September 3, 2025 · Montego Bay, Jamaica · 07:45 AM (EST)
The Night-Wing touched down at a restricted airfield on the west coast twelve kilometres outside the city. No flags. No documentation. A tarmac strip behind a chain-link fence that existed on Trinity's access ledger and nowhere else.
The LX came off the cargo ramp and Alen drove. The coast road stretched south toward Montego Bay, the Caribbean morning already warm and bright and carrying the salt smell of the bay. His black leather gloves sat easy on the steering wheel. He drove the way he drove everything — calmly, without visible thought, the machine and the man running at the same quiet frequency. Jake sat in the passenger seat with the city map on his phone, studying the school approach, the clinic position, the street layout between them.
The car monitor lit up. Ingrid Hunnigan's face appeared on the screen, composed and precise.
Alen tapped the monitor.
"Status on Linda Baldwin and her children," he said.
"My DSO men are on the ground," Ingrid said. "White shirts, civilian cover. They have eyes on the clinic and the school." A pause. "But there is a second presence I cannot account for. Black cars. Men in dark coats. They are not CIA, not FBI, not any agency I can cross-reference through official channels."
"The Connections," Alen said.
"That is my assessment," she said. "I am pulling clinic footage now. She is at her desk — the children are at school. Both confirmed mobile within the last forty minutes."
"How many Connections assets on the ground?"
"I have confirmed three," she said. "There may be a fourth. The mobile vehicle is a grey Toyota, parked on the road behind Sam Sharpe Square."
Alen watched the road. He thought about Linda Baldwin — eleven years as Lena Brooks, two children, a concealed pistol she had been carrying since 2014 when her husband's car crash produced an accident report with minor inconsistencies nobody followed up on. Twenty-seven years of a formula that could cure the thing that was killing Leon Kennedy and Sherry Birkin and every person who had walked through Raccoon City and was still walking, slowly, toward a horizon they could not see.
"We extract her today," he said. "She is the most valuable asset in this operation. She may know more than AT1521 — she may have knowledge of the Elpis architecture and the ARK facility. I need to know what happened to Yoko Suzuki and Dr. George Hamilton. She is the thread that connects all of it."
"Agreed," Ingrid said. "What is your plan?"
"Jake takes the school," Alen said. "Children first — out before the Connections network registers movement. I will handle the square myself." He looked at the road. "No drone today. No Trinity in the field. I missed the old way."
"The old way," Ingrid said, with the specific tone of someone who was not going to argue but wanted the record to reflect they had thought about it. "I suggest at least maintaining CCTV access — I can pull the surrounding camera network and give you asset positions in real time."
"That I will take," Alen said.
"Good," she said. "The area is very populated today. Tourist traffic, market workers, cruise ship passengers. You will have significant cover. Use it."
"Understood." He looked at Jake. "Operation name."
"Golden Duck," Jake said, without looking up from the map.
"Golden Duck," Alen confirmed. "Begin."
Ingrid's image disappeared from the monitor. The city appeared ahead through the windscreen — Montego Bay coming into view as the coast road widened, the bay glinting behind the buildings, the morning already full and moving.
∗ ∗ ∗
He pulled the LX over two streets from the clinic. He looked at Jake.
"Reeves and Cole are on Cottage Road at nine-forty," he said. "The son's name is Marcus. Thirteen. He will not come easily — tell him his mother's real name. That will be enough."
"Copy," Jake said. He was already different from the man who had eaten bread in the kitchen at Mount Song — the younger brother energy filed away and the operative underneath it fully present. "What about a Connections unit at the school?"
"Assume one vehicle," Alen said. "Ingrid will flag it if it moves. You handle it."
"And you?"
"I call her," Alen said. "She comes to Sam Sharpe Square. Twelve minutes from the moment she leaves the clinic before their network registers the surveillance pattern is broken. Get the children out in that window."
"Got it, big bro," Jake said.
He got out of the LX. Jake slid into the driver's seat. The LX pulled away toward Cottage Road and the school. Alen stood on the Montego Bay street in the morning heat — the coat, the sunglasses, the platinum-blonde hair completely wrong for the latitude and completely irrelevant — and pulled out his phone.
He dialled.
∗ ∗ ∗
Inside the clinic on Barnett Street the morning was running at its usual pace. Linda Baldwin — who had been Lena Brooks for eleven years and whose hands had stopped shaking in crowds approximately three years after they started — was at her desk with two patient files open and her daughter sitting on the floor behind the partition with a colouring book.
Her phone rang.
"This is Lena Brooks, how may I help you—"
"Listen very carefully," the voice said. "Your name is Linda Baldwin. You are a former Umbrella Corporation researcher. You survived the Raccoon City incident. You are the co-inventor of AT1521 — the antiretroviral compound."
Her eyes went wide. Her hands started shaking. The pen she had been holding dropped and she did not notice it hit the desk.
"Who are you," she said. Barely controlled. "What do you want. Are you one of those people in the black coats — are you—"
"I am not them," he said. "If I were them I would not be calling you. I would already be at the door." A pause. One beat. "You want to live — then listen. The men watching your clinic are from an organisation called The Connections. They are not government. They want what is in your head and they will not ask for your cooperation. They will take you."
She looked at the front window of the clinic. The street outside. The man in the dark coat she had been watching for three days from behind the glass, pretending she had not noticed him.
"How much time do you have left in your shift," the voice said.
"I — my morning appointments end at—"
"You leave now," he said. "Not at the end of your shift. Now. Your daughter comes with you. You walk to Sam Sharpe Square. South entrance. Thirty minutes. I will find you. Do not look for me. Do not run. Walk like a woman going to the market with her child."
"And if I don't—"
"Then the men in dark coats come through your door this afternoon," he said, "and I am not there."
Her daughter looked up from the colouring book. Linda looked at her daughter.
"Sam Sharpe Square," she said. "South entrance. Thirty minutes."
"Walk normally," he said. "I will do the rest."
He hung up. He started walking toward the square. He had twenty-two minutes to be in position before she arrived. That was enough.
∗ ∗ ∗
He was in the square with sixteen minutes to spare. He bought water at the south entrance and read the geometry while he paid. Four Connections assets confirmed. North entrance: one man, stationary twenty minutes, weight forward on the right hip. East side: one man at the market stalls, forty-second rotation. West side: one woman at the café, coffee untouched, left ear. The grey Toyota behind the north entrance, engine running.
He found the twelve-second blind corridor through the tourist cluster and committed its timing to memory. Then he moved into the crowd and disappeared.
In the Toyota the field commander watched his screens. Three feeds. The clinic showing Linda's desk — empty now, chair pushed back. His radio crackled.
"Subject has left the clinic. On foot. Child with her."
He sat up straight.
"All units — subject mobile. Stay passive. I want to know where she is going before anyone moves."
∗ ∗ ∗
She came through the south entrance at 10:09 with her daughter on her hip and a yellow flower the child had grabbed from a vendor on Barnett Street. She was doing well — normal pace, not scanning, not running. The concealed pistol under her jacket would not help her here and she knew it.
The earpiece crackled.
"Keep walking. Same pace. North toward the fountain."
She kept walking. Her daughter pointed at the water.
"Craft stall. Right side. Stop."
She stopped at the craft stall. She picked up a bracelet. Looked at it without seeing it.
The north entrance asset had her in his peripheral vision. Possible match. He started moving. He keyed his radio.
"Possible at the east craft stall. Moving for confirmation—"
In the Toyota: *confirmed — move for facial ID.*
In Linda's ear:
"Man approaching. Behind you. Pick up the bracelet. Don't turn."
She picked up the bracelet. Her daughter wanted it. She let her hold it. The approaching operative was ten metres away. Eight.
Alen stepped out of the tourist cluster at the fountain — coming from the operative's left and behind, the angle his rotation never covered. Three seconds of controlled contact, the titanium arm's specific weight applied precisely, and the north entrance asset sat down against the decorative wall at the square's edge with the quality of a man who had decided to rest and would be resting for some time. No sound. No drama. The crowd flowed around them without noticing.
Alen took the phone from his coat pocket. He took the earpiece from his ear. He was walking again before any of the other assets had registered the movement.
In the Toyota: *Alpha — status.* Nothing. *Alpha — confirm.* Nothing.
"All units — Alpha is down. Box the square. Move now."
The east asset broke from the market stalls and started moving fast across the open square. The west asset stood up from the café table. The Toyota's engine revved.
In Linda's ear:
"West exit. Blue awning. Now. Don't run."
She moved. West. Fast walk. Her daughter held the flower and the bracelet. Then Linda saw the man walking toward her from the west — dark coat, moving with purpose, her direction — and twenty-seven years of running produced the only reaction it knew.
She stopped. She turned back east.
"Negative," Alen's voice, flat and immediate. "Not a threat. West."
But she had already turned and the east asset was twenty metres away and his eyes found her face — the specific moment of recognition when the photograph and the live face resolve into the same person.
"Confirmed — that's her—"
He did not finish.
Alen was already there. The east asset went down beside the fountain in two contact points — the titanium arm finding its work — and Alen took the second phone and was walking before the man stopped moving.
Two phones. Both Connections comms networks now running in his left hand. The full asset deployment. The handler number. The secondary objective flag.
Marcus.
"The man in the dark coat is a tourist," Alen said into the comms. "West exit. Go."
Linda looked at the man in the dark coat who was looking at his phone and not at her. She breathed once. She turned west and walked through the gap in the vendor awnings onto the side street and the Bentley was at the kerb — matte black, rear door open, Trinity already running the engine.
She got in. The door closed. The Bentley pulled out.
The west asset came around the awning thirty seconds later and stopped. Alen was standing on the pavement between her and the street. The coat still in the heat. The sunglasses showing nothing. Charlie had been in this work for nine years.
"Walk away," he said.
She walked away.
He got into the Bentley. He keyed his comms.
"Jake. They have a unit at the school. Move now."
In the back seat Linda Baldwin was looking at him. Her daughter was asleep already, the yellow flower and the blue bracelet both still in her small hands. Linda's hands had stopped shaking. She looked at the two phones in his left hand and the coat and the sunglasses and the face that her Umbrella training made her want to catalogue and could not.
"You said you wanted to know about AT1521," she said. "And Elpis. And the ARK facility."
"I do," Alen said.
"Then we have a lot to talk about," she said.
The Bentley drove toward the airfield. Behind them Sam Sharpe Square had a fountain and two operatives sitting against solid surfaces and a grey Toyota with a field commander who was staring at his screens and understanding, for the first time today, that whatever he had been watching was not the person he had been briefed to watch.
Ghost was not done. The clock was still running. Jake had the school.