"Wait, but…" the young man stammered, his eyes were wide with a dawning realization. “But you look different.”Jayden met his gaze, there was a flicker of something unreadable in his own eyes. Different, indeed. He remembered the musty smell of the safe house, the struggling form of the real Abdul Khyber. He remembered the painstaking hours spent studying photographs, meticulously replicating the man’s moustache and mimicking the precise cut of his hair. It was a detail, a small, superficial alteration, but one designed to anchor his disguise in the minds of those who knew Abdul only by reputation or fleeting glimpses. The glowing bracelet, a clever, distracting trinket, was another layer of misdirection, drawing the eye away from any subtle discrepancies.“You will be quiet,” Jayden’s voice was a low, resonant rumble, cutting through the young man’s burgeoning confusion. His eyes, usually warm, now held a cold, unwavering intensity that promised severe repercussions for disobedie

Jayden’s eyebrows shot up almost imperceptibly. Ron Khyber? He hadn't accounted for this? The young man, oblivious to Jayden's surprise, puffed out his chest, his face was radiating an almost comical pride."Standing beside me here," the young man declared, with a voice ringing with self-importance, "is Abdul Khyber, Tariq's cousin! According to him, he has urgent business with Farouq Khyber. He needs immediate access!"There was another pause. The silence stretched, becoming almost palpable, broken only by the steady thrum of the immense door and the faint, almost imperceptible pulse of the young man’s bracelet. Jayden held his breath, his eyes were fixed on the unyielding iron barrier, his mind was racing. Had the hypnotic suggestion been strong enough to convince the security system as well? Or would this be the moment his elaborate disguise unravelled?"Hang on a minute," the synthesized voice responded, the words were echoing slightly in the confined space.Five minutes. It f

Jayden met Farouq's intense stare without flinching. He knew this was the critical juncture, the moment that would define not just how Farouq reacted to this devastating news, but the dangerous confrontation that was rapidly unfolding between them. He maintained his solemn expression, allowing a flicker of genuine distress – a carefully manufactured one – to cross his face.“Farouq, listen to me,” Jayden’s voice was steady, a stark contrast to the escalating tension in the room. “I know this is hard to believe. I wouldn't be here, risking everything, if it wasn't the absolute truth.” He took a deliberate step closer, his eyes were kind of pleading with a manufactured urgency. “Project Revenant… it's compromised. Irreparably so. It’s gone, Farouq. Every last byte, every last detail. It has been erased. Vanished.”Farouq’s jaw tightened. He rubbed his temples, a gesture of a man wrestling with an impossible reality. The initial shock began to give way to a flicker of fear, a primal

Jayden remained impassive, allowing Farouq’s mind to grapple with the terrifying truth. The seeds of doubt had bloomed into full-blown paranoia.“And that’s not all,” Jayden continued, his voice was still steady, almost clinically precise as he delivered each blow. “The Primarch Broadcast has been released. Across all streaming platforms, encrypted messaging networks. It is a whistleblower confession.”Farouq visibly flinched. “A whistleblower?” he choked out, his voice was hoarse. “Who? Who would dare?”“Someone who understood the true, insidious goal of Revenant,” Jayden replied, his gaze was unwavering. “Someone who denounced its goal of mental enslavement. Loyalist factions are crumbling internally as the audio evidence circulates. Ties with affiliate groups are being severed, Farouq. The narrative you built, the one about a benevolent force guiding humanity… it’s collapsing.”Farouq buried his face in his hands, groaning. The image of their vast network of operatives, their metic

“The firewall! Re-route the neural-net protocols through the older subnet!” a young woman with disheveled hair shrieked, her voice was cracking with desperation.“No, no, that’s too slow! We need to isolate the core processing unit! Override the security protocols and purge the infected data streams!” a burly man with thick-rimmed glasses bellowed, his face flushed red with exertion.“It’s too deep! The code is self-replicating! It’s embedding itself in the foundational architecture!” another voice, thin and reedy with fear, wailed from a corner.They were hollering at themselves, trying to deliberate on what to do, it was a cacophony of panicked suggestions and desperate denials. Their voices overlapped, creating a jarring symphony of despair.“Try to establish a backdoor connection! Anything! We need to buy time!”“Time?! We’re out of time! The financial servers are crashing! The entire global network is going dark!”“What about the emergency protocols? The self-destruct sequence f