The doors slid open with a soft hiss, releasing John into a floor that felt nothing like the rest of The Crest. Floor Thirty Two was normally a high level research division filled with analysts, long glass tables, and thin screens glowing with algorithmic models.Tonight, everything was dark.Every light was off except the faint emergency strips along the walls. They cast a pale glow, enough to see the shapes of inactive monitors and silent desks stretching into the distance like abandoned battlements.John stepped forward slowly, his footsteps echoing with a sharp clarity that made the entire floor feel hollow.He listened.The hum of distant servers. The faint tension in the air. A soft vibration beneath his feet, like the building itself was awake and watching.But not a single human voice.Not yet.He walked deeper into the floor, past row after row of unused workstations. Everything felt staged, arranged, prepared for him alone.Which meant Celine Archer was close.A soft click

*******The corridor swallowed John and Celine the moment they burst through the sealed door. The lights along the ceiling flickered like nervous heartbeats, each pulse faster than the last. The entire floor trembled beneath their feet, warning of something deep and dangerous waking within the walls.Celine sprinted ahead, her voice sharp and urgent. “If Rita forces that final lock, the system will purge everything inside this level. It was Harold’s failsafe. No survivors. No evidence.”John followed close behind, his steps pounding against the steel tiles. His lungs burned, but adrenaline pushed him forward like a storm given legs.“She thinks she is saving me,” he said. “She has no idea what she is triggering.”Another tremor roared through the corridor. A harsh groan echoed from the structure overhead, as if the building itself braced for impact.Celine threw him a quick look. “She loves you too fiercely. That is both her strength and her mistake.”John did not respond. He could no

The upper executive floor felt wrong the moment John stepped off the lift. Not silent. Not empty. Not chaotic. Just wrong. The air was heavy with a quiet tension that clung to the walls like fog. Rita leaned on him as they crossed the polished floor, her steps slow but steady enough to keep moving. Celine remained close behind, every sense sharpened for danger.The doors to John’s private suite opened at his touch. The lights flicked on. Everything looked exactly as he left it.Except for one thing.A porcelain cup sat on his desk.Fresh. Still steaming. Placed in the exact centre of his workspace.Celine froze. “Someone was here minutes ago.”John set Rita carefully on the couch and crossed to the desk. He touched the cup’s rim. Warm. The scent rising from it was sharp and bitter.Black tea.John never drank black tea.He looked around the suite slowly, feeling eyes that were no longer there. Someone had stood in his office. Someone who knew the floor plan. Someone confident enough

Elias Brenner moved through The Crest as if he were part of the architecture. Not a person. A fixture. A quiet, polished detail of the building that no one truly saw. He walked with the calm confidence of someone who had never been questioned in his entire career. His expression never shifted. His pace never changed. Everything about him flowed with predictable smoothness.This made him the perfect place for John to start pulling threads.John watched him from the elevated glass walkway above the operations floor. His posture was stiff. His expression was unreadable. His eyes followed Elias with the focus of a predator studying prey for the first move.Morgan stood beside him, holding a tablet. “This man has no emotional fluctuations. His biometric data has been stable for years. Not a single spike in heart rate. Not a single moment of stress. It is almost unnatural.”Celine leaned her arms on the railing. “People like him are built for infiltration. They leave no trails. They create

The lift doors slid open on Floor Sixteen, and the temperature changed immediately. Unlike the buzzing upper levels, this wing was still, cold and lined with shelves that swallowed sound. The Records Wing always felt like a place where time held its breath, but tonight the silence felt sharper. Thicker. Watchful.Celine stepped out first, scanning the hallway. “She is here. Room Sixteen B. Alone.”John nodded once. He moved forward, Rita and Morgan flanking him while Celine followed at the rear. Their footsteps echoed faintly in the long corridor, each step measured, each movement deliberate.Rita whispered, “What is the plan?”John did not slow down. “We do not approach her directly. We observe her reaction to seeing me. Elias is calm, but Maeve is not. She will show something. A twitch. A hesitation. A mistake.”Morgan chuckled under his breath. “People fall apart when they meet the wrong boss on the wrong night.”Celine smirked. “And tonight is definitely the wrong night.”They rea