MasukChapter 98I found out from Elena.Not from Dante. Not from an alert on my phone. From Elena calling me at six forty-five in the morning with the particular quality of urgency in her voice that meant something had already spread far enough that containing it was no longer the first priority."Don't look at your social media," she said.Which meant I immediately looked at my social media.The photos were better than the first round.That was the thing that hit me before anything else. Not the content. Not the framing. The technical quality of them. Whoever had produced these had invested in the production. The first round had been obvious to anyone looking carefully rough edges around the face composite, lighting that didn't match, metadata that Dante's team had been able to pull apart within hours.These were different.Same principle. My face. Someone else's body. But the compositing was clean. The lighting was consistent. The metadata had been scrubbed or fabricated. And the framin
Chapter 97Dante put the report on the kitchen table at seven in the morning.Not Matthias's desk. The kitchen. Which meant he'd found me first, which meant he'd decided I needed to hear this before the day got moving around it.I looked at the report. Then at him."Sit down," I said.He sat. Which was unusual enough to tell me the contents were significant."Caden made contact with Selene four days ago," he said. "Through a third party. Someone outside the estate with no direct connection to either of them that we'd previously mapped." He paused. "We found it because the third party used a communication method that overlapped with one of the relay signatures from the European operation. It flagged automatically.""Selene is under house arrest," I said."House arrest limits physical movement. It doesn't eliminate every communication channel for someone who spent two years building external networks." He held my gaze. "She had a dormant contact. Someone she'd used before the estate op
Chapter 96I didn't move my things dramatically.That wasn't how either of us operated. There was no announcement, no formal moment, no gathering of staff to explain the change. Matthias told Marta on a Tuesday morning that the upper west guest room was being converted to permanent use and that Ms. Lennox would be relocating from the campus dormitory by the end of the week.Marta looked at him for exactly one second.Then she said, "I'll have the wardrobe cleared by Thursday."That was that.*******I told the university housing office I was moving off campus for personal reasons. Filled out the form. Paid the early release fee from the money I'd saved from my estate shifts. Arranged a car for Friday morning.Elena was in the room when I started packing.She sat on her bed with her knees pulled up and watched me fold clothes into a bag with the expression of someone who had been waiting for a conversation to arrive and was now watching it walk through the door."So," she said."So," I
Chapter 95The ruling came on the sixth day.Not through a courier this time. Through the Council's official digital channel, which meant they'd decided the weight of the envelope wasn't necessary anymore. The decision had been made and they were done performing around it.Dante brought it to Matthias's office at nine in the morning. Set his tablet on the desk with the document already open.Matthias read it standing up.I watched his face. The controlled version of him was fully present, giving nothing away in the surface of it. But I knew how to read the places he didn't show things now. The slight tightening at the corner of his jaw. The one breath that came out slightly slower than the ones before it.He set the tablet down and looked at me."Tell me," I said."The panel finds the relationship inappropriate given the employment context," he said. "Formal reprimand. Entered into the Council record." He paused. "I'm required to acknowledge the reprimand in writing within forty-eight
Chapter 94The Council chamber was built to make people feel small.That was the point of it. High ceilings. Stone walls. A raised panel platform that required everyone below it to look up. The lighting was cold and institutional and fell on the floor in front of the panel table in a way that left the people standing in it slightly exposed. Slightly lit from above like specimens.Whoever designed this room had understood power.Matthias stood in the lit space like he hadn't noticed any of it.I stood beside him and kept my hands folded in front of me and my face entirely neutral and looked at the five people behind the raised table.Five panel members. Three I didn't recognise. Two I did.Varen on the left. Silver-haired, precise, the particular stillness of a man who had been in rooms like this his entire career and felt entirely at home in them. He had a folder open in front of him that he wasn't looking at because he already knew everything in it.Solke beside him. Heavier. Older.
Chapter 93The estate was quiet by ten.The kind of quiet that settled in when everything that could be done had been done and what remained was just the waiting. Dante had gone to his quarters two hours ago after confirming the documentation was complete and the legal counsel Marcus had recommended was briefed and ready. The security team had their positions. The car was arranged for seven AM.Everything was in place.Which left Matthias and me alone in his sitting room with a fire that had burned down to embers and the hearing twelve hours away.He was in the chair nearest the window. Not reading. Not on his phone. Just sitting with a glass of whiskey he'd barely touched and his eyes on the middle distance the way he looked when he was thinking through something he'd already decided.I was on the sofa across from him.Neither of us had said anything for ten minutes.He broke the silence first."We could end it," he said.I looked at him."Before tomorrow," he said. "Walk away from t







