Court Gentry, known to the CIA as Sierra Six, watched the cursor blink in the corner of his laptop. He was in a safehouse in Prague—a drafty apartment that smelled of old wallpaper and boiled cabbage. Outside, the trams rattled the windowpane, a rhythmic sound that usually helped him sleep. But tonight, sleep was an impossibility.

"Carmichael sent me to make sure you hadn't opened it," she said, her voice low.

"The drive is clean," Six said as the laptop hissed and shut down. "But I remember the names. All of them."

Six grabbed his jacket. "Prague is beautiful this time of year. Shame we have to burn it down."

Dani Miranda froze, her hand hovering near the baguette—which Six knew concealed a suppressed HK VP9. She sighed, the tension leaving her shoulders but not her eyes.

A woman stepped in. She wasn't wearing tactical gear. She wore a beige trench coat and carried a grocery bag with a baguette sticking out. She looked like a local coming home from a late shift. But Six recognized the way she shifted her weight—always balanced, always ready to spring. "The drive is wiping, Dani," Six said from the darkness.

Six looked at the gun, then at her. The tram passed by outside, casting flickering shadows across the room. For the first time in years, the Gray Man wasn't running from an enemy; he was looking at an ally who had finally run out of reasons to follow orders.

The door didn’t burst open. There was no flashbang, no tactical shout. Instead, a thin piece of fiber-optic wire threaded through the keyhole, stayed for three seconds, and retracted. Then, the lock clicked with the precision of a Swiss watch.