Chapter 132Adrian Black stood in front of the full-length mirror in his master bedroom, adjusting the collar of his leather jacket Lena had handed him the next morning. It was immaculate. The scorch marks from the Dead Wastes were gone, the tear in the shoulder had been invisibly mended, and the leather possessed a rich, supple sheen that smelled faintly of lemon oil and lavender."I don't know how she does it," Adrian murmured to his reflection, popping his collar. "I literally fell from the stratosphere, and Lena managed to make this jacket look like it just came off a runway in Milan. The woman is a sorceress."[ SYSTEM DIAGNOSTIC: APPAREL INTEGRITY 100%. ][ MINOR ANOMALY: UNRECOGNIZED MICRO-ACOUSTIC SIGNATURE DETECTED IN COLLAR LINING. ]Adrian glanced at the blue text floating in his peripheral vision. He frowned, brushing a hand over the collar. "Acoustic signature? Probably just static cling from the dry-cleaning chemicals. Ignore it, System."[ COMMAND ACCEPTED. FILTERING

Chapter 134 Adrian didn't crush the turrets. He didn't use gravity to smash them.He raised his hands and snapped his fingers.The gravity fields surrounding the automated turrets instantly pulled apart. The molecular bonds holding the steel, the wires, and the depleted uranium rounds together simply ceased to exist.The dozens of heavily armored turrets dissolved. They turned into a cloud of fine, gray metallic dust that rained softly down onto the concrete floor.The room was dead silent.Adrian stood in the center of the dust, his chest heaving. He walked over to his ruined jacket and picked it up as he carefully examined the collar. There, stitched flawlessly into the lining, was the melted remains of a microscopic emitter.He looked closely at the stitching. It was perfect. And it smelled faintly of lemon oil and lavender.Adrian’s breath hitched. A memory flashed in his mind. The frictionless floor in the foyer. The perfectly timed tea tray during the drone centipede attack

Chapter 136Adrian’s breath hitched.The elderly housekeeper looked terrible. Her pristine black-and-white uniform was torn at the shoulder. A nasty, purple bruise was swelling on her cheekbone, and a trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. She looked frail, terrified, and utterly broken.All of Adrian’s cold deductions, all the logic that had pointed to her being "The Caretaker" just ten minutes ago at the Water Treatment Plant, instantly evaporated. Let's be honest. One doesn't look at an eighty-year-old woman bleeding on the floor and see a mastermind. One sees a victim.His intrinsic, blinding bias kicked in with the force of a freight train."Lena!" Adrian rushed across the room, dropping to his knees beside her. He gently hovered his hands over her, terrified of crushing her fragile bones with his ambient gravity. "Lena, what happened? Who did this to you?"Lena looked up at him, her eyes wide and swimming with tears. She flinched, pressing herself deeper into the c

Chapter 138 Sector 1 - The Cross EstateCornelius Cross did not live in a house. Oh, the structure didn't qualify for a house. It was much more than that. He lived in a fortress of white marble and reinforced glass overlooking the ocean. It was a monument to old money and generational power.Tonight, that monument was about to be renovated.Adrian Black didn't bother with the front gate and he didn't even bother with the intercom.He landed directly in the center of the grand courtyard, the impact of his boots cracking the imported Italian cobblestones.The security response was instantaneous.Klaxons wailed and the floodlights snapped on, pinning Adrian in a blinding crossfire of illumination. Dozens of heavily armed private security contractors poured out of the mansion with their assault rifles raised. These weren't street thugs. These were the remnants of the Cross Vanguard who had stayed loyal to the patriarch after Victoria's exile."Hands in the air!" the captain of the gua

Chapter 140 The flight back to the Black Estate wasn’t really much of a sprint. What was the point of running blindly anyways? Adrian Black had realized his mistake. He had let his emotions blind him, treating the elderly housekeeper like a fragile porcelain doll while she quietly laid landmines in his boots. But the panic was gone now. The lord of the City didn’t panic when he found a rat in his house; he simply called the exterminator. And tonight, he was the exterminator.He touched down on the ruined front porch of the estate, stepping over the shattered oak doors he had destroyed earlier.The house was completely silent. The red emergency lights bathed the foyer in a bloody hue.Adrian didn't rush up the stairs. He walked slowly, his boots makinh loud wet sounds against the frictionless hardwood floor he was now effortlessly countering with microscopic gravity grips on his soles.So, Lena had tried the grease again. He reached the second floor and walked down the East Wing co