Night swallowed the coast when she arrived. The harbor was a scatter of sleeping lights and distant gulls. Alexa moved like a silhouette taught to mimic shadows—untraceable footfalls, no reflections left in wet asphalt. Her crew was two: Tomas, an electronics savant who could lull any surveillance grid to sleep, and Noor, a linguist who could pass as a dockworker anywhere from Alexandria to Algiers.