Novels by Sally Diandra

A thunderstorm raged across the night sky over New York City. Heavy rain slammed violently against the five-inch-thick bulletproof glass of Matthew Thomas’s penthouse, perched at the peak of Manhattan Spire.Blue lightning cracked across the sky, illuminating the massive room layered in black marble and mahogany wood, radiating the absolute luxury of a trillionaire, along with the reflection of Matthew’s pale face.Yet amid all that grandeur, the owner of the space was dying. Matthew Thomas knelt on a two-million-dollar Persian silk carpet.Thick, dark red blood streamed from his nose and left ear, staining the bespoke white shirt he wore. His eyes glowed with a blinding blue light, reflecting thousands of lines of holographic code from the ARC System floating around him.“Matthew! Stop this madness! What are you trying to upload into the ARC blockchain? Your blood pressure is dropping dangerously!” Veronica Wu’s voice crackled through his earpiece, filled with panic.“It is not just

A few hours later,Sharp midday sunlight pierced through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of Monolith ARC Tower, washing across the marble floor that had finally been cleared of the chaos from the night before.In the center of the spacious room, Caleb Foster sat cross-legged in his ergonomic chair, surrounded by seven holographic screens displaying streams of green and red code. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, and he had just finished his sixth cup of coffee.Across the long glass table, Matthew Thomas sat in an advanced motorized wheelchair. Thick medical bandages still covered both of his eyes, and his legs were wrapped in a thin wool blanket, completely paralyzed as the absolute cost of using the master architect.Yet despite his broken body, the aura of intimidation around him felt even stronger. “Have you found the pattern yet, Caleb?” Matthew asked calmly. Beneath his voice lingered a terrifying analytical sharpness.<

A few days later,The freezing autumn wind cut across the skin at the ARC Aerospace Ground Control Facility, hidden behind the rocky hills of Upstate New York.Under the harsh glow of massive halogen floodlights, rows of satellite dishes as wide as tennis courts tilted toward the dark night sky, maintaining vital connections with Earth’s remaining satellites.Mark Davies crept along the shadows behind a steel cargo container. His breath came in ragged bursts, forming clouds of white vapor in the cold air. Cold sweat dampened his forehead and slid down past his slightly crooked wire-framed glasses.His trembling fingers clutched a black titanium flash drive containing lethal sabotage code that Julian Vance had given him two days earlier.“I just need to plug this into the main transmission server,” Mark muttered to himself, his voice shaking with a mixture of fear and anticipation.“Once ARC’s orbital satellites go down, Julian Vance will definitely give me a director position in the S

Morning broke over New York City, pale sunlight pushing through the lingering fog left by last night’s storm. Out on the streets, wrecked cars and shattered glass still littered the avenues after the waves of mass panic. Yet the heartbeat of the city was slowly returning to normal thanks to the miraculous intervention of the night before. Meanwhile, on the top floor of Lane Corp Tower, a battle far more brutal than the street riots was unfolding.The boardroom had been designed with intimidating luxury. A ten-meter mahogany table split the room in half, surrounded by twelve men in expensive suits representing the elite of global finance.They were major shareholders, CEOs of allied corporations, and power brokers who normally never broke a sweat. But this morning their faces were tense and flushed with anger.At the head of the table stood Viviane Lane. She wore a dark blue executive suit with sharp tailoring that emphasized her commanding aura. Her brown hair was tied neatly behind

The smell of rust, evaporating puddles, and sharp ozone filled the air inside an abandoned underground facility beneath the Staten Island subway system in New York.Sixty meters below the city streets, which were still trembling from the remnants of panic, a concrete chamber that had once been a Cold War bunker now glowed with unnatural purple and green light.The light came from three obsidian pillars, each standing two meters tall. No cables snaked across the floor and no cooling fans hummed. The glow came from pure quantum servers belonging to the Proxima Syndicate, technology that surpassed human computing comprehension by thousands of years.“Damn it! Damn it! How could he possibly do that?!” Julian Vance slammed the metal desk in front of him so hard that it dented. His breathing was ragged, his eyes bloodshot as he stared at the monitor displaying a flat line of financial destruction.“How did he reset sixty seconds of global transactions back to zero? Forty five trillion dolla

An oppressive silence settled over the ARC Tower penthouse, broken only by the roar of the storm outside and the low hum of cooling fans from the quantum supercomputer in the corner of the room. Matthew’s statement had just dropped a mental bomb on the two people standing before him.“You are insane, Matt. That is pure financial suicide!” Viviane slammed both hands onto the glass table. Her eyes locked onto Matthew as her chest rose and fell with restrained emotion. “You want us to shut down SWIFT? Visa? Mastercard? The central banks? All of them?”“It is the only way, Vie,” Matthew replied calmly as he pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and pressed it to the corner of his eye, which was still leaking traces of capillary blood.“They are attacking at the speed of light. Proxima’s algorithm spreads like a virus. If we do not shut down the network now, Earth will not have an economy by morning. Paper money will become firewood.”“So we shut down the entire global banking syste