Chapter 89. The Buyers of Fear

The air in the tiny apartment was thick with the unsaid, charged with the echo of Anton’s ultimatum. Sabe stood frozen, Anton’s hands still framing his face, the truth of his words a seismic shock to the foundations of his carefully constructed despair. The fear of future loss warred with the undeniable reality of the present love being offered, here, now, without conditions.

He didn't kiss him. But he didn't pull away. He leaned his forehead against Anton’s, closing his eyes, a shudder running through him. It was a surrender of a different kind—not to passion, but to the terrifying possibility of hope.

“I’m sorry,” Sabe breathed, the words a confession. “I’m so… damn… scared.”

“I know,” Anton whispered, his thumbs stroking his temples. “So am I. We’ll be scared together. That’s the deal.”

They stood like that for a long moment, drawing strength from the simple contact, the shared breath. The precipice was still there, but they were standing on it side-by-side.

The fragile peace was shattered by a violent vibration from the burner phone on the rickety table. Leora.

Sabe broke away, snatching it up. The message was a string of coordinates and a time: 00:15. Secondary loading bay, Dock 7. Visual confirmation attached.

The attached image was grainy, taken from a distance with a powerful lens. It showed two figures standing under the harsh security lights of a private dock within the Geneva Freeport complex. One was Evelyn Voss, elegant in a long coat, a briefcase chained to her wrist—the QX-7 key’s twin, presumably. The other was not a Zorya lieutenant.

He was a tall, broad-shouldered man in an impeccably tailored, dark suit that couldn't quite disguise a military bearing. His hair was silver, his face a network of sharp angles and old scars. Anton didn't recognize him, but the chilling sense of absolute authority radiated even from the pixelated image.

“That’s not Zorya,” Sabe said, his voice grim. He zoomed in on the man’s lapel. A small, discreet insignia was visible: a stylized eagle’s head superimposed over a globe. “Valkyrie Group.”

The name meant nothing to Anton, but Sabe’s expression told him everything.

“Private military conglomerate,” Sabe clarified, his mind racing. “The biggest. They don’t run drugs or traffic arms. They rent armies. They orchestrate coups. They provide ‘security’ for extractive industries in war zones. They are state-level power, without a state. The ultimate mercenaries.”

“Why would they want the prototype?” Anton asked, though the answer was already coiling, cold and monstrous, in his gut.

“Think about it,” Sabe said, his eyes locked on the image. “Evelyn wants wealth. Marcus wanted a title and revenge. The Meridian wants… influence. Control. But to sell to the Zorya? That’s like selling a nuclear bomb to a street gang—profitable, but messy, unpredictable. The Meridian prefers order. Valkyrie Group is ordered. They are a bureaucracy of violence. They would use the Aethelred not for chaotic blackmail, but for systematic, strategic dominance. To blind an enemy’s communications during a ‘peacekeeping’ intervention. To freeze the assets of a recalcitrant government. To own the digital battlefield in every conflict they’re contracted for. They wouldn't just buy a weapon; they’d buy a monopoly on modern warfare.”

He pulled the USB drive containing Rico’s audio files from his pocket, connecting it to the phone with a small adapter. He scrolled through the file names, looking for anything referencing buyers or bids. He found one: /audio/valkyrie_bid_assessment.wav

He played it. Evelyn’s voice, crisp and businesslike:

“The Valkyrie offer is lower than the Zorya bid upfront, but the long-term service contract and the clean, deniable nature of the partnership is worth the discount. They have the infrastructure to deploy the ‘Quiet Hour’ protocol with surgical precision. The Zorya would just cause a panic and try to extort everyone. Valkyrie will lease the silence to the highest bidder, again and again.”

The male Meridian representative replied, his tone considering: “The Collective prefers predictable returns. And Valkyrie’s board has two of our members. It is, in essence, selling to a subsidiary. Ensure the brother is unaware. Let him believe the Zorya fairytale. It keeps him motivated and contained.”

The call ended. The truth was now undeniable. The Meridian was using Evelyn as a broker to sell the weaponized prototype to its own violent offshoot, Valkyrie Group, under the guise of a Zorya deal. Marcus was a useful idiot, a patsy to take the fall if anything went publicly wrong. Evelyn got her wealth and a seat at a much darker table. The Meridian secured a stranglehold on global conflict, profiting from both sides of every future war.

It was a deeper, colder betrayal than Anton had imagined. It wasn't just about his company. It was about weaponizing his father’s legacy of protection into a tool for perpetual, privatized war.

“Marcus doesn't know,” Anton said, the pieces clicking into a horrifying new picture. “He thinks he’s trading with criminals to be CEO. He’s actually facilitating a coup against the very concept of national security.”

“And he’s the perfect scapegoat,” Sabe finished. “When the ‘Quiet Hour’ is used somewhere, and the world investigates, the trail will lead to Marcus Rogers, the disgraced, vengeful brother who stole the prototype and sold it to the dreaded Zorya Collective. The Meridian and Valkyrie are clean. Evelyn vanishes with her money. And the dragon is loose, owned by the highest bidder.”

The scale of it was staggering. The personal betrayal was now a geopolitical one. The fight was no longer just for Anton’s life or his company. It was for a fragment of the world’s soul.

Anton looked at the time. 23:40. The exchange—the real exchange with Valkyrie—was in thirty-five minutes.

“We have the audio,” Anton said, his voice hardening into the tone he used for impossible boardroom turnarounds. “We have the invoice. We have Marcus. We have Leora’s packet ready to broadcast the financials. We have to stop the handover and expose the true buyer. Publicly. Catastrophically.”

Sabe was nodding, his mind aligning with Anton’s, the operative and the CEO merging into a single, focused force. “We can’t just sabotage the prototype now. We have to capture the moment. We need to be there when Valkyrie takes delivery. We need their face, their voice, on record, linked to the Meridian. We need to make the exposure so loud, so undeniable, that even their bought governments can’t cover it up.”

He looked at Anton, a fierce, almost feral light in his eyes. “We don’t just break into the vault. We hijacked the meeting.”

It was the most audacious move yet. To walk into the heart of the transaction, surrounded by Meridian overseers and Valkyrie mercenaries, and turn it into a live broadcast of their crimes.

“We have one advantage,” Anton said, thinking of the frightened man in the culvert. “Marcus. He’s expecting to meet Zorya, to see his reward. When he sees the Valkyrie Group, when he hears the audio… he’ll know he’s been played for the ultimate fool. His revenge won’t be against me anymore. It’ll be against them.”

“A cornered rat,” Sabe mused. “Unpredictable. Dangerous. But potentially a very loud, very convincing witness.” He began to pack their meager gear with swift, efficient movements. “We get to Marcus. We show him the truth. We offer him one chance: walk into that meeting with us, wear a wire, help us expose them, and maybe he survives as a cooperating witness rather than the patsy who takes the life sentence.”

It was a slim chance. Marcus was a coward, but he was also a proud one. The humiliation of being used so completely might be the one thing that could push him into a desperate, vengeful courage.

They moved out into the night, the butcher’s shop smell giving way to the cold, diesel-tinged air of the industrial waterfront. The stakes had just been recalibrated to a planetary scale. The buyers weren't gangsters; they were merchants of the apocalypse. And they were minutes away from taking possession of a key that could lock the world in digital chains.

As they hurried towards the culvert where Marcus was hidden, Anton’s hand found Sabe’s. Their fingers laced together, not in comfort this time, but in a pact. They were no longer just fighting for their lives or their love. They were stepping onto a battlefield to confront the very architects of a darker future. The revelation had changed everything. The mission was no longer about survival.

It was about a declaration of war.

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