The air reeked of stale whiskey and regret. Johnny Lance squirmed in discomfort, on an old couch with annoying springs looming against his back and that feeling almost lost in a haze of liquor. He was holding a bottle almost empty of cheap bourbon with one damp label hanging off. In contrast, the image of his daughter, Lily. Her bright, gap-toothed smile was an echo of his, a glaring reminder of the life he had destroyed.He raised the bottle, gazing at the amber liquid inside."How did it come to this?" he murmured, his voice hoarse and shaky. "How did I let them take everything from me?"The area remained quiet. It just never happened.He lay on his back watching the soft light from the solitary bulb overhead dance. His eyelids very lightly closed, if only for a second, and the noises of the city outside receded. Contrastingly, the memory came on—strong, pervasive, and relentless.FlashbackIt was a Wednesday, merely another lengthy day at work. For once, he had departed early, the

Except for the flicker of the laptop screen, the room was dark. Johnny was leaning forward, his bloodshot eyes scanning numbers and graphs on the monitor. His fingers hovered just above the keyboard, which was illuminated by the green pulse of his system threads in his vision. Each thread is connected to a point in the stock market—a company, a price, an opportunity. Each one whispered the same promise: *Money. Power.* “Do it,” the system’s cold voice echoed in his head. Johnny’s finger tapped the enter key. “That’s it?” His voice was hoarse, almost disbelieving. “That’s all I had to do?” The system responded, its tone as unfeeling as ever. “The market will respond accordingly. Greed has shown you the path. Now watch.” Johnny leaned back in his chair, his heart racing. The screen erupted in a flurry of activity—stocks plummeting, others surging. He had shorted a failing company, betting it would collapse, and the system had guaranteed the outcome. The company’s shares tanked

It was ringing phones, clacking keyboards, and low hums of conversations -- the newsroom. In that crowded spot, Mia Torres sat still at her desk with her eyes glued to the glowing monitor, her fingers doing a methodical tapping on the keyboard while stopping for a moment to note something down in her used leather notebook. And to top it off, a cup of cold coffee was lying at the very edge of the desk in an abandoned state.A loud voice sliced through all the clamor. It was Carl, her editor, whose angry steps soon reverberated through the air even before Mia managed to look up. Barrel-chested, with a deeply lined weather-worn face permanently set in a scowl, he was visibly irritated now. "You're still after that Johnny Lance story?"Mia leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. "You mean the story of a guy who in weeks turned from rags to riches, for which there is no clear explanation? Sure, Carl, I am after it."Carl snorted and tossed one of the papers on her desk, with the title read

The newsroom was buzzing with chaos. The news of Johnny Lance’s alleged embezzlement scandal had exploded across every major headline in New Veritas. A harsh glare from on-stage eyebrows. **“Corporate Fraud Scandal Rocks New Veritas” though it meant flashes of screens damning their expressions with documents, financial charts, and photographs of Johnny's face.Mia Torres sat by her desk, scrolling through her breaking news feed via her laptop. Her fellow journalists were huddled together in groups, whispering and speculating among themselves. Meanwhile, Carl - her editor - was directing orders across the room.“Torres!” came the voice, as if it were shot at her instead of directed to everyone else. “Get moving! I want a piece on Lance by tonight. Everybody's talking about it. This is the kind of story that makes careers.”Mia looked up, jaw tight. "What if the story's wrong?" she asked, voice slicing through the buzz of activity.Carl scoffed, walking toward her desk. “Wrong? Are you

Mia Torres sat at her desk, seemingly glued to her computer screen. The newsroom bustled with the sounds of ringing phones and hurried footsteps, but to all intents and purposes, her world was made up of the fragments she had unearthed during her investigation, in the form of a chaotic mess of highlighted notes, financial records, and email transcripts. There was a stop short of typing on her keyboard with her fingers as if they would type something in."Torres!" boomingly roared Carl, from inside his office. "It's deadline. Don't tell me you are still chasing your Johnny Lance conspiracy theory!"Mia groaned and rubbed her temples. She grabbed the stack of papers and walked into Carl's office, slamming it onto his desk.“It’s not a conspiracy theory,” she shot back. “Look at this. The timeline doesn’t add up. The offshore accounts linked to Johnny? They were opened months before Silverstone’s collapse. And these emails? They were sent from an IP address that doesn’t trace back to him