Chapter 77. Ghosts in the Machine

The coordinates Leora provided for the final rendezvous weren't the waste transfer station or a dark alley. They led to a pristine, white-walled art gallery in Geneva’s wealthiest district, its name, Galerie du Zénith, glowing in discreet, backlit letters. It was past midnight, but the lights were on, casting a sterile, inviting glow onto the empty, rain-slicked street.

“A gallery,” Sabe muttered, his hand hovering near the concealed knife at his back. “Of course. Where better to hide a crime than in plain sight, dressed as culture?”

Anton felt a surreal disconnect. Hours ago, he’d been sobbing in a stolen van. Now, he was about to walk into an upscale art gallery as part of a heist to save the world. The two USB drives were a hard, rectangular presence against his chest.

The glass door slid open silently as they approached. The interior was a temple of minimalist wealth—polished concrete floors, soaring ceilings, and walls upon which hung large, abstract digital canvases. They pulsed with slow, shifting colors, silent and expensive. A lone figure stood in the center of the main room, facing a massive screen that resembled a fractured, liquid mirror.

Leora had shed her hoodie and scarf. She was younger than Anton had guessed, perhaps mid-twenties, with a sharp, intelligent face framed by choppy black hair dyed electric blue at the tips. She wore utilitarian black clothing, but her fingers were adorned with chunky, tech-infused rings that glimmered in the screen’s light. She didn't turn as they entered.

“You’re late,” she said, her voice now her own—clipped, with a faint Eastern European accent.

“We had a detour,” Sabe replied, his eyes scanning the room. It was empty save for them. Too empty.

“This is the front?” Anton asked, stepping forward. The digital art was hypnotic, waves of indigo and silver bleeding into each other. It felt alive.

“The front, the back, and the laundry,” Leora said, finally turning. Her eyes, a startling pale grey, assessed them with cold curiosity. “The Meridian uses a dozen fronts like this. High-end galleries, auction houses, rare book dealers. Places where vast sums of money change hands are unremarkable. But this one is special. It’s where they wash the crypto.”

She gestured to the largest canvas on the far wall. It looked like a storm of golden static. “Watch.”

She tapped a sequence on a sleek tablet in her hand. The golden static on the screen resolved, for a fraction of a second, into a cascading waterfall of alphanumeric code—blockchain hashes, wallet addresses, transaction IDs. It flickered so fast it was almost subliminal, then dissolved back into abstract beauty.

“The art is the ledger,” Anton breathed, understanding dawning. “The transactions are hidden in the visual noise.”

“Every pulse, every color shift, every ‘glitch’ in the animation is a laundered payment, a f*e for a service, a kickback to a politician,” Leora confirmed. “The gallery is a node. A beautiful, silent bank. Zorya's payment for the prototype is flowing through this room right now, being split, washed, and rerouted to a hundred different offshore accounts.”

Sabe’s gaze was fixed on the screens, not with appreciation, but with the focus of a predator seeing the hidden shape of the herd. “And you can trace it.”

“I have traced it,” Leora corrected. “The packet I gave you contains the map. But seeing it…” she gestured around the room, “…helps you understand what you’re really fighting. It’s not a company. It’s an ecosystem. An organism that feeds on money and secrets and disguises itself as beauty and power.”

She walked to a seemingly blank section of wall and pressed her palm against it. A hidden panel hissed open, revealing a narrow, dimly lit staircase leading down. “The vault access isn't at the Freeport. Not directly. That’s the stage. This is the green room. The Meridian and the Zorya will finalize the authentication here, in the secure server room below. The Freeport vault is just the hardened box where the physical chip will be stored after the deal. The digital transfer of ownership, the release of the cryptographic locks… that happens here. Now.”

Anton and Sabe exchanged a glance. This changed everything. The hacker hadn't just given them a way in; she’d redirected them to the heart.

“Why?” Sabe asked again, the question more urgent. “Why give us this? You could expose this yourself.”

For the first time, Leora’s cool façade cracked, revealing a flash of something raw and furious. “Because I am not a soldier. I am a surgeon. I cut, I expose, I map. I don’t… confront.” She spat the word. “They killed my friend in a way that was meant to be quiet. A digital ghost. I want their death to be loud. I want it to be physical. I want someone to look them in the eye as their perfect, silent machine grinds to a halt. You,” she pointed at Anton, “are the wronged prince. And you,” her gaze shifted to Sabe, “are the disgraced knight. You have the motive for a scene. I’m just providing the stage directions.”

It was revenge, orchestrated with cold, brilliant precision. She was using their rage and their desperation as the blunt instrument to shatter her enemy’s pristine window.

Anton looked at the pulsing, deceptive art, at the ghosts of billions flashing across the screens. This was the true face of the Meridian: not a shadowy cabal in a smoky room, but this clean, bright, brutal efficiency. It was more horrifying than any monster he could have imagined.

“The server room,” he said. “Lead the way.”

Leora nodded and started down the stairs. They followed, the gallery’s serene silence giving way to the hum of powerful climate control and servers. The basement was a stark contrast to the gallery above—a sterile, cold room lined with black server racks, their status LEDs blinking like a constellation of malevolent stars. In the center of the room was a single, polished steel console.

“The authentication terminal,” Leora said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “At 00:01, a Meridian representative and a Zorya representative will be here to input their halves of the final key. The QX-7 key you stole is Evelyn’s half. The Zorya have the other. Together, they unlock the prototype’s core programming and transfer control.”

She pointed to a data port on the console. “Plant my packet there. It will lie dormant until the authentication sequence is initiated. The moment both keys are accepted, my worm activates. It will hijack the transfer, broadcast the ledger, and send a corrosive dump of the Aethelred’s weaponized code—your code,” she looked at Sabe, “to every intelligence agency on the planet. It will be a data nova. The Meridian’s finances and their super-weapon, exposed in the same instant.”

“And trap us in the middle of it,” Sabe finished grimly.

“Escape route,” Leora said, pulling up a schematic on her tablet. It showed the gallery’s plumbing and electrical conduits. “There’s an old service tunnel for telecom lines that runs behind the east wall. It exits into a utility closet two buildings over. It’s tight, but it’s clean. Once the packet is in, you have approximately ninety seconds before the system security—what’s left of it after your virus at the villa—fully reboots and locks the place down.”

Ninety seconds to vanish before the most powerful criminals on earth realized they’d been hit.

Anton looked at the console, at the port that was the mouth of the dragon. He pulled the two USB drives from his pocket. One for entry to the Freeport—now obsolete. The other, Leora’s packet of apocalypse.

He handed the first back to her. “We won’t be needing this.”

She took it, a ghost of a real smile touching her lips. “I’ll recycle it.” She then moved to a secondary terminal, her fingers flying. “I’m looping the security camera feeds now. You’ll have a three-minute window of digital blindness. Starting… now.”

A soft chime echoed in the server room. The red lights on the discreet ceiling cameras winked out.

It was time.

Sabe took the second drive from Anton, his fingers brushing his. No words were needed. The touch said everything.

As Sabe moved to the console, Anton turned to Leora. “What will you do?”

She was already backing toward the stairs, her tablet closed. “Watch the fireworks from a very long way away. And then… maybe get a cat. Something that doesn't lie or launder money.”

And with that, she was gone, leaving them alone in the humming heart of the beast.

Sabe knelt, inserted the drive. A progress bar flashed on the console’s main screen: PACKET RECEIVED. SLEEPING.

It was in. The trap was set.

They had ninety seconds. The ghosts on the canvases above were counting down. The final act was upon them, and the gallery’s beautiful, lying front was about to become the epicenter of a truth that would shake the world.

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