POV: Ethan ColeSeventy-two hours.That was the deadline I'd given Victoria, and I meant every word of it.Maya was in surgery for three hours while doctors were repairing her shattered leg with pins and plates. I was sitting in the waiting room covered in dust and her blood, and Marcus was beside me running scenarios on his laptop while Lily was remotely scrubbing every digital trace of our safe house location.Victoria was mobilizing resources, lawyers, security teams, financial analysts, everyone she controlled. The parking garage footage deletion proved that Daniel had someone with elite hacking capabilities, possibly someone as good as Lily or even better. We were outmatched technologically, outmaneuvered strategically, and running out of time.The system was displaying mission options, but I was dismissing them all. I didn't want incremental progress anymore. I wanted total war.Maya came out of surgery around 4 AM and the doctor said she was stable but heavily sedated."She'll

POV: Maya SantosSusan Chen's request for a meeting was putting us in a delicate position. We were two days into Ethan's seventy-two-hour deadline and we didn't have time for elaborate verification protocols. But Chen could be a genuine defector or she could be Daniel's trap.I convinced Ethan to let me handle the meeting since Chen had been looking for Marcus, not him."My broken leg makes me less threatening," I argued. "More sympathetic. She's more likely to trust me."Ethan hadn't liked it, but he agreed. We arranged to meet at a quiet tea house that Victoria's security was able to monitor. Traditional Chinese place with private rooms and excellent sight lines for surveillance.Chen arrived looking like she hadn't slept in days, and she was checking over her shoulder constantly as she walked in. I was already seated in the private room when she entered. My crutches were propped against the wall where she could see them."I'm Maya Santos," I said. "Marcus's colleague."Chen froze i

POV: Maya SantosI was monitoring from the surveillance van when the hospital explosions began. Not one bomb, three, detonated in sequence across different floors to create maximum chaos and confusion. I could feel Ethan's cold focus through our sync connection as he was carrying Kemper down the service stairs. And damn he was ready to kill anyone who got in his way.Marcus was guiding them through emergency exits using building schematics Lily had hacked into, and his voice was coming through calm and steady on the comms."East stairwell clear. Two more floors to parking level."Victoria's security team was converging on their position, but I was seeing other movements on the security feeds that worried me.Kane's operatives. At least four of them moving through the parking garage."Ethan, you've got hostiles in the garage," I said through our comms. "Four tangos setting up ambush positions."I felt his combat mode fully activate immediately. They burst out of the stairwell into the

POV: Maya SantosThe building was an inferno and we were running out of time. Smoke was filling the third floor where Marcus and I were protecting Kemper, and I could barely breathe through the cloth I'd tied over my face.I felt Ethan's calculation through the connection as he was looking for any tactical advantage from his position on the top floor. He was refusing to surrender, he'd rather die fighting than let Kane steal the system. Victoria's security team was pinned down on the ground floor by Kane's operatives, and gunfire was echoing through the building mixed with the roar of flames. We were losing this fight.My broken leg was screaming with pain from crouching behind concrete pillars, and Marcus was looking pale and terrified beside me while Kemper was coughing violently from smoke inhalation. Then Lily's voice crackled through our earpieces with what sounded like a desperate plan."I've hacked the building's fire suppression system," she said quickly. "I can trigger a cont

POV: Maya SantosThe court hearing was basically corporate warfare of people dressed up in suits and legal briefs instead of guns and explosives. Daniel's lawyers were ruthless, and they were presenting their case with the kind of energy that meant they had been preparing for this for weeks, while we'd been scrambling to survive Kane's attacks.I sat in the gallery watching them systematically destroy us with our own actions. They argued that Victoria and Ethan had engaged in illegal conspiracy to manipulate stock prices, destroy competing businesses, and falsify evidence against legitimate board members, and they had recordings to prove it.The audio played through the courtroom speakers, and Victoria's voice was crystal clear."We need to eliminate the threats by destroying Daniel's support structure before he can mount an effective defense."Out of context, it sounded like criminal conspiracy instead of legitimate business strategy.Then they showed footage of Ethan working as a wai