Page 110 of Anchor
The news came not by phone, nor by signal. Lucien Vos sat in a private compound buried inside the hills of Montenegro, glass-walled, sunless, and quiet. A man stepped through the security threshold. No name, just the leather folder in hand and the breathless tension of someone who’d sprinted from a plane.
Vos didn’t ask him to sit. Didn’t offer coffee. He took the file and read the first page, paused, then turned the second. By the third, he was smiling. Ian Chase was moving, not with strategy but with fury.
Vos stood and walked to the broad, cold glass overlooking the pine-covered valley. No roads in and no wireless signal traceable. There was no real name attached to this address. But he knew the moment he saw the signature on the warrant’s internal order—sealed but unofficial, hand-delivered to certain European offices—he understood the message. This wasn’t legal. This was personal. Ian had taken the bait. Finally.
Vos placed the folder gently on the table. The sunrise hadn't breached the clouds yet. The light was steel gray, a storm color.He touched the side of the comm tablet, waking the encrypted interface. Two taps with one delay trigger. Then the emergency relocation protocols began to spin.
“Secure extraction window?” he asked calmly.
The assistant’s voice was tight. “Nineteen minutes.”
Vos nodded once. He didn’t grab anything. Everything essential was already scattered, cloned, and stored. His name meant nothing now. He had six more. His face would begin to change by tonight.
But Ian? Ian had one face. One name. And weaknesses Vos had catalogued down to the hour of birth. Reid Hanlon. Claire. And Reid’s team.
Vos smiled to himself as the compound lights dimmed in emergency cycling. He reached for the burner device and tapped the last line of a dormant subroutine. One stored message opened:Final phase: Madness and destruction. Push on confirmation. Target: Ian Chase’s remaining assets. Timing: Variable.
He didn’t press send—not yet—but he would. When it hurt the most. He stepped into the elevator as the last of the perimeter systems blinked offline.
“Sir,” the aide said, trying not to sound shaken. “Do you want to disappear for good?”
Vos looked at him, and for the first time in a long time, he laughed. “I’ve only just begun.”
PRAGUE – PRIVATE CLINIC – NIGHT
The walls didn’t have color. Everything was white, soft-lit, and without texture—a place designed to erase anxiety and maybe identity. Vos walked through the sterilized corridor like a shadow folding into itself. No windows. No clocks. No time.
The receptionist didn’t ask his name. She just stood when he entered and motioned silently toward a sealed door with a fingerprint scanner.
He placed his thumb on the pad. It accepted him. The door hissed open.
Inside the consultation room, Dr. Halden was already waiting. A smooth, predatory face, so clean it looked grown in a vat. He gestured to the chair, like he’d been expecting Vos all his life. “Sit.”
Vos did, and the lights above dimmed slightly. A panel in the wall flickered to life projecting three-dimensional facial models in rotating symmetry. Options. Choices. Futures.
Dr. Halden’s voice was silk-cut steel. “You want to disappear or become someone worth watching?”
Vos didn’t answer immediately. He studied the models. They changed with a gesture—jawlines narrowing, noses sharpening, brows tightening into clean angles.
“Erase me,” Vos said. “But make them look twice before they realize they never knew me.”
Dr. Halden smiled faintly, sliding to a new preset. The image on screen shifted: deep-set eyes, slightly asymmetrical lips, a nose with character but no flaw.
“You’ll look like a classic film star. A ghost from Golden Hollywood. Striking, not beautiful. Memorable, not familiar. Noone will ask where they’ve seen you. They’ll assume they should already know.”
Vos leaned in and chose the eye shape with a slow nod. Lifted a finger to adjust the tilt of the brows. Narrowed the bridge of the nose. A surgeon of his own anonymity. “The ears,” he said. “Subtle. Nothing that sticks out in photos.”
Halden nodded. “And the lips?”
Vos paused. “Give me lips that can lie without moving.”
Dr. Halden tapped the interface once more, locking the selections. The lights shifted, bathing Vos in pale surgical blue.
“The first surgery will take eleven hours,” the doctor said. “Then you’ll sleep for four days. Full sensory blackout. Your brain will think you’re dead, so it doesn’t interfere with the healing.”
Vos blinked once. “And after?”
Halden leaned forward, his voice quieter. “Four weeks of silence. No mirrors. No photos. No outside light. No speaking more than a sentence an hour until the tissue stabilizes. The face will be yours, but it won’t trust you at first. If you rush it, it will be rejected. And then a second surgery to make things complete.”
