Chapter 85

The Name No One Speaks

Lex left the safehouse before dawn and drove to an underground records facility near Brixton. It was where he and Siddharth used to access off-the-record intel. Posing as a private contractor, Lex requested all unindexed Cartwright Group aliases from the year before Project Eden collapsed.

One name repeated.

> "Noah Caine"

Not Cartwright by blood, but tied to them through funding, ghost accounts, and a splinter faction within the intelligence world. Noah was a shadow—no face, no confirmed location—but every operation tied to disappearances and memory alterations had his signature.

Lex traced one operation log that chilled him.

> March 15 – Location: Mumbai, India

Target: Variant-R confirmed on location. Termination team aborted. Asset is maternal.

Maternal.

They had found Rhea while she was still pregnant.

Someone had stopped them. And someone had let her go.

And now that someone might be inside the system, helping them—or watching them.

Lex snapped a picture of the page and sent it only to one person.

Micah.

> "Need eyes in India. Noah Caine—look for ties to maternal operations around March 15. Tell no one. Even Sky."

Seconds later, Micah replied:

> "Copy. Already heard whispers. Be careful, Lex. They don't just erase names. They erase bloodlines."