Chapter 26: A Name Reappears

AEGIS_ZERO burned itself into Sabe's mind, a bitter scar of fear. It was the plan of their downfall, a plan for his death and Anton's imprisonment. The blunt, bureaucratic callousness of it took his wind. They were not only criminals; they were social surgeons, excising disease with clinical, legal precision.

He had to leave there. The body in the stairs was a ticking time bomb. But more than papers were on the flash drive. In the highest directory, besides the dossiers, was a single video file, recorded from last week before the theft. It had only a title by a sequence of numbers. His cursor hovered on it. This was the meat of it. The proof.

He clicked play.

The film was grainy, shot with a hidden camera at a severe, downward angle, perhaps concealed in a light fixture or a smoke detector. The environment was upscale, all dark wood and plush leather—a private clubroom or a high-end hotel suite. And there they were, caught on film in intimate, incriminating detail.

Evelyn Voss reclined calmly in a wingback chair, a crystal tumbler of amber-colored liquid held cupped in her hand. She looked utterly at ease, a queen on her throne. Marcus Vale paced before the fireplace, his agitation a high wire, a cold contrast to her chilly reserve.

"—can't keep stalling, Evelyn," Marcus was saying to her, his voice a little distorted through the microphone but filled with frustrated passion. "The window is closing. Anton's paranoia is a piece of performance art these days. He's auditing departments he hasn't touched in years."

Evelyn drank slowly. "Patience, Marcus. Paranoia is a weapon. It makes people predictable. He's looking for a thief in the unit. He won't be looking for a grieving brother making a desperate attempt for the family name. Your emotional state is your best cover.".

Marcus stopped his pacing, running a hand through his hair. "It's not camouflage. He cut me out. He left me with nothing but a trust fund and a name you can gag on."

"And within a short time, you'll have more than you can spend in ten lifetimes," Evelyn replied, her voice a silken temptation. "The prototype is the key. But it's not the product. It's the key to the kingdom."

Marcus glared on screen. "What does it signify? We've been here before. We copy the code, we stage an illusion, we sell it to the highest bidder. We destroy Anton's precious legacy in doing so.".

Evelyn’s smile was a slow, cruel thing. “Oh, we’ll sell it. But the highest bidder isn’t some foreign syndicate or a rival tech firm. They’re… a consolidation.” She leaned forward, her eyes glinting in the low light. “Think bigger, Marcus. This isn’t about hurting your brother. This is about inheriting him.”

Sabe’s blood ran cold. He leaned closer to the tablet, his pain forgotten.

Inherit him?" Marcus was actually baffled. "What are you saying?

"'Aegis' is the most advanced digital security platform ever constructed," Evelyn explained, as to a child. "Whomever possesses it, possesses the next generation of global information infrastructure. Our client doesn't just want to use it. He wants to buy the company that built it. He wants the source code, the development logs, the patents. He wants Rogers Industries itself."

"But… Anton would never sell."

He won't be able to help it." Evelyn's voice dropped, grew conspiratorial. "The 'theft' will be in full view, a catastrophe. The stock will plummet. The board will panic. And then, out of nowhere, a mysterious, well-capitalized white knight will emerge. A new holding company, ready to make a tender offer to save the founding giant, gobbles it up whole.". They'll buy the company pennies on the dollar, and with it the legal title to the prototype. Our payday is from the holding company, for delivering the target compromised.

It was an acquisition. A hostile, masterful, ruthless acquisition. The swiping wasn't the end game; it was the opening gambit.

Marcus was staring at her, a realization dawning on his face and then horror. "You. you're not just stealing from him. You're cheating him out of everything. The company. His reputation. Everything Father built."

"Everything you were cheated out of," Evelyn interrupted, her voice slicing. "Don't get cold feet now, Marcus. This is what you wanted. You wanted him to see your hurt. This is it. This is a masterpiece."

She stood up, going to a sideboard to get another drink. "The icing on the cake. An accident during the investigation. The ultimate backups, lost forever. The value of the original code, in the hands of our client now, becomes impossible to calculate. Anton's failure is complete."

Marcus sat in silence for an eternity, staring at the fire. "And the investigator? Stalker?"

Evelyn waved a dismissive hand. “A complication. A useful one. His history makes him the perfect patsy. We’ll leak his name, his past. He’ll be the unstable element Anton foolishly brought in, the one who caused the catastrophic data loss. It tidies up all the loose ends.”

She turned to him, her expression becoming tougher. "This is the plan. This has always been the plan. The client insists. They've been. insistent."

There was a new gravity in the way she used the word 'client'. A flash of something that was almost fear flickered across her face before it vanished.

"Who are they, Evelyn?" Marcus asked, his tone low. "This 'consolidation'? Who has this level of influence?"

Evelyn hesitated. For the first time on the tape, her flawless demeanor seemed to come apart at the seams. She looked around the room, as though sensing the unseen eyes, the ears. She turned back to Marcus, her voice dropping to a whisper the microphone strained to capture.

"They operate through shells. Shells of them. But the money, the orders… they all lead back to one master entity. The mastermind of the consolidation."

She inhaled a harsh, stabilizing breath.

"The client is 'Rogers.'"

The name hung in the air of the secret apartment, heavy and crushing.

Sabe stared, stunned for a moment. Rogers? It was impossible. Anton was the victim. He was…

And then, the horrific truth came crashing down on him.

Not Anton.

Rogers Industries.

The company itself. The board. The business. Not being threatened from the outside. Eating itself alive. A corporate cannibalism. A coup in disguise as a rescue.

The 'white knight' holding company, the 'consolidation'. a group at Rogers Industries, using stolen company resources to drive down the value of the company, so they could buy it out from under Anton and control it. They were using his own invention to organize his ouster.

Evelyn and Marcus were not simply peddling a prototype. They were staging a boardroom coup, with the help of an unnamed, exceedingly powerful client who happened to share the target's name.

The final, missing web snapped into place, and the picture it painted was more grotesque than he could have imagined. Section Seven, Janus Holdings, the killer. all of them, contractors, tools of this internal organization. The 'Rogers' client was the real puppet master.

He had to get this to Anton. Now. This reshaped everything. Anton wasn't fighting a thief; he was fighting his own corporation.

A booming, crackling thud from down in the stairwell below—the reinforced door kicked in. They were here. Failsafe activated.

Sabe's survival instincts kicked in. He pulled the flash drive out of the tablet. He grabbed the pistol and the knife. No time to grab anything else.

He crawled over to the room's other amenity: a filthy, narrow ventilation shaft on the far wall, an emergency door he had noticed when he came in. He hoisted himself up, his injured arm protesting in agony, and squeezed into the narrow, dirty metal tube just in time as the door to the apartment shattered and gave way beneath him.

He didn't look back over his shoulder. He crawled, the flash drive clutched in his hand like some kind of holy relic, the name 'Rogers' echoing in his mind, a blessing and a damnation.

He had the proof. He had the truth.

And now he just had to live long enough to get it out.

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