Location: Black Tower – Floor 38 (Nursery Wing Perimeter) Time: 8:58 A.M.The floor shuddered, Alarms shrieked, Lucas stood at the edge of a hallway lit in red, behind him, bodies and fire. Before him, Agent Leary and his kill team of ten operatives in armored vests.Lucas had one pistol. And a blade, And no margin for error. “You look tired,” Leary said, spinning Rachel’s bloodstained ID card between his fingers. “Still think you’re walking out of here?”Lucas stared at the card, Every breath tightened in his lungs, Every second, his heart pounded, and with it, the biometric tether inching toward detonation. He knew if he collapsed… His son died, So he smiled, Just a little. “I'm not walking out,” Lucas said.“I’m burning through.”Before Leary could react, Lucas threw the blade, It sank into the neck of the closest soldier, a scream, blood spraying. Then Lucas charged.He dove behind a security desk, rolled beneath gunfire, disarmed the nearest agent with a brutal knee to the throat

Location: Black Tower – 5:18 A.M... The tower was still, Smoke cleared from its hallways. Broken glass reflected the rising sun.But inside Helena’s private chamber, stillness was an illusion, She stood alone, in front of a wall-sized screen. Twelve profiles glowed in front of her.Her senior command. Every executive, strategist, and adviser she'd trusted across five years of rebuilding. One of them… was a mole. Rachel’s last whisper replayed in her head: “Someone close to you… is feeding the Council.”Helena’s eyes burned, And her hunt had begun, In his temporary office on the Tower’s fortified 60th floor, Lucas stared at the file he'd received: OFFER_OF_SEAT_09.docInside: a contract.Encrypted.Signed by the Council’s dead chairman.Offering Lucas a seat among them, conditional upon one thing: “Abandon your public crusade. Pledge your heir to the Council.”The signature at the bottom?Leary, Dated two months ago, Before Lucas had even made his first move. Which meant, They’d expect