The victory of the previous night still hung in the air like a faint, brittle shadow. The core of the Order’s operation had been dismantled, its network fractured. Yet Ethan Cross knew better than to celebrate. In wars of poison, victory was temporary. Every action created a reaction — and reactions came swiftly.Tessa was already at the monitors, scanning for anomalies. Her posture was taut, deliberate, unyielding. Even in moments of calm, her mind ran like a machine, analyzing, predicting, anticipating. Ethan didn’t need reports; he could sense the shift. Something moved beneath the surface. Something subtle. Something lethal.“They’re adapting faster than expected,” Tessa said, voice low, controlled. “The remaining operatives have consolidated into a shadow cell. And they have an insider… someone embedded in your inner security team.”Ethan’s jaw tightened. “An insider,” he echoed. The words were simple, but the weight behind them was absolute. He had eliminated visible threats; no

The city thrummed like a living organism — lights flickering, engines roaring, sirens whispering in the distance. Ethan Cross felt it immediately: the poison was no longer confined to his empire. It had metastasized. The Order had deployed a high-level insider with access not just to Cross Global Holdings, but to critical city infrastructure. Power grids. Traffic control. Communications. They had turned the city itself into a weapon.Tessa’s eyes were fixed on the monitors, scanning data streams from the city’s municipal network. Every rerouted signal, every manipulated sensor, every ghost protocol screamed of deep infiltration. “They’ve embedded someone with administrative clearance over multiple city systems,” she said. “If unchecked, they could collapse essential services, create chaos, and cover the escape of remaining operatives.”Ethan’s jaw tightened. “Then we move beyond the building. This war isn’t just digital anymore. It’s physical, tactical, and strategic. Every move they

The city had quieted after the simultaneous strikes, but Ethan Cross knew better than to trust silence. Silence in war was rarely peace. It was a mask, a bait, a lull before the storm. The Order of the Veil had learned something from their failures — and now they were preparing a new kind of assault. One crafted to manipulate, to lure, to fracture confidence.Tessa’s fingers hovered over the digital feeds, eyes scanning every line of code, every anomaly. “They’re retreating,” she said, voice calm yet precise. “But not entirely. Subtle traces of digital manipulation remain — ghost protocols, delayed signals, false nodes. They’re setting a trap.”Ethan didn’t flinch. He already felt the tension in the city’s infrastructure, the slight misalignment in security logs. The Order was clever, but overconfidence would be their undoing. “Then we enter carefully. Every move anticipated. Every path controlled.”The first clue appeared in a compromised substation. Systems showed inconsistencies —

The first alerts appeared as random flickers across Tessa’s monitors—brief disconnects between data centers and surveillance feeds. She thought it was residue from the Signal Collapse until she noticed the pattern. Every disruption pulsed in rhythm, like a coded heartbeat.“Echo Protocol,” she said quietly. “They’re mirroring real-world movement through digital interference.”Ethan looked up from the tactical map. “Meaning?”“They’re syncing ground agents with cyber breaches. Every time one of their operatives moves, the system shadows them. If we respond to the digital trace, we walk straight into the physical ambush.”Ethan studied the map, tracing the sequence of anomalies. “Then we break the rhythm. Desynchronize the pattern, isolate their link.”He divided the command teams. Half guarded the data hubs under Tessa’s direct control. The rest followed Ethan into the industrial district—old warehouses, conduits, maintenance tunnels that ran beneath the city’s core.Tessa’s voice came

The storm had not stopped since they left the vault.It rolled over the city like a living pulse — thunder rippling through the skyline, lightning reflected in every glass tower. To most, it was just weather. To Ethan, it felt like the world holding its breath.Tessa stood before the holo-table, her eyes scanning the decrypted data stream projected in midair. The symbol — a black spiral enclosed in a silver circle — glowed faintly at the center. No coordinates. No digital footprint. Just silence, as if the system itself feared to speak the name it represented.“I’ve seen this encryption pattern once before,” she said quietly. “It’s recursive. It folds back on itself. Someone designed it to erase every trace of origin the moment it’s accessed.”Ethan leaned against the console, arms crossed. “You’re saying whoever this is—”“—exists above the grid,” she finished. “No ID, no trail, no history. Even the Order doesn’t seem to communicate with them directly.”He studied the spiral. “The Ar