The Don's Hidden Legacy
The voice was synthesized, layered with a faint, deliberate distortion filter, but the cadence—precise, cold, and utterly unmistakable—hit Noah like a physical blow.
Dr. Iris Vale.
She was supposed to have vanished three years ago during the initial collapse of the Chimera bio-gen labs, presumed dead when Thorne purged his internal R&D division.
"Thorne isn't just building a sovereign financial registry," Iris’s synthesized voice continued, the background static swelling with the rhythmic clicking of a high-speed server farm. "He’s already deployed the first phase. Vesper didn't go rogue by accident, Noah. Thorne designed the AI as a distributed parasite to migrate into international banking