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Edmond grabbed Faria’s fragile shoulders and dragged him through the jagged hole in the concrete, hauling the corpse into his own cell. He hoisted Faria onto the freezing concrete slab, turning the old man’s face toward the wall and pulling the shredded, salt-stained remnants of his midnight-blue tuxedo over the frail shoulders. In the dim, harsh light of the recessed LED, it was a perfect decoy order. When the guards checked Cell 34, they would see a man sleeping, his face obscured, his biometric collar (which Edmond carefully swapped to his own neck) broadcasting a steady, healthy pulse.

Edmond scrambled back through the breach into Faria’s cell. He grabbed the heavy, industrial canvas bag that the guards used for laundry and supply drops—the same bag the black site utilized as a burial shroud for off-ledger inmates.

He crawled inside the coarse, suffocating canvas and pulled it shut from the inside, clutching a jagged shard of his nutrient tray like a scalpel.

He was executing the ultimate contrarian trade: going completely short on his own existence. He lay perfectly still on Faria’s cot, burying his face in the damp fabric, slowing his breathing to a microscopic fraction of a percent.

The hydraulic door hissed open. Heavy tactical boots hit the concrete.

"Collar flatlined," a gruff voice echoed, the sound muffled through the thick canvas. "The old man finally logged off. Took him long enough."

"Grab the bag. The Warden wants the cell sterilized and prepped for a new high-value transfer by midnight," a second voice grunted.

Rough hands seized the edges of the canvas bag. Edmond’s stomach plummeted as he was hoisted into the air. He forced his muscles into rigid, rigor-mortis compliance, ignoring the agonizing strain on his atrophied spine as they carried him out of Sector D.

They moved quickly, ascending the spiral concrete staircases. With every floor they climbed, the ambient temperature plummeted, and the stale, damp air of the subterranean vault was replaced by the violent, freezing bite of an Atlantic gale.

They are taking me to the graveyard, Edmond calculated, his mind racing in the darkness of the bag. When they throw the dirt on me, I cut the canvas. I wait for them to leave, and I dig myself out of the shallow grave. A temporary drawdown before the breakout.

The boots marched onto uneven, salt-crusted cobblestones. The deafening roar of crashing waves filled Edmond’s ears. He could smell the iodine, the deep ocean spray cutting through the canvas.

The guards stopped abruptly. They dropped the bag onto the hard, jagged rock. Edmond bruised his shoulder but did not make a sound.

"Tie the weight," the first guard ordered, out of breath.

Edmond’s blood turned to ice. Weight?

He felt a heavy, coarse rope being rapidly coiled around his ankles, cinching the canvas tight against his shins. A massive, metallic mass—a thirty-six-pound iron cannonball—was ratcheted to the end of the rope.

The horrifying reality of the black site’s off-balance-sheet accounting crashed over him. There was no graveyard at Château d'If. The state did not waste prime real estate on financial terrorists. The ocean was the ultimate dark pool—a bottomless ledger where bodies vanished without a trace, leaving zero forensic evidence.

"Ready?"

"Heave."

Strong hands gripped Edmond’s shoulders and feet. They swung him backward.

One.

They swung him forward toward the abyss.

Two.

"Three!"

The guards released the canvas. Edmond was launched into the freezing void, the heavy iron weight instantly dragging him into a terrifying, accelerated freefall. He had seconds before he hit the water, seconds before the deep ocean executed a margin call with absolutely no stop-loss. He gripped the jagged plastic shard in his fist, preparing to cut the canvas the exact millisecond he broke the surface of the sea.

Chapter 16: The Drop

The impact was a violent, catastrophic gap-down.

Edmond hit the freezing surface of the Mediterranean with the force of a high-speed collision, the breath driven completely from his lungs as the canvas sack instantly flooded. The icy water was a hostile takeover, shocking his system and paralyzing his atrophied muscles.

Before he could process the thermal shock, the thirty-six-pound iron weight executed its mandate. It dragged him under.

Down he plummeted into the pitch-black abyss, descending at terrifying velocity. The hydrostatic pressure built rapidly against his eardrums, a physical manifestation of a margin call that could not be negotiated or delayed. Ten feet. Twenty feet. Thirty. The ocean was a dark pool with zero bottom, swallowing him whole.