Target acquired.

Their informant had spotted a high-level ATA operative entering the Golden Triangle – where the cartels laundered their billions through gleaming office towers.

Through the reinforced windows, a line of black SUVs pulled up to one of the district's mirror-glass monoliths. Corporate security, but their enhancement signatures pulsed with pure cartel tech.

"Well then." Montero stood, his ancient hardware singing to life with harmonics that hadn't been standard for decades. "Time to see if you're as good as your file claims."

His scarred hands checked weapons with practiced efficiency. "Or if you're just another ghost looking for a place to die."

Salvaterra chambered a round, the motion precise as a monk's prayer. "Try not to get us all killed on your first day."

The words hit closer than they knew.

Kasper touched the scar on his neck where Sarah's last kiss had burned like betrayal. The city's broken heartbeat pulsed through his enhancements – children with pharmacy needle marks, flesh-markets hidden behind corporate logos, and somewhere in the concrete canyons, the truth about why ideology had meant more to her than love.

Seven people knew the truth.

Seven people carried the weight of the lie that kept the Association stable, that prevented a scandal that could unravel everything they'd built.

And one of them was hunting the people who had turned Sarah Blackwood from a healer into a weapon.

The hunt was about to begin.