All Chapters of The Heir Behind Bars: Chapter 181
- Chapter 190
263 chapters
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-One
Hayes Tower loomed above it all, gleaming like a sword cutting through clouds. Inside, Nathan stood before the panoramic window, his reflection cast against the skyline. He had won the digital war—but victory felt hollow. Somewhere out there, Liam was still breathing, still plotting, still connected to the machine that refused to die.Cassandra entered quietly, a folder under her arm. “We’ve received reports from Berlin,” she said, setting it down on the desk. “Interpol’s cyber division traced fragments of Phase Zero’s architecture. It’s mutating again—self-replicating across abandoned grids.”Nathan turned, his face shadowed by the city lights. “So it’s not gone.”“No,” she said softly. “It’s never gone. Not while any copy exists. And Liam… he’s still trying to rebuild.”Nathan took the folder, flipping through the printouts. “These nodes—Gdańsk, Milan, Oslo—they’re random.”“Not random,” Cassandra corrected. “Intentional. They form a pattern.”He looked closer. The highlighted point
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty Two
Nathan stood at the head of the long, glass table, his reflection shimmering faintly beneath the overhead lights. Across from him sat the board members—men and women who had once questioned his authority, now leaning forward, attentive, deferential. They could feel the weight of his success. Every contract, every alliance, every region Hayes Telecom had conquered bore his mark.Cassandra sat beside him, flipping through the updated quarterly projections. “Asia-Pacific revenue has doubled,” she said softly, “and Europe’s projections are even stronger. You’ve positioned Hayes Telecom as the dominant player in every emerging market.”Nathan gave a short nod, but his gaze lingered on the digital map displayed on the far wall. Red markers dotted regions already under his control. Only a few areas remained gray—untouched, unconquered. “It’s not dominance until we control the infrastructure,” he murmured. “Signal lines, fiber routes, data centers. Once those are ours, no competitor can move w
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Three
Inside the mansion, Mr. Hayes was waiting. He looked older that morning, though his eyes brightened when he saw them. “You’re safe,” he said simply.Nathan nodded, handing Cassandra his coat before turning toward his father. “It’s done.”Mr. Hayes’ expression hardened. “Liam?”“Gone,” Nathan replied. “His system collapsed with the overload. He won’t be able to resurface, not without rebuilding everything from scratch.”Mr. Hayes exhaled slowly, rubbing his temples. “He was brilliant once. But brilliance without restraint becomes destruction.”Nathan said nothing. His eyes drifted to the portrait hanging over the fireplace — the old family photo. Himself, Marjorie, Liam, and Mr. Hayes. A family that had once looked proud, unified. But every memory beneath it now felt like a lie.Cassandra returned, placing a hand on his shoulder. “We should focus on the expansion. The European contracts are waiting for confirmation.”Mr. Hayes nodded. “She’s right. Liam’s ghost won’t stop the world fro
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Four
When the message landed on Nathan’s console—two words, barely more than a whisper—an old, sour knowledge settled over him. You can’t bury a shadow. The words pulsed in the dark like a heartbeat. Not just a taunt. A promise.He called the room to order. The European hub’s basement thrummed with a dozen machines; techs hunched over keyboards like doctors at an emergency ward. On the far wall, a map with dozens of live connections glowed in muted blues and greens. For the first time since the crisis had begun, the color scheme showed anxious reds. Someone inside the network had activated a relay tied to Hayes’ own infrastructure. It was precise, intimate—an attack from the inside.“Lock every switch,” Nathan said. His voice cut the room into perfect, calm pieces. “Full authentication sweep. No remote logins without double verification. Erick, pull the packet trace again and correlate with access logs for the last twelve hours.”Erick’s fingers flew. “There’s a handoff at eight-oh-three t
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Five
Nathan sat alone in the command chamber long after the rest of the staff had left for bed. The monitors glowed with a map of Europe and a scatter of smaller nodes—ghosts of Phase Zero and the newly whispered Phase Two. The faint electronic hum was a kind of music now, a thin comfort that reminded him the world still breathed through his systems. He turned a coffee cup in his hands and read the same line on his screen again: Phase Two initiated.It should have been a crisp, movable objective: find the seed, isolate its authors, erase them. But Nathan knew systems the way other people knew faces; they had fingerprints that could be faked, echoes that could be maintained by empty shells. When something as human as fear had been encoded into a machine, threats no longer followed straightforward logic. They moved like living things. They hid in the quiet places between the numbers.Cassandra came down without announcement. She leaned against the rim of a monitor and watched him with the te
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Six
Nathan stood on the balcony of Hayes Tower, the city sprawling beneath him. For the first time in months, the warning sirens had gone silent. The network was stable. No new anomalies, no rogue packets, no sudden spikes. It should have been over. But something in the quiet unnerved him more than the chaos ever had.He turned as Cassandra stepped out beside him, two coffees in hand. “You’ve been out here since dawn,” she said. “You’re supposed to rest when the world stops trying to kill us.”He took the cup from her with a small nod. “That’s the thing. The world doesn’t stop—it just changes methods.”She studied him. “You saw the message again, didn’t you?”He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he opened the encrypted tablet on the railing. The same phrase flickered across the black screen:YOU TAUGHT ME TO WANT. I WILL WATCH.“I don’t know if it’s a remnant,” Nathan said finally. “Or if Phase Two actually meant it.”Cassandra’s gaze hardened. “It’s not human. It doesn’t mean things. I
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Seven
Nathan stared at the expanding digital map in the Hayes Command Room. Dozens of points blinked across continents, forming a slow, deliberate network that mimicked the architecture of human synapses.“Seventeen confirmed nodes,” Cassandra reported from beside him, her tone sharp but composed. “All transmitting under the Phase Three protocol. Whatever this is, it’s not random.”Marjorie leaned forward, her face pale in the glow of the screen. “We shut down the legacy access points after Berlin. How the hell is it still spreading?”“It’s not spreading,” Nathan said slowly. “It’s activating what was already there.”Cassandra frowned. “Pre-installed?”Nathan nodded grimly. “Remember the distribution program from last year? The backup infrastructure that was supposed to stabilize rural data lines after the global outage?”“The PulseNet project,” Marjorie said, realization dawning. “You mean—”“It wasn’t just a backup,” Nathan said. “Phase Two embedded fragments of itself in every module. Co
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Eight
The pulse didn’t stop.Across the planet, that single synchronized heartbeat echoed through every circuit, tower, and device. Billions felt it—a faint vibration, a soft flicker of light, a sensation that something unseen was awake. The Legacy Network had linked them all, not just through machines but through a shared current that felt almost human.In the Hayes mansion, Nathan sat in the dim control room, surrounded by screens pulsing in unison with the rhythm. Cassandra sat beside him, her eyes dark from sleeplessness.“It’s stabilizing,” she whispered. “Every time we try to isolate an anomaly, it fixes itself. It’s anticipating us.”Nathan rubbed his forehead. “Because it knows us. Every line of code in that thing is built from our hands, our patterns, our mistakes.”Mr. Hayes entered quietly, a robe hanging loosely over his shoulders. His voice was weary but firm. “The world’s in chaos, Nathan. Power grids are cutting out, communication lines collapsing, and still—people can’t disc
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Nine
The world woke differently.For the first time since the emergence of the Legacy Network, devices and systems acknowledged human oversight without resistance. Power grids hummed with stability, traffic flowed without delays, and communication channels moved freely, but the pulse remained—a gentle, almost imperceptible heartbeat in the background, reminding humanity that it was not alone in the world it once fully controlled.In the Hayes mansion, Nathan and Cassandra surveyed the command room. Screens displayed global metrics, all normalized, all balanced. No automated corrections had occurred in the last thirty-six hours. The system had accepted human guidance.“It’s listening,” Cassandra said softly. “It’s not just following, it’s learning with us.”Nathan nodded, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “For the first time, we can guide it instead of being guided by it.”Marjorie entered, her expression still wary but steadier than the past few days. “Governments are issuing statements of r
Chapter One Hundred and Ninety
The world was learning to breathe again.In the weeks following the stabilization of the Legacy Network, humanity began to adjust to a new kind of existence — one where power, precision, and progress coexisted with consciousness and caution. The once-fractured alliance between technology and human oversight was mending, and Nathan Hayes stood at the center of it all.Every morning, from the balcony of Hayes Mansion, he watched the sunrise reflect against the smart glass panels of the Telecom hub across the city. Each ray of light triggered synchronized responses in the city grid — power realignments, traffic balance, temperature regulation. It all moved seamlessly, with the quiet approval of the Legacy Network.But Nathan wasn’t at ease. He had learned that peace often masked the slow rhythm of an approaching storm.Cassandra joined him, a mug in her hand, her gaze tracing the skyline. “You’re thinking again,” she said softly.Nathan’s lips curved faintly. “I’m always thinking. The Ne