To be told that his greatest masterpiece of corporate liquidation was nothing more than an irrelevant calculation error was a strike to his sanity. He gripped the edges of his desk, staring up at Zarek with wild, unhinged eyes. "Is that the truth?! Tell me! Is that the absolute truth?!""It is," Zarek replied simply.The absolute, cold certainty in Zarek’s voice was the final match. Vance’s face flushed a deep, violent red, pure, unadulterated fury boiling over his panic. He swept his arm across the desk in a mad rage, sending the shattered crystal, the gold-plated pads, and the useless paperwork flying across the room to smash against the walls."Then who are you?!" Vance roared, his chest heaving aggressively as he glared at the man towering over him. "If you aren't a Blackwood, what family are you from?! Whose bloodline are you carrying?"As the Director screamed the question, a sudden, horrifying realization locked into his brain. The pieces of the puzzle finally slammed toge

Tinny trotted down the structural service hallway, completely unbothered by the loud sirens, though he was getting highly annoyed by the constant, muffled whining coming from the heavy silk camping bag strapped to his shoulders."I'm telling you, Blackwood, this is a highly inefficient logistics strategy!" Valerius Vance screamed from deep inside the tightly bound comforter, his body wriggling like an oversized caterpillar as he tried to shift his weight. "You've been walking in circles for five minutes! Set the bag down so we can finalize a proper executive compromise!""Oh, silence, please!" Tinny groaned, adjusting his grip on the velvet cords while the chains of his handcuffs rattled merrily against Valerius’s ribs. "I'm not walking in circles, jacket boy. I'm looking for a premium place to wait for Zarek.”“Do you know how hard it is to find a comfortable lounge area in a corporate compound when the decorative lighting turns entirely red? It completely ruins the aesthetic."Tinny

He charged into the primary stairwell, tracking the upper levels as he ascended three steps at a time, desperately pushing toward the residential wing.STOMP.STOMP.STOMP.Zarek burst through the heavy fire doors of the thirty-eighth floor, his boots skidding across slick marble tile as he pivoted toward the main residential corridor.But the moment he cleared the threshold, his path was blocked.An entire secondary detachment of the corporate vanguard legion stood waiting in a rigid phalanx. More than twenty heavy enforcers sealed off the narrow exit, their interlocking ballistic shields forming a solid wall of matte-black comp

"If you had run a standard encrypted cross-reference on my biometric signature instead of blindly swallowing whatever desperate broadcast Director Vance pushed to your terminals five minutes ago, you wouldn't be standing here holding toy rifles in a stairwell."He let out another long, slow sigh, the sound echoing hollowly off the concrete walls."Drop your weapons and your tactical gear," Zarek commanded calmly, his eyes narrowing as he adjusted his grip on his sidearm. "Step away from the landing, clear the residential thoroughfare, and I might leave enough of your structural integrity intact to write a report.""Drop our gear?!" Gog laughed, the sound loud, grating, and utterly incredulous through his helmet's external speaker. He turned his head slightly toward