//Report: Park Taewon.

//New Washington.

//The United States.

//New Axion Industries headquarters.

//Designation: Olympus Tower.

//Resume log.

Pink and green bloomed across the black glass like chemical flowers, a thunderous burst of neon that splattered against the sheer surface, marking the tower with mockery. The rain smeared the colors downward in lazy streaks, a rainbow bleeding down Olympus Tower's once-pristine flank. A wet blotch of green struck the window near me with a slap, cracks spidering outward from the impact.

I blinked, momentarily stunned. My heartbeat surged, not in fear, but in awe.

Sam's drone wasn't alone.

Below, more of them swarmed up from the crowd—clumsy, cobbled-together machines buzzing like angry wasps. They burst one by one in glorious bursts of paint and noise, each impact sending tremors up the structure and cheers rippling through the protesters like wildfire.

The low, guttural howl of a siren echoed through the tower—then again, louder—followed by the hiss of hidden speakers overhead crackling to life. A vocal protocol, female and painfully calm, spoke loudly over the din.

"Attention. Due to escalating unrest outside the tower, all lower levels are now entering limited lockdown protocol. Please remain at your assigned stations until further notice."

"Calican?" I called. "Did you and Tio make it outside?"

There was a painful moment of silence before the familiar sound of the riots echoed over the comms, but it wasn't Sam's signal that carried it this time.

"All good!" Calican called. "The old man and I are out and clear of the protests, we're headed to the rendezvous."

"Confirmed," Reina added. "I've got eyes on them."

"Be sure to get my good side with that thing!" Calican called.

"It's a scope," Reina replied. "No side is your good side."

I bolted back to the stairwell door, heart hammering in rhythm with the shouts and explosions below, and pressed my eye to the glass again. My pulse steadied.

The Red Ties were already in motion. One was speaking urgently into his comms headset, while another reached for a control panel beside the service elevator, tapping in a quick code. In seconds, all six had piled into the elevator, weapons already drawn. The dented silver doors slid shut behind them with a hiss, whisking them down the tower.

Gone, just like that.

The hallway was empty.

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding and shoved the stairwell door open, stepping into the freshly abandoned corridor.

Paint dripped outside. Sirens wailed faintly below.

And I was in.

"So far, so good," I announced. "The suits are scared. They're headed your way, Sam."

"Good!" Sam replied. "They'll find a warm reception down here amongst the crowd!"

Striding out into the open hall, it was hard not to feel incredibly exposed. Camera lenses glinted in the light, recording my every movement, and I just had to pray that whoever was on the other end was too occupied with the protest outside to notice me. The Red Ties were gone, but for how long?

"What am I looking for here, Haneul?" I called.

"Should be a security terminal just past the checkpoint," Haneul replied. "You'll need an open port, but don't disconnect anything to free one up or you might trigger an alert."

"On it," I replied. Approaching the checkpoint, it was hard not to feel cowed in the face of the reinforced polymer plates that blocked the hall. The metal detector gleamed in the cold light, a faint green light blinking intermittently.

"Ah, damn," I hissed. "Haneul, what happens if I trigger the detector? Your little present here isn't exactly made of plastic."

"Tae," Sora sighed, "this isn't an airport. So long as the detector doesn't take up the entire hall, you can just... toss stuff over the barricade."

"Huh," I chirped. I tried to ignore the sudden flush of heat in my cheeks.

"Yeah," Sora sighed. "Huh indeed."

Drawing the black fabric case from my pocket, I reached up, straining on my toes, and slid the thin object through the gap between the top of the polymer barricade and the ceiling. With a quiet thump, I heard it drop through to the other side.

No alarms.

Stepping through the metal detector, the green light blinked one final time as I moved—and mercifully, it stayed green.

"I'm through," I remarked. "No alarms."

"Phenomenal." Haneul gave a wry chuckle.

I stooped, retrieving the black fabric case I'd tossed over, and my fingers moved automatically, unzipping it as I crossed the hall.

The terminal was right where Haneul had claimed it would be, just as Tio had reported in the weeks prior. A portable tower PC sat docked against the checkpoint's back wall, tucked halfheartedly behind a folding desk stacked with visitor logs and half-empty coffee cups. No monitor, just the main unit on wheels, already powered on. A single USB port winked up at me invitingly from the front panel.

"This is it," I murmured. "I'm at the terminal."

"Alright," Haneul's voice came through, low and focused. "Pull out the keyjammer and slot it in. Be quick—tower security refreshes network keys on a fifteen-minute cycle, so once this is in you're on the clock." He paused. "Well, even more on the clock than before."

I slid the sleek silver device from the case. The keyjammer was no bigger than a lighter, but heavier than it looked, with faint lines carved into its brushed-metal surface and a tiny blue LED glowing at its tip. It looked like a device from a bad sci-fi film, but I had to trust that Haneul had handed me a tool more useful than a prop.

Holding my breath, I knelt beside the tower and pushed the jammer into the port.

Click.

The blue light pulsed once. Then again. The device began to pulse at a rhythmic interval, once every few seconds.

"I'm in," Haneul announced. He chuckled. "That's how they say it in the movies, right?"

"Focus, Haneul," Sora warned.

"Hold steady, I'm working on it," Haneul shot back. He gasped. "Oh, wow, Sora, this thing's ancient. They never upgraded from the old Axion security protocol, I remember this from our job in Indonesia. Give me about a minute."

I stood slowly, turning my head and scanning the hall. The elevator was still. The barricade untouched.

One minute.

One eternity later, I heard Haneul sigh contentedly.

"Smile and wave, Taewon-ah, you're on camera." I heard him laugh. "Too bad we didn't choose a more handsome person for this role."

Turning toward the nearest camera lens, I rolled my right hand forward in a smooth motion, making a comical show of folding down each finger until only one in particular was left standing at attention.

"Well-mannered, too," Haneul chuckled. "You're the total package."

"Boys," Sora snapped. "Focus."

"The tower's systems are ours, at least for now," Haneul declared. "I'll pop locked doors and keep your ugly mug off the record as best I can, but when that fifteen minutes is up we're going to run out of options pretty fast."

"Gotcha," I nodded. "Proceeding upward."

Making my way to the elevator at the end of the hall, I thumbed the call button and waited. To my surprise, the doors slid open almost immediately, filling the hall with a delicate chime.

"I have full control," Haneul informed me. "I'm sending this lift up to floor ninety-eight. The top three floors are one giant penthouse—that's where you'll find Stoat."

As I stepped inside, the elevator doors whispered shut behind me with a gentle hiss, and the motion beneath my feet told me we were rising. I leaned against the cold, brass-lined wall, arms crossed, and tried to remind myself that the chill in the air I felt was just the tower's air conditioning unit.

This mission wasn't just about vengeance. It wasn't even about justice, not really. Justice was a word the corporations loved to hollow out and reshape like clay. This was about consequence. About making the people at the top feel something—fear, guilt, doubt, I didn't care what. Anything other than smug invulnerability.

Ezekiel Stoat was part of that, but he was just the rot on the skin. The disease was deeper, embedded in the marrow of this tower. It came in many faces, many roles and accounts and names.

It was these names that we'd unearthed—the death of Andros Oakley had exposed this web of secrets, but it went much deeper than that.

The so-called Oversight Committee, the ones who had made Axion what it was—this sprawling behemoth of cruelty wrapped in progress—were pawns in a larger game. But for who?

Hesiod. Gabriel. Arthur Pierce. Two codenames, one stolen identity and a conspiracy that went deeper than anything I'd ever imagined. How had one anonymous person managed to stand in as a trusted ally of both Axion Industries and SPEAR for so long?

Whoever Gabriel was, it was clear that their plans ran deeper than the destruction of SPEAR or the fall of Axion Industries. The cause we'd held so dear had only been a weapon, used for Gabriel's purposes and then discarded. Now they were doing the same to Axion Industries, letting it rot from within.

But they still didn't know about me.

I would burn the web one strand at a time, eradicating the Oversight Committee, and force Gabriel into the open in the process.

I didn't expect the men and women of the committee to know who their beloved Hesiod really was—most people with that much power didn't bother learning the names of the people beneath them. But even a whisper, even a slip—any sign of who my enemy really was—was a step closer.

My reflection stared back at me in the mirror-polished brass. Wet hair, a thin frame, and those tired eyes that Sora had always said made me look older than I was. I straightened, adjusted my collar.

How had it come to this?

The elevator slowed, and with practiced precision I reached into my waistband and pulled loose the pistol I had stashed there.

"Nearing the top," I muttered.

"You don't have to remind me," Haneul chirped. "I've got eyes on everything, even in the secure wing, but my control stops on floor ninety-eight. Once you're in the penthouse, all I can do is keep the cameras off you."

"How much time do I have?"

"Thirteen minutes and counting," Sora replied. "Move fast, Tae, there's no time for delays."

"It's also damn cold up here," Reina remarked. I could hear the howl of the wind cutting through her comm signal, forcing her to raise her voice almost as much as Sam. "As expected, I've got no visuals on the top three floors—they've got blast shutters closed on every floor of the penthouse."

"Shoulda borrowed one of my spare cloaks," Calican remarked. He sounded out of breath, and I could hear the rush of street traffic over the comms. "They're warm and fashionable!"

"Frankly I'd rather take my chances with the windchill than be caught dead in one of those gaudy things," Reina retorted.

"Suit yourself," Calican sighed. "But I bet they'll grow on you!"

"Please leave me alone."

The elevator doors whispered open, and for a moment I just stood there, pistol at my side, taking in the sight.

It was like stepping into the hollow ribcage of something enormous—sleek, modern, too clean to feel alive. Steel and dark marble stretched around me in sharp angles, every surface catching the faint overhead glow and throwing it back at me in cold fragments. A hallway of long, white walls stretched ahead of me, empty and silent.

At the far end, the space opened into what looked like a living room, though calling it that felt wrong. It was too staged, too perfect; low furniture in muted gray, a patch of shag carpet the color of bone, even the decorative plants looked fake.

Beyond that were the windows—immense, floor-to-ceiling glass panels made up the majority of the far wall. The view would've been incredible, if not for the heavy-duty metal shutters that intercepted my line of sight, draining most of the natural light from the room.

Even so, I could still catch glimpses of the world outside through the gaps. Rain splattered against the glass, but up here it sounded like nothing—in fact, the world outside was silent.

I could hear no shouting. No sirens. No drums or chants or the roar of the crowd. Just the hum of recycled air and my own heartbeat in my ears. Up here, it was like the protests below didn't even exist.

I stepped out of the elevator, my boots landing softly on the marble. My eyes flicked up—there, at the corner where the hallway ceiling met the entryway, a little black glass dome stared back at me.

I raised my free hand in a small, mocking wave. "Haneul?" I murmured.

"Still got you," his voice crackled back in my earpiece, all bright and crisp despite the distance. "Smile and wait for the flash!"

I didn't smile. I raised my pistol back up, hugging the wall as I crept forward. Every step felt like wading through an empty cathedral. This was the belly of the beast—quiet, rich, untouchable. For now.

I glanced back at the slits in the shutters. Rain dripped down in rivulets like the city was trying to seep in, clawing for any way to remind this place what waited below.

I kept moving. Thirteen minutes. No mistakes.

"Alright, time for a little dance," Haneul remarked. "I've got eyes on at least seven Red Ties on this floor."

"Seven?" I replied, trying to keep my voice a panicked whisper. "I don't see any sign of them."

"And if I do my job correctly, you never will," Haneul shot back. "Your goal is the staircase, but it's going to be more complicated than that."

"Of course it is," I whispered.

"Just follow my directions and you'll be fine," Haneul replied. "And by follow, I mean obey like your life depends on it."

"Sir yes sir," I retorted.

"Simon says..." Haneul breathed. "Head to your right, keep a steady pace. Aim for the alcove."

Moving quickly, I tried to keep my footsteps quiet as I padded out into the living room, hugging the right side of the wall. From here, I could see above—both upper penthouse floors looked down into this central living room, balconies of polished steel. To my left was an ornate staircase that seemed to float out of the wall itself, and I could hear faint voices from the top.

I did as Haneul instructed, sliding past bookshelves and glass display cases until I found a gap in the polished white wall. The space looked to have once been a gap for a large piece of furniture, but a few scraps of painter's tape and a scuff mark on the tile floor told me that it had recently been moved.

"Against the wall," Haneul barked, "now!"

I pressed myself into the alcove just as the sound of footsteps became audible, practically ramming my back against the recessed portion of the wall. Somewhere above me, the footsteps stopped, and through the reflection in the tile floor I could see a vague blur of black and red leaning over the railing a floor above to glance down into the living room.

"Sure pissin' down out there now," muttered the Red Tie. I heard him sniff once, shuffling to one side, then the reflection vanished, accompanied by the sound of receding footsteps.

It was only then that I remembered to breathe, and took in a lungful of air as Haneul's next commands filled my ear.

"Keep to that wall, head for the staircase on the opposite side. Don't ascend until I say so."

I slid along the wall, feeling like a rat in a maze, until I'd reached a staircase that mirrored the one I'd passed moments earlier. Up close, I was astonished to see that each tread really was free-standing, just plates of glass burrowed into the wall and held in tension by their own internal structure.

"Four, three, two..." Haneul hissed. "Climb, now!"

I nearly tripped on the first step, catching myself on the second with a pained hiss, but managed to scramble up the rest of the staircase relatively quickly and quietly.

At the top of the stairs, the silent atmosphere of the penthouse felt even thicker. Up here, the second floor wrapped around the living room like a balcony inside some absurd luxury museum. The hallways branched left and right, lined with high, spotless walls and recessed strip lights that cast everything in a too-clean white glow.

Most of the doors stood ajar, and I caught flashes of a life I could scarcely comprehend; a glass-walled study full of old books no one read, their spines straight and uncracked. A display room where rows of antique rifles hung in precise ranks under spotlights, each tagged and catalogued. One room looked like a private lounge—leather chairs so dark they seemed to swallow the shadows, an empty decanter glinting on a low marble bar.

"Hold here!" Haneul's voice snapped in my ear. I froze mid-step. "Red Tie at the end of the hall, in line of sight."

I slipped back, pressing against the doorframe to a small side room. This one felt more like an afterthought, a half-finished reading nook of some kind. Shelves lined two walls, stacked with old model cars and trophies, none of them dusty. A single lamp sat dark on a side table, next to a leather-bound notebook that probably hadn't been touched in months. There was a smell in here, too—like expensive polish trying to cover stale air.

I desperately wanted to investigate, to poke around this mausoleum of an apartment, but we just didn't have the time. If I was going to deviate from the plan, it would need to be for a truly important reason.

"Okay..." Haneul breathed. I could almost see him hunched over his screens, eyes flicking back and forth. "Two more Red Ties coming up behind the first. If you stay here, they'll box you in."

"Options?" I hissed.

"Through the room. Now."

I ducked in without a second thought, boots whispering across the plush carpet. A glass door at the back opened into a small side passage—a shortcut linking this room to the opposite hallway. I eased it open just wide enough to slip through, thanking my lucky stars that the door's hinges were as well-kept and silent as everything else.

The voices of the Red Ties drifted through the open door behind me—casual, bored. I held my breath, counted to five, then stepped out into the other hallway.

"Clear," Haneul confirmed. "Nice work, Tae. You're a natural at this!"

"What did you think I used to do before I left my post?" I retorted. "Corporate infiltration was my specialty."

Even so, my pulse was hammering against my ribs, like it was trying to punch its way out. Before SPEAR, I'd spent over a year working as a desk jockey for Axion Industries in California—digging up secrets, bribing desk clerks, and feeding scraps of intel back home. It had never felt half as dangerous as this.

"Keep moving," Haneul continued. "The staircase to the third floor is to your left, two doors down. You're almost there."

I forced myself forward, sticking to the shadows along the white marble walls. I was hyper-aware of every breath, every footstep, so when the faint squeak of boots on tile echoed down the hall, my chest seized up.

"Han, I've got someone coming," I hissed. "Where's my warning?"

"What?" Haneul exclaimed. "That's not supposed to..." The concern in his voice was palpable, even as his speech quickened. "I've got him on cams now, another Red Tie. He's... not following the patrol routes, I can't tell where he's headed!"

"Shit," I breathed.

No time to think—my eyes snapped to the nearest door, a slab of unmarked white metal that occupied the hall to my right. I twisted the handle and slipped through, inching it shut just as the footsteps drew closer.

Inside, it was pitch black. I pressed my back against the door, fighting to slow my breathing.

"Talk to me," I whispered.

"I—I can't see inside that room," Haneul admitted, his voice low and tight. "No cams, no thermal. It's dead space on every schematic."

"Phenomenal," I sighed. "Just my luck."

I could hear the footsteps again—closer now, they slowed as they grew in volume. Through the narrow crack under the door, I caught a glimpse of a shadow shifting back and forth. The Red Tie was right outside.

"Status?" I murmured.

"Hold... hold..." Haneul's keyboard clicks rattled in my ear. "Alright—he's crossing into the suite across the hall. Door's open. He's searching for something in there. Don't move. If you step out now, he'll clock you for sure."

"Okay," I whispered. "Guess I'm staying put."

I clenched my jaw, peering into the pitch black around me. I couldn't tell what this room was—no windows, no lights, just silence, stale air, and the faint thud of my pulse in my throat.

I was about to speak to Haneul again when the sound of movement made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. A faint shuffling filled the room, the rustle of fabric, and then all at once I heard someone speak.

"Park?" the voice called. It gave a wry chuckle. "Now I know I've gone crazy."

A harsh clicking sound cut through the dark, and a single overhead bulb flickered to life, pale and sterile. I squinted against the sudden glare, blinking until the shapes in the room came into focus.

It wasn't a suite. It wasn't an office. It was a cage.

Bare white walls, no windows. A single bed bolted to the floor, a metal sink in the corner, a few scattered scraps of paper littering a desk that looked welded to the wall.

And there, sitting up on a thin mattress, was General Marissa Mallet.