Chapter 15

POV: Liam

The sun is a cold, flat coin over the city. It doesn’t provide heat. It just makes the glass of the Sterling Tower look sharper.

I haven’t slept. My eyes feel like they’ve been rubbed with sand.

I sat at my desk. The screen in front of me was a wall of scrolling text. White on black. The raw data dump from the house in New Jersey. Isabella’s "mirror."

Every time a line of code flashed, I saw her face. The way she looked in the kitchen. The way she asked about the math.

Interrupt the thought. Delete it.

Reputation is a fragile structure. It’s built on the assumption of control. The moment the market smells a leak, the structure begins to groan.

"Liam."

Felix didn't knock. He never knocks when the world is ending. He was holding a physical tablet. His hand was shaking.

"It’s out," Felix said.

"What’s out?"

"The Medusa specs. Not all of them. But enough."

He slid the tablet across the desk.

It was a blog. A high-traffic tech site that thrives on corporate blood. The headline was a neon smear: STERLING’S SECRET SYLLABLE: THE WEAPON BEHIND THE WEALTH.

I scrolled.

It wasn't the whole core. It was a partial schematic. The encryption layer. The part that Isabella said would bridge the Vane and Sterling networks.

But it had been edited.

Someone had stripped away the defensive protocols. They had left only the offensive scripts. It made the Medusa core look like a global hacking tool. A digital virus designed to dismantle banking security.

"The DOJ is going to have a field day with this," Felix whispered. "If they think we’re building a weapon of mass disruption..."

"We aren't."

"The market doesn't care what we’re building. They care what the leak says we’re building."

I looked at the ticker.

Sterling Tech. down 4% in pre-market trading.

The momentum from Isabella’s interview was gone. The "logic" she sold the world was being rewritten as a threat.

"Trace the upload," I said.

"We’re trying. It’s routed through seven different VPNs. Three in Eastern Europe. One in Singapore. It’s a professional job."

"Professional doesn't mean perfect."

I stood up. My shoulder felt stiff. The bandage was dry, but the skin underneath was pulling.

"Where is she?" Felix asked.

"Safe."

"Liam, if she has the drive—"

"She doesn't have the drive. I do."

I touched the encrypted drive in my pocket. It was heavy. It felt like a stone.

"The board meeting is in three hours," Felix said. "Henderson is going to use this. He’s going to say you’re a national security risk."

"Henderson is out. I fired him."

"He’s still a shareholder. He still has friends on that board. Friends who don't want to go to prison for funding a cyber-weapon."

I walked to the window.

The city was waking up. Millions of people. Millions of phones. All of them vulnerable to the code on my desk.

Leverage.

If Arthur Vane leaked this, it’s a suicide move. It destroys his own assets.

If Eleanor leaked it, it’s a test.

But there was a third option.

Risk assessment: Internal.

"Felix. I want the logs for the board’s private server. Every login for the last six hours."

"They have privacy protection, Liam. You signed the bylaws yourself."

"I’m the CEO. Bypass them."

"That’s a breach of—"

"Bypass them."

The conference room was a morgue.

The grey-haired men and women were back. They looked at me with a new kind of fear. Not the fear of losing money. The fear of being hauled away in handcuffs.

I sat at the head of the table. I didn't open my tablet. I just watched them.

"The leak is a fabrication," I said. My voice was clipped. "It’s a partial document, edited to look malicious."

"The Department of Defense just called the lobby," Sarah said. Her voice was thin. "They want a meeting. This afternoon."

"We’ll give them the meeting. We’ll show them the full specs."

"You can't," Henderson said. He was sitting in the back, in a guest chair. He didn't have a vote, but he had an audience. "The full specs are classified under the Vane merger agreement. If you show the DOD, you violate the contract. Arthur will sue for everything."

"Arthur is under federal investigation," I said.

"And you aren't?" Henderson pointed at the screen on the wall. The blog post was still there. "You look like a terrorist, Liam. A high-tech terrorist."

I looked at Sarah. I looked at the man next to her, a retired general named Vance.

Vance was staring at his hands. He knew about structures. He knew about weight.

"General," I said.

He looked up.

"Does this look like a weapon to you?"

"It looks like a skeleton key," Vance said. "And in the wrong hands, a key is just a way to steal."

"I am the hands," I said.

"Are you?" Vance asked. "Because the data was uploaded from an IP address registered to this building."

The room went silent.

The humming of the lights seemed to get louder.

"That's impossible," Felix said from the corner. "The building is on a secure loop."

"A loop that has one exit," Vance said. "The board’s private uplink."

I felt a coldness settle in my stomach.

It wasn't Arthur.

It wasn't Isabella.

It was someone in this room.

I looked at the twelve people.

Sarah. Vance. Miller. Cho.

"I want everyone’s devices," I said.

"Now wait a minute," Miller started.

"I want them on the table. Now."

"You don't have the authority—"

"I have the majority," I barked. "Table. Now."

One by one, they set their phones and tablets on the mahogany.

I pulled out my own device. A master override I’d built three years ago. I’d never had to use it.

I plugged it into the table’s hub.

"What are you doing?" Sarah asked.

"Checking the math," I said.

I ran the search. Medusa_Core_Partial_Edit.docx.

Nothing on Sarah’s phone.

Nothing on Vance’s tablet.

Nothing on Cho’s.

I got to the end of the table.

My screen stayed green. No matches.

"Satisfied?" Henderson sneered.

"No."

I looked at the door.

"Where’s the secretary?" I asked.

"She’s at the front desk," Felix said.

"No. Not her. The minute-taker. The one who was here yesterday."

"She called in sick," Sarah said.

I looked at the chair where the assistant usually sat. Empty.

I stood up and walked to her station. A small desk in the corner of the room.

I opened the drawer.

Empty.

"Liam, what is this?" Vance asked.

I didn't answer. I went to the back of her computer tower.

There was a small, black dongle plugged into the USB port. It had a tiny red light. It was blinking.

It was a hardware keylogger.

"Someone didn't need to login," I said. "They just needed to watch the screen while I was working."

I pulled the dongle.

"Felix. Find out who hired the temp."

"I did," Sarah said. Her voice was barely a whisper.

"Where did the agency come from?"

"It was a referral. From the Vane HR department. As part of the merger integration."

I closed my eyes.

Arthur. He didn't need to break in. He just sent a girl with a notebook and a thumb drive.

But Arthur was in a glass cage. He couldn't have coordinated the leak this morning. He didn't have the access.

The realization hit me.

The leak wasn't meant to destroy the company.

It was meant to pull me away from the safe house.

I pulled out my phone. I dialed the encrypted number.

Ringing.

Ringing.

No answer.

"Isabella," I whispered.

I ran for the door.

"Liam! The DOD is coming!"

I didn't stop. I hit the stairs.

I reached the lobby. My car was waiting.

"New Jersey," I told the driver. "And don't stop for the lights."

The drive took forty minutes. It felt like forty years.

I kept calling.

No answer.

Reputation risk. I’d spent the whole morning worrying about the stock price. I’d spent the whole morning worrying about what the General thought of my code.

Logic.

Isabella said her mother wanted the core.

And the house was a node.

I reached the gates. They were open.

The two guards were on the ground. They weren't dead. I saw their chests moving. Sedated. Professional.

I pulled up to the front door.

It was hanging open.

The cold air was blowing into the hallway.

"Isabella!" I yelled.

I went into the kitchen.

The white marble was empty.

I went to the living room.

Nothing.

I went to the bedroom upstairs.

The bed was made. The windows were shut.

I went back to the kitchen.

There, on the island, was her phone.

The screen was still red. System Overload.

But someone had scratched something into the glass.

I picked it up.

It wasn't a coordinate.

It was a name.

HENDERSON.

I looked at the phone.

Henderson was in the board meeting. I’d just seen him.

But then I remembered his tablet. The one he’d thrown at me.

The one that showed the SEC filing.

I pulled out my own tablet. I pulled up the metadata of the document Henderson had shown me.

The author of the SEC filing wasn't Arthur’s lawyer.

The author was a user named ST_Admin_1.

My own system admin.

Cliffhanger:

My phone buzzed in my hand.

A text from an unknown number.

Check the basement, Liam. I left you a gift.

I went to the basement door. It was heavy oak.

I opened it.

The stairs were dark.

I turned on my flashlight.

There, sitting on the bottom step, was a laptop.

It was open.

The screen showed a live feed of my boardroom.

I saw the twelve people. I saw Felix.

And I saw a man in a black tactical vest standing behind Sarah.

He wasn't from the DOJ.

He was holding a tablet.

And on the tablet was a countdown.

00:59

00:58

I looked at the laptop screen.

Under the video feed, there was a chat window.

One choice, Liam, the message read. The girl or the board. You have fifty seconds to decide which server I delete.

I looked at the timer.

I looked at the empty house.

"Isabella," I whispered.

The timer hit 00:45.