19: The Viper's Nest

The information from Valerius changed the game board entirely. Kael wasn't just a rival Alpha; he was a zealot chasing a myth, and he was willing to tear Jack’s entire world down to get to it. The time for reconnaissance and planning was over. It was time to strike, and to strike hard.

“He’s using his human enterprises to fund his search for the Progenitor’s Bone,” Jack said, pacing the floor of the study. The war council was convened again, but this time the atmosphere was thick with an predatory urgency. “We don’t go for the man himself. Not yet. We go for the foundation. We cut off his money.”

On the screen, Elara had a complex web diagram displayed. In the center was Kael. Branching off from him were dozens of shell corporations, but one stood out, highlighted in pulsing red: ‘Apex Consolidated Holdings.’

“Here’s the heart of the viper’s nest,” Elara said, zooming in. “On the surface, it’s a simple commercial lending company. But its real business is laundering money for the entire city’s underworld, primarily the Iron Fist Brotherhood. It’s Kael’s cash cow and the source of his influence in the human world. He can’t operate without it.”

“It’ll be heavily guarded,” Marcus stated, his eyes narrowed on the building schematics Elara pulled up. “It’s in a downtown high-rise. Private security, motion sensors, pressure plates in the server room. The Iron Fists use it as an unofficial bank. They won’t let it fall easily.”

“And there’s a ticking clock,” Elara added, pointing to a data packet. “I’ve been monitoring their internal network. Their chief accountant is paranoid. Every twenty-four hours, at precisely 3:00 AM, he backs up the core ledgers onto an encrypted physical drive and transports it to an off-site location. If we don’t get that data before the next transfer, it’s gone, and they’ll know they’ve been breached. We have one shot at this. Tonight.”

A classic, high-stakes heist. It was a language they all understood.

The plan was audacious, a three-pronged assault synchronized to the second.

Phase One: The Distraction.

At 2:30 AM, a souped-up muscle car, tires screeching, slammed into the front entrance of The Moon’s Howl bar. The doors exploded inward in a shower of splintered wood and glass. Before the patrons could even react, Marcus and three of his most trusted men, all large and imposing figures, stormed into the bar. They weren’t there for a subtle infiltration; they were there to start a riot.

A massive bar-wide brawl erupted. It was chaos, carefully orchestrated. Marcus, a whirlwind of controlled violence, moved through the room, targeting Kael’s werewolf enforcers specifically, drawing them into a protracted, brutal fight that spilled out into the street. The noise and sheer scale of the violence were an irresistible beacon, drawing the attention of every Iron Fist gangster and Kael loyalist in the area. It was the perfect diversion. The majority of Kael’s physical strength was now pinned down, miles away from their financial center.

Phase Two: The Ghost.

At precisely 2:45 AM, as the first police sirens began to wail near The Moon’s Howl, Elara Chen launched her assault. From her command center thousands of miles away, she was a digital phantom, slipping through the firewalls of Apex Consolidated Holdings. The company’s expensive security system was good, but Elara was better.

Code scrolled across her screens at a dizzying pace. She sidestepped intrusion detectors, looped security camera footage, and disabled the silent alarms one by one. Her final keystroke sent a targeted electromagnetic pulse through the building's wiring, frying the pressure plates and motion sensors in the server room for a window of exactly five minutes.

“I’m in,” her voice came through Jack’s earpiece, calm and clear. “The system is blind and deaf. Your window is open, Alpha. Five minutes on the clock. Go.”

Phase Three: The Alpha.

Jack was already moving. Clad in dark, non-reflective gear, he stood on the roof of the building adjacent to the high-rise. The wind whipped around him, carrying the distant sounds of the city. He took a running start, his powerful legs propelling him across the chasm between the two buildings. He landed silently on the ledge of the target skyscraper, his fingers finding purchase on the cold steel of the window-washing rig.

He moved down the face of the building with a terrifying, spider-like grace, his enhanced strength making the descent effortless. He reached the correct floor and used a glass cutter to silently remove a pane of glass, slipping into the darkened office like a wraith.

The office was cold and sterile. The only sound was the hum of the servers from a room down the hall. He moved with an unnatural silence, his senses on fire. He could smell the lingering scent of stale coffee and the ozone from the electronics.

He reached the server room. The heavy steel door had a complex digital lock, now uselessly dark thanks to Elara. Jack didn’t need to pick it. He gripped the handle, braced himself, and pulled. Muscles bunched in his back and arms. With a groan of tortured metal, the lock’s internal mechanism sheared apart. The door swung open.

The room was a cage of humming machines and blinking lights. In the center was the main server rack. This was the prize. He inserted a specialized flash drive—Elara’s masterpiece—into the primary port. A progress bar appeared on his wrist-mounted device. Data was being copied at an incredible rate.

Two minutes left, Elara’s voice said in his ear.

Suddenly, a scent hit him. Dog-like, musky, and aggressive. The smell of another werewolf. He wasn't alone.

From the shadows in the corner of the room, a figure emerged. It was a man, short and stocky, with a flattened nose and cruel, beady eyes. But as he stepped into the light, his form began to shift. Bones cracked and reformed, his skin stretching, fur sprouting from his arms. He was a Beta, one of Kael’s lieutenants, and he had been left behind as the final guardian.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the Beta snarled, his voice a low guttural rumble. He didn’t lunge. He was a brawler, a bruiser, and he stood his ground, cracking his knuckles.

Jack didn't have time for a prolonged fight. He needed to end this, and end it now. He dropped into a combat stance, drawing on a new skill he had purchased from the system just for this occasion: 【Military Close-Quarters Combat Mastery】.

The Beta charged, a roaring mass of muscle and fury, his claws extended. It was a straightforward, brutal attack. Jack didn't meet it head-on. He sidestepped, the claws whistling past his ear, and flowed with the bigger creature’s momentum. As the Beta stumbled past, Jack’s hand shot out in a knife-hand strike, impacting the nerve cluster at the side of the Beta’s neck.

The werewolf grunted in pain and surprise, his arm going numb. He spun around, swinging wildly. Jack ducked under the clumsy blow, his body a coiled spring. He drove his elbow up into the Beta’s ribs with a sickening crack, followed by a palm heel strike to the jaw that snapped the creature’s head back.

The system skill guided his movements, overlaying cold, lethal precision onto his raw, lupine power. Every strike was efficient, targeted, and devastating. He was no longer just a beast fighting on instinct; he was a trained weapon.

The Beta, enraged and wounded, let out a howl of fury and lunged again, this time trying to grapple, to use his superior bulk. Jack met the charge, but instead of pushing back, he dropped his center of gravity, hooked his leg behind the Beta’s, and used the creature’s own forward momentum to throw him over his hip.

The Beta slammed into a server rack with a crash of sparks and shattering plastic. He struggled to rise, dazed and disoriented. Jack was on him in an instant, his knee on the werewolf’s chest, his forearm pressed against his throat.

“It’s over,” Jack growled, his golden eyes blazing with cold fire.

“Thirty seconds, Jack! Get out now!” Elara’s voice screamed in his ear.

He glanced at his wrist. The data transfer was complete. He pulled the drive, delivered a final, concussive blow to the Beta’s temple that knocked him unconscious, and turned to leave.

As he was about to exit the server room, his eyes caught something on a nearby desk. It was a printed manifest, separate from the digital files he had just stolen. A shipping ledger for an import/export business Kael owned. Most of it was mundane—machine parts, textiles, electronics.

But one line item made his blood run cold.

It was a recent shipment, flagged with multiple biohazard warnings. The description was vague: ‘Geological Survey Samples - Lead-Lined Containment.’ The quantity was listed as twelve units. And the destination address wasn’t a warehouse or a lab. It was a remote, abandoned iron mine, located just a few miles from the Sterling estate.

He snatched the manifest, his mind racing. Kael wasn't just laundering money. He was using his criminal network to secretly import something dangerous, something that required lead-lined containers, and he was storing it right on their doorstep.

“Security systems are coming back online in ten… nine… eight…”

Jack didn’t wait. He sprinted from the room, retraced his steps through the silent office, and slipped back out the window, melting into the night just as the alarms began to shriek, echoing through the empty building. The viper’s nest had been raided, its financial heart ripped out. But Jack knew, with a chilling certainty, that he had just stumbled upon something far more venomous than money. He had found the viper’s fangs.