Chapter 31: Smoke and Mirrors

The new base was the antithesis of Anton’s penthouse. It was a disused, soundproofed recording studio in Soho, a windowless cube buried behind a nameless door. The air smelled of dust and old electronics. Wires snaked across the floor, and acoustic foam peeled from the walls like dead skin. It was a place designed to keep secrets in and the world out.

Anton stood amidst the technological graveyard, profoundly dislocated. This was not his world. His world was one of light, glass, and visible power. This was a cave.

Sabe, for his part, however, loosened up for the first time since the bridge. He moved through the space with a sense of ownership, checking power outlets, testing the integrity of the door. This was his habitat: the shadows, the operational clutter.

"We need to move the timeline up," Sabe said, hooking up a line of stolen laptops into a jury-rigged network hub. "The stewardship vote is in forty-eight hours. Once it's done, Eleanor Shaw and the others will be legally bound. Our proof becomes a conspiracy theory.

“I'm aware of the corporate by-laws,” Anton said, a bit of his old edge showing. “But we can't hand her the video all nicened-up. Like you said, it's gonna get tossed. We need to shake the tree first. Create chaos. Make them doubt their own story.

Sabe's eyes narrowed; he looked up from his work. “What are you thinking?”

“Evelyn’s strength is her control. She’s a master of narrative. So, we give her a new narrative to manage.” Anton paced the small, cluttered space. “We fake a security breach. At Rogers Industries. We make it look like the ‘real’ thieves, the ones who have the prototype, are trying to cover their tracks by erasing the last of the developmental data from the primary servers in London.”

Sabe was silent for a moment, processing. A slow, grim smile touched his lips. It was a terrifying expression, all sharp edges and cold approval. “She’ll panic. She’ll think Janus or Section Seven is double-crossing her. She’ll have to divert resources, expose her own security protocols. It creates a smokescreen.”

“And inside that smokescreen,” Anton completed, “you get to Eleanor Shaw.”

“It’s risky,” Sabe said. “If I’m caught inside Rogers Tower…

“You won’t be,” Anton said, with a confidence he didn’t entirely feel. “Because you won’t be going in. Not physically.”

He nodded toward the bank of laptops. "You said you were a ghost. So, be one. Hack the system. Initiate a Level 5 security alert from the outside. Make it look like a sophisticated, external attack with the aim of data purification."

Sabe's eyes narrowed further. He could appreciate the beauty of it. No actual danger. Ultimate psychological damage. "I can do that. But I'll need access. A backdoor."

Anton gave him a long, level look. “You’ll have one. My old executive overrides codes. They were tied to my biometrics, but the digital key… I never surrendered it. Evelyn would have assumed it was lost in the chaos.

He could only manage to say a stream of alphanumeric characters in a sequence he had carried in his mind for years. It was the key to his kingdom, and he was handing it to a fugitive in a dusty room-the ultimate act of trust.

Sabe’s fingers were already flying across a keyboard. “It’ll take me an hour to set up the attack vector. I’ll route it through a server in Moldova, bounce it off a satellite link… make it look like it’s coming from the same IP range as the Janus Holdings probes.” He spoke in a low, rapid-fire monologue, a stream of technical jargon that was both alien and deeply impressive to Anton. This was not the bruised man from the cell; this was the intelligence operative, the architect of digital havoc.

Anton watched, mesmerized. He was used to seeing brilliance in boardrooms—the sharp legal mind, the innovative engineer. But this was a different kind of genius. It was a brutal, surgical precision. Sabe built layers of deception like another man built financial models, each one designed to withstand scrutiny and misdirect the enemy. It was a soldier’s discipline, honed in a war fought with code instead of bullets, and it was wrapped in a quiet, focused rage that Anton now understood was directed entirely at those who had wronged them.

“The alert will trigger an automatic lockdown,” Sabe murmured, more to himself than to Anton. “Seal the data halls, isolate the core servers. Evelyn’s team will be scrambling. They’ll be looking for a physical breach, a team of hackers. They won’t be looking for a single, encrypted data packet containing our proof, sent to one, private device.”

“Eleanor Shaw prefers tablets. She hates company-issued laptops. Uses a personal, high-security model,” Anton provided, falling seamlessly into his role as intelligence officer. “Her device ID is in the HR file under ‘Non-Standard Hardware Permissions.’” It was a tiny, insignificant piece of data he’d once approved without a second thought, now becoming a crucial weapon.

Sabe nodded, his eyes never leaving the screen. "I'll package the video with a decrypt key that expires in sixty minutes. She'll have one hour to watch it before it turns to digital dust. No chance to forward it, no permanent record. It forces a decision."

It was beautiful. And terrifying.

An hour later, Sabe sat back. "Ready. On your mark."

Anton took a deep breath. He was about to attack his own company, to set a fire in the very heart of what he'd built. It felt like sacrilege. A necessary one.

“Do it.”

Sabe pressed a key.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, on a secondary screen, a live news feed from the financial district showed the familiar facade of Rogers Tower. There was no visible change. But Anton knew that inside, strobe lights would be flashing, sirens would be blaring a silent, internal scream. The perfect, controlled empire of Evelyn Voss was, for the first time, truly and publicly under siege.

His own phone, the one linked to his old executive alerts, buzzed once and died. The system had purged him. He was now officially an outsider.

He looked at Sabe, who was monitoring the chaos through a half-dozen command line interfaces, his face illuminated by the cool, blue light. He was utterly still, his entire being focused on the digital battlefield he had created. This was the man who had haunted his boardrooms and saved his life. The genius and the guardian. The ghost and the anchor.

In that moment, Anton saw the raw, unvarnished truth of Sabatine Stalker. Not a troubled PI, not a disgraced soldier, but a weapon of exquisite precision, guided by a moral compass that had been bent but never broken. The quiet rage wasn’t for show; it was the fuel that powered an engine of formidable competence.

“They’re diverting,” Sabe said, his voice calm amidst the storm he’d created. “Eighty percent of their internal security is now focused on the data center. The executive floors are on skeleton staff.” He typed a final command. “The package is away. Injected directly into the alert system and routed to Shaw’s device as a ‘Priority One: Eyes Only’ security briefing.”

Finally, he looked up at Anton, the glow of the screens etching exhaustion and triumph in his features. "The smoke is rising. Now we see if your director has the courage to look through it."

Anton could only stare. The plan had been his. But the execution… The execution was a work of brutal, beautiful art. He'd glimpsed the machinery inside the man, and it was more powerful, more terrifying, and more magnificent than he could ever have imagined.

The mirrors now faced squarely at their foes. And in the reflecting chaos, he and Sabe just had taken their first, real step out of the shadows.

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