Chapter 3: The Shadow Over St. Kilda

Valkyrie's POV

Next to the window, there was a neon sign emitting an unpleasant, continuous buzz, with vibrations running through the glass, which was filled with water.

Seaside Palms Motel. One could not hear anything; there was only a stretch of cracked asphalt and the constant storm blowing in from Port Phillip Bay.

I was sitting on the edge of the mattress, with the thin bedspread wet under my jeans since they had been soaked by the rain.

The air in the room had a stale smell, a mixture of cheap disinfectant and old sea air, but I didn't feel like giving a damn.

My entire body was like a nerve, shaking strongly as it changed from being due to cold to one caused entirely by exhaustion driven by adrenaline.

Opposite the bed, on the small desk, my laptop screen was casting a harsh blue glow onto my trembling hands.

My sister had gone missing, in the same way that a chess piece is transferred by a person who holds their breath in their hand, and I was left trapped in St. Kilda, stuck in the dark, with a positive pregnancy test in my pocket while the man I loved believed that I was the villain who had destroyed him.

“If you want to keep her heart beating, you must stay in Victoria’s grid. Valkyrie, I'm watching you.”

The text message kept replaying in my mind, troubling me just as a ghost does on my phone screen.

I ran my hand through my hair, pressing the rainwater into the carpet.

Crying would not help Chloe, any more than feeling depressed would help the child developing in silence within me.

I needed to think it over.

I needed to work through it logically.

I was a financial analyst, a woman who could see order in chaotic situations and who regarded numbers as if they were a language.

I moved the laptop closer and opened an encrypted local partition, one that even Kaelen's most advanced cybersecurity team had not managed to erase before kicking me out.

I typed quickly on the keyboard and fetched the original dump of the financial leak files, precisely the evidence which Kaelen had shown me face to face two hours earlier.

The collapse of Vance Energy's main subsidiary was exact: at 2:14 PM, millions of dollars' worth of trade algorithms and short-position strategies had been dumped into the open market.

The digital signature on the main transfer made use of my exact cryptographic key and contained my timestamp, my private token string, and my IP routing node from the penthouse.

It would have been obvious to any member of the board, to any court, or to Kaelen that this was a simple case in which a bloody knife was found in my hand with my initials engraved on the handle.

I whispered, "Think, Val," and at the same time my teeth began to shake as another wave of nausea hit me.

I grabbed the edge of the desk; only when the dizziness had passed did I lean back against the monitor. "Simply look beyond the surface."

To begin with, I removed the file headers and then looked at the deeper parts of the original code, staying away from the main routing protocols and taking the metadata off line by line.

Five minutes had gone by, then ten.

The neon sign outside flashed for a moment and made the room go dark before it began to buzz once more.

My breath became trapped in my chest at that moment.

There.

There was a small, microscopic difference in the alignment of the clock cycles under the main execution layer.

Even though the digital signature looked exactly like mine on the surface, the CPU execution register showed a microscopic delay, a three-millisecond offset that occurred only when a cryptographic token was cloned with the help of a remote hardware emulator.

It pounded against my ribs like a battering ram.

I never leaked the files; my laptop had never actually executed the code.

On the contrary, someone had used a high-level corporate hardware duplicator to copy my security token in real time and had then been sitting at another location, using my digital ghost to carry out the betrayal while I was in the penthouse living room making tea for Kaelen.

At that moment I experienced a sudden and dizzying sensation of being validated, after which a heavy pressure settled on me and made it hard to breathe.

I was innocent, and the evidence was right there in the unprocessed metadata.

I slammed my hands onto the desk, my throat contracting.

"I can handle this," I whispered, a strong surge of hope rising within me.

"I can take it to Kaelen. I can show him the execution offset. He's smart enough to understand the concept of hardware emulation. He'll see…"

I stopped completely; my hand stayed over the trackpad and did not move.

The hope vanished in my throat and turned into ashes.

I would not bring it to him.

What would happen even if I succeeded in proving my innocence and even if I went back into the penthouse and got him to look at the code?

Kaelen would then launch an immediate and comprehensive internal investigation into Vance Global and would dissolve his executive board in order to locate the rogue device.

And as soon as he did that, Victoria, or the person who was holding Chloe's life support hostage, would know that the trap was starting to fall apart.

They would have turned Chloe’s switch over before Kaelen had even realised that he had the emulator.

I pushed myself back into the creaking bed's headboard and placed my face in my hands. A hot, silent tear slipped through my fingers.

The terrible way in which it had been designed was amazing.

The person who was actually to blame had not only framed me but had also constructed a fortress around the lie.

My innocence was of no use; if I used it, I would be bringing about my sister's death, and if I stayed quiet, the man I loved would have to spend the rest of his life hating me, and I would have to bring up his child in the dirty room of the motel.

I couldn't help but feel incredibly small.

Vance Global was an empire worth billions and had corporate lawyers, private security, and unlimited funds.

Victoria Vance directed the matters of Melbourne's upper class.

As for myself, I had only a rusted suitcase, a failing laptop, a few thousand dollars in an offshore account in a false name, and a secret life forming inside me.

I wasn't in a position to resist. I couldn't hire a private intelligence firm. I didn't carry out a counter-audit. I was completely and absolutely beaten.

I was overcome by a deep and severe fatigue, after which I turned off the laptop screen, causing the motel room to be plunged into a thick and heavy twilight, the only light being that from the red glow of the digital clock on the nightstand.

3:42 AM.

I settled back down on the thin mattress, tied my wet coat around myself to stay warm, and then used my hand to pull my legs up to my chest, gently covering my flat stomach.

"It's just you and me now, little one," I whispered in the dark, my voice full of feeling.

"I have no idea how we're going to get through this, but I promise... I will protect you. I will protect Chloe. Even if that meant your father hating me forever."

The heavy rain that was falling outside struck the glass in a steady and rhythmic manner, having a soothing effect on my tired mind and thus causing it to move towards a weak and restlessly sleep.

Thump.

I suddenly opened my eyes in the dark.

Immediately, all the muscles in my body responded.

The quiet sound wasn't due to the rain outside; it had, in fact, come from just outside my motel room door, more precisely from the soft, wet squelch produced by heavy boots stepping on the damp carpet of the exterior walkway.

I held my breath, and my heart contracted in my chest.

I slowly and in silence placed my hand under the pillow and, with my fingers, grasped the small pocket knife which I had taken out earlier.

Click.

A barely audible and rather mechanical sound could be heard as the electronic lock bypass device moved through the thin wooden door, and the red light on the motel door handle flickered before settling down to a pale, eerie green.

I was terribly frightened; I had been discovered.

I jumped off the bed and moved backwards in the direction of the bathroom door as the handle of the motel room was turned slowly and deliberately downwards.

The door opened to reveal a tall, shadowy figure standing in the doorway against the background of the flashing neon sign.

Rain dripped along the edge of his dark coat. But as he stepped over and went into the dimly lit room, the flickering streetlamp picked up the sharp angle of his jaw and a pair of sharp, icy silver eyes.