False Echoes.The recording ended, its final words still echoing across the command room.“You’ll keep them busy, Helena. I’ll keep building from the shadows. And when they think it’s over,that’s when I’ll strike.”Aria stood, more like an ice, her breath shallow.Jerry leaned in. “It sounded like…”“Daniel,” Isabelle whispered.Philip shook his head, rewinding the audio. “The voice is distorted. Deepened artificially. Could be anyone.”“No,” Aria muttered, brows furrowed. “It’s too specific. The cadence... the inflection. It’s him.”“Aria,” Jerry said, placing a hand on her shoulder, “if it’s him, why now? Why not strike when he had the upper hand? Why wait until Helena fell?”Silence.Isabelle crossed her arms. “It could be a frame-up. Regina’s smart. She knew we’d find this.”Philip turned from his screen. “I ran the voice through our biometric filters. There’s a 58% match to Daniel, but also a 52% match to someone named Declan Voss—a known tech mimic and voice actor Helena hired
Beneath the Surface.The city lights went on and off continuously beneath them like a restless heartbeat.Standing at the tower's edge, Aria folded her arms, her reflection evident on the glass. The recording, the voice, kept playing in her mind. Not Daniel’s voice. Not yet. That would come later. But the silence surrounding Helena’s last words. The secrets that still clung to every page, every letter, every calculated move.Jerry joined her, eyes scanning the skyline.“She’s gone,” he said. “But she didn’t vanish. Someone’s helping her.”“Regina.” Aria’s voice was certain.Jerry didn’t argue.“She walked in like she knew where we’d be,” Aria continued. “Knew what would be waiting. Helena left that message, but Regina burned it before we could finish deciphering it. That’s not loyalty. That’s orchestration.”“And now we have two enemies.”Aria shook her head. “No. We have more. We just haven't seen them yet.”~~*~~At the underground command center, Philip projected a map of every
Shadows Speak.“Breathe. Just breathe,” Aria whispered, her fingers trembling as they moved slightly above Isabelle’s wrist, checking her pulse again.“She’s stable,” Philip assured from the other side, scanning vitals with the handheld monitor. “Bruised, but she’s strong.”Aria crouched by Isabelle’s side, brushing a blood-matted curl from her temple. “I shouldn’t have waited.”Isabelle stirred slightly, her lips twitching. “You came,” she mumbled, voice hoarse.A breath Aria hadn’t realized she was holding escaped. “Of course I came.”Jerry stood a few steps behind, his face shadowed under the dim lights of the infirmary. “She’s safe now. That’s what matters.”“No, Jerry. What matters is that Helena got away again,” Aria snapped, eyes narrowing with fury. “She’s always one step ahead. And now... she’s mocking us.”Isabelle winced, trying to sit up.“Easy,” Aria said, guiding her gently. “Don’t push yourself.”“She didn’t just want to hurt me,” Isabelle whispered. “She wanted me to t
Queen’s Gambit.The morning after the press conference, Aria stood at the edge of the boardroom, flanked by her core team. The room was filled with tense silence. The media firestorm still raged beyond their walls, but inside, there was strategy.Jerry tapped the digital screen. “Helena didn’t retaliate. Yet. That means she’s recalculating.”Aria nodded slowly. “Good. That means she knows we’re no longer playing defense.”Philip turned from his laptop. “We've cross-referenced every server Helena touched. Traced transactions. She left a false trail through five dummy shell companies,but one of them accidentally pinged a warehouse in Lower Brightstone.”“Accidentally?” Isabelle asked.Philip smirked. “No such thing. She wanted us to find it.”Jerry’s gaze darkened. “A trap.”“Most definitely,” Philip confirmed. “But possibly one worth springing.”Aria stood, her presence commanding. “Then we walk into it. But on our terms.”~~*~~Later that afternoon, Aria returned to her private quar
The Smoke Beneath Silk.“You know,” Aria murmured as she watched the sun rise over the bay, “this enemy doesn’t want money. They want meaning. To unmake everything I rebuilt.”Jerry leaned against the doorframe, sipping his coffee. “Which means it’s personal. Not business.”“Someone who knows me intimately. Someone who studied my patterns. My fear isn’t that they’re watching... it’s that I might already know them.”He walked over, brushing a loose strand of hair from her cheek. “Then it’s time we smoke them out.”~~*~~In the tech lab, Philip outlined the next phase of their counterattack.“The bait worked, but they didn’t flinch. Whoever X is, they’re not just clever, they’re confident. So, we change the narrative.”Aria folded her arms. “How?”“We leak a fake vulnerability report. Make it seem like there’s an exploitable backdoor in the Women’s Initiative database.”“And then?”“We watch who tries to access it. We’ll embed tracking code directly into the file. Once they open it, it’
The Baited Trap.Jerry moved across the war room like a man threading through invisible tripwires, every step measured. His eyes flicked from the digital map on the wall to the string of open files on the central table. “This won’t work unless we make them think they’ve already won.”Aria didn’t move from her post by the window. The skyline blinked in the distance, but her gaze was inward, sharp. Her arms stayed folded, jaw tense. “They’ve already sniffed out the tech wing,” she muttered. “It won’t take much to sell the illusion. But that’s not enough for me.”He paused, watching her.“I want names, not shadows,” she continued. “I want them dragged out, not just scared into silence.”Jerry turned, his voice low but pulsing with edge. “Then we give them exactly what they’re looking for, a fracture. Just deep enough to pull them in.”Aria turned to face him, the light catching the glint of frustration in her eyes. “You’re talking about bait. A planted vulnerability. You really think th