Lucas sat still, motionless, as if the weight of the truth had pressed his very soul into the floor beneath him. His whole life and every memory, every friendship, every struggle had not been random or natural. It had been designed and engineered.A project.The word rang in his head like a curse, echoing in the corners of his mind until it felt too loud to bear. How do you process something like that? How do you move forward when your past, your present, even your emotions may have been pieces of someone else’s game?He was devastated, not just from the shock, but from the deep sense of betrayal that followed. These weren’t just strangers manipulating him from behind the scenes. These were people he trusted as friends and he shared moments with, laughed with, and suffered beside. Had it all been fake? Were they actors, or worse, participants playing their role while he blindly believed in their sincerity?His chest ached. His breathing grew uneven.Lucas stood and walked to the windo

Chapter 74The numbers on the screen looked meaningless, as Lucas tried to clean his face.Twenty-seven dollars and forty two cents. That was what was left in Lucas account after his “withdrawals,” the student portal reflected another number which was almost impossible. A past-due balance for the current semester, with an academic suspension notice appended for non-payment of tuition. It was the perfect trap. No money, no classes. No classes, no degree. No degree, no future.He has been at it for hours. His bank statements scattered across the table. His laptop was a hub of activities; a dozen unanswered email to the financial department, a frozen account with a customer care, pleading message to his faculty advisor. Every road led to a dead end, an automated response, or a calm customer service who had promised to “resolve” the issue.He massaged the space within his eyebrows as he was already getting frustrated. This was no bad luck, the timing was too perfect, the coordination was

Chapter 76Estelle's campaign was a marvel of modern problem-solving, a lot of legal motions and digital countermeasures. On the surface, it was working. The academic suspension was formally under review, and the bank had frozen his compromised accounts, initiating their own investigation. Dr. Vance, the forensic accountant, had confirmed the money trail led to a maze of offshore entities, a fact that seemed to satisfy Estelle's need for an adversary.Yet, for all the forward momentum, a new, dread began to coil itself around Lucas. It lived in the spaces his sister's confident words could not fill, in the silent, unguarded moments when the general's mask slipped.He saw it in the way she moved through their apartment. Her pacing, which had always been a sign of focused energy, now had a frantic, caged quality. At night, long after she thought he was asleep, he would hear the soft, relentless pad of her footsteps in the living room, a nocturnal patrol against an enemy she wouldn't na

Chapter 78A message from Dev arrived on Tuesday evening.*Dev:* Hey, dude, you've been all by yourself. All good? Want to get a cup of coffee? The usual place.Lucas stared at the words. The "usual place" was The Grind, a student-run café with terrible coffee and comfortable, worn-out armchairs. Every instinct, honed by weeks of research screamed at him to refuse. Meeting in person was a risk. It created a data point, a connection that could be observed. What if Sentinel was monitoring Dev? What if this was a trap, some kind of social engineering play to gauge his state of mind? He had a stockpile of excuses ready—a fake paper deadline, a feigned illness.But as he was about to type a response, his fingers froze. He was exhausted. The weight of his secret knowledge was a physical burden, a leaden cloak he wore every waking moment. He was tired of talking to ghosts in encrypted chat rooms, of seeing his friends as potential assets or liabilities in a shadow war. He missed the simple

Chapter 80The message arrived not on a mainstream app, but buried in the logs of an obscure, invite-only developer forum Dev moderated. It was a string of text that looked like an error code, a fragment of a failed compile query which stood out among all other queries. But his eye, trained to see patterns, instantly recognized it as a steganographic tag—a digital whisper meant for him alone. When he decoded it, the payload was minimal: a set of GPS coordinates and a time: 11:30 PM. The location was a decommissioned freight yard on the industrial edge of the city, a place the digital world had forgotten.His first instinct, honed from a lifetime of internet skepticism and a healthy aversion to real-world danger, was to dismiss it as an elaborate prank or worse: a trap. But the sophistication of the delivery method was undeniable. This wasn't some script kiddie showing off; this was professional, using a channel so obscure and secure it was practically a secret handshake. And the onl