When Names Become Chains [Part 3]

In espionage, aliases protect you.

Hearing your real name means the game is already over.

For Agent Peter, the illusion collapsed the moment he heard his real name spoken aloud.

Espionage and counterintelligence are never opposing forces — they coexist, feed each other, and often betray each other. Inside intelligence agencies themselves, information is currency, and loyalty is temporary. Peter understood that better than most.

Years earlier, he had successfully infiltrated a major security-focused Big Tech firm, extracting proprietary systems and selling them piece by piece to the highest bidder. The operation was flawless. His reputation soared. Within the agency, Peter became untouchable — a model operative, a legend in controlled rooms.

So when Project Chimera opened recruitment, Peter didn’t hesitate.

He claimed it would be easy. That he could infiltrate the program, steal its classified research, and disappear richer than ever. Fate — or calculation — seemed to favor him. He was assigned to a corporation he already knew intimately.

To Peter, it felt like a victory lap.

For a spy of his caliber, there were no moral lines left to cross. He would have signed a pact with the devil himself if it guaranteed results.

That confidence was precisely why he never saw it coming.

The company’s owner remembered Peter.

Remembered the breach. The losses. The years spent rebuilding quietly while waiting. When the opportunity arose, the executive moved mountains — legal, political, financial — to engineer this moment.

Peter wasn’t infiltrating Project Chimera.

He was being absorbed by it.

The trap closed elegantly. The executive had already delivered classified corporate secrets directly to government intermediaries. In exchange, he received something far more personal — a binding agreement that guaranteed him a future asset disguised as a devoted spouse.

Peter’s transformation wasn’t just approved.

It was finalized.

Encircled by contracts, legal amendments, and biometric reclassification orders, Peter understood the truth too late. His previous identity had been erased. His resistance irrelevant. Every escape route preemptively sealed.

Standing there, facing a life rewritten without appeal, he realized the cruel symmetry of it all.

He had built his career stealing secrets.

Now, he was the secret.

Project Chimera didn’t fail.

It didn’t get compromised.

It evolved — learning to weaponize not just bodies, but ambition, arrogance, and the certainty that the smartest person in the room always believes they’re untouchable.

Peter knew then what every Chimera asset eventually learns:

In this program, transformation is permanent.

And hearing your real name means the deal was closed long before you arrived.

More of this series: Part 1 - Part 2