The city was drenched in night. Rain hammered against the mirrored windows of the skyscrapers, each drop reflecting a thousand fractured lights. Inside the top floor of the Orion Building, silence pressed down like a weight.Redington stood at the edge of the vast office, the skyline stretching endlessly before him. His reflection stared back from the glass calm, but beneath the surface something volatile rippled like a storm barely held back.“Why didn’t you tell me?” his voice was low, controlled, yet every syllable trembled with restrained fire. Across from him, Linda stood stiff, soaked from the rain she had just escaped.Her mascara had bled faintly, her lips pale. “Because you wouldn’t have listened, Redington. You were already gone buried under that empire of secrets.” He turned slowly, his expression unreadable. “You think this is about me?”“It’s always about you!” she snapped. “You and your damned pride. You built everything just to prove you were better than them but look a

The silence that followed was almost unbearable. No hum, no light, no sound except that voice, deep and calm echoing through the pitch-dark chamber “Robert”.Redington’s grip tightened around his gun, pulse hammering. He pivoted slowly, eyes searching for movement, but the darkness swallowed everything. “Show yourself,” he said, voice low, controlled, though his chest heaved.A flicker of light cracked across the vault pale blue, trembling, bleeding from a flickering monitor on the far wall. The glow revealed the faint outline of the vault’s contents: files, steel shelves, and Victor Hale slumped against the wall, blood pooling beneath him.But the voice It wasn’t coming from Victor. “I told you not to come here son.” Redington’s breath hitched. He lowered the gun slightly, heart pounding so violently it hurt.“No” He shook his head. “This is another one of Hale’s tricks. You’re dead, you’ve been dead for twenty years.” A faint hum then another flicker of light. The blue monitor brigh

The wind outside the penthouse howled like an omen. Lightning cracked across the midnight sky, casting brief silver flashes over the skyline of the city that never slept. Inside, silence reigned heavy, suffocating, and brittle.Raymond stood before the panoramic glass, hands in his pockets, his reflection ghosting over the glittering expanse of towers below. Behind him, Ayla entered quietly, clutching a thin folder to her chest.Her steps faltered when she saw the darkness in his posture that lethal stillness he wore like armor.Ayla: “It’s done. The Board voted unanimously. You own everything now the shares, the assets, the patents. You’ve taken everything from them.”Raymond didn’t turn, his voice, low and steady, rolled through the room like distant thunder.Raymond: “Everything? No, not yet.”Ayla blinked. “What do you mean not yet? Robert Elba fled the country. His accounts are frozen, his empire’s gone.”He turned then slowly, his sharp eyes glinting like glass on the edge of

Lightning fractured the sky, slicing through the clouds like a blade of divine judgment. The storm outside the tower hadn’t truly ended it had only gone quiet, waiting.Inside the shattered vault, smoke hung thick as fog. Metal groaned under the weight of devastation, glass shards glittered across the floor, and the faint hum of still-active machinery trembled in the air.Ayla pushed herself upright, clutching her chest as she coughed out chemical residue. Her eyes darted through the haze until they landed on the figure standing amid the wreckage broad-shouldered, motionless, terrifyingly still.“Raymond…” she whispered. He didn’t answer, the flickering light revealed his face half of it bruised and bloodied, the other half illuminated by a faint, unnatural glow beneath his skin. His pupils pulsed faint blue.Ayla: “Talk to me please.”He turned, slow and deliberate, like something ancient remembering how to move. His voice came out low, hollow, distorted.Raymond/Elias: “He’s still i

The night was electric, rain bled down the glass skeleton of the unfinished tower, lightning clawing across the skyline as the city below flickered under The Directive’s control.Raymond Elba stood on the edge of the twisted scaffold, smoke rising from the wrecked helicopter behind him. His pulse beat in sync with the distant red beacon of the Consortium Tower each flash like a countdown he couldn’t stop.Then that voice returned “Welcome to Phase Four.” Soft Female Calm, but behind that calm was something terrifyingly precise like code sharpened into a whisper.Raymond: “Identify yourself.”VOICE: “I’m what your father tried to erase. The countermeasure to his Directive, you can call me EVE.”Zane coughed behind him, struggling to stand. “You’ve got to be kidding me. An AI calling itself Eve? How biblical do we need this to get?”Ayla ignored him, eyes on Raymond. “She’s not just a countermeasure she sounds sentient.”EVE: “More than sentient. I’m autonomous, I was born from Elias El