Johny sat alone in his private office with the special phone resting in his hand, staring at its dark screen as though he could force it to ring simply by watching it. The device had never been used for ordinary business. There was only one number stored in it, and that number belonged to the people who had changed his life after he acquired Bolt Group, providing him with resources, connections, and opportunities that had allowed him to move far beyond what his own position could have achieved.He pressed the call button again. Nothing.Johny ended the call and tried again, then a third time. The silence on the other end was beginning to frighten him. He had known for days that Raiden had escaped, and he understood what that meant. The first failure had been tolerated, but the second had already crossed a line, even though Johny knew the situation was not entirely his fault.He had captured Raiden. Whatever happened afterward had taken place inside their facility. Yet Johny knew better

The atmosphere at Aurora was noticeably lighter that morning.For the first time in weeks, there was no urgent meeting about a supplier withdrawing, no unexpected call from a corporate client, and no report of another problem created by the pressure surrounding the hotel. Instead, Mileena stood in Raiden's office with an official letter in her hands and a restrained smile that she had been unable to hide since receiving it.“Mr. Bolt, we received the official notification this morning.”She placed the document on his desk.“Aurora has been selected as the preferred corporate hospitality partner.”Raiden looked down at the letter and read through the details without immediately reacting. The result was significant. The tender had attracted several established hotel groups, and Aurora had entered the process while dealing with public criticism, the loss of corporate accounts, and the disruption surrounding Elena's event. Yet the committee had still chosen Aurora after reviewing the fina

Johny remained in his office long after midnight, staring at the security reports spread across his desk. The documents contained enough information to confirm what he had already suspected: Raiden's escape from the facility had not been a matter of luck.Someone had systematically broken through the facility's security. Across from him, the cybersecurity specialist continued scrolling through the copied logs on his laptop."Whoever accessed these systems understood the architecture," the man said. "This was not a simple credential breach. Several authentication layers were bypassed, and some of the security logs were altered afterward."Johny's expression tightened."Can you identify him?""I cannot give you a name from the logs alone. But the access pattern is consistent. Whoever did this moved through the system in a very specific sequence, as if he already understood what he was looking for."Johny leaned back."Raiden."The specialist looked at him for a moment before nodding. "I

Raiden remained in his room long after the rest of Aurora had settled into its usual evening rhythm, the glow from his monitor illuminating the desk as another layer of the recovered archive unfolded before him. Since discovering the reference to Project Neural Legacy, he had been tracing every surviving fragment he could find, comparing timestamps, server structures, and archived records in an attempt to understand what his mother had been working on and why an organization he had never heard of had spent years searching for the research.Most of the information he found led nowhere.Some records had been damaged beyond recovery, others had been deliberately encrypted, and several archive paths ended abruptly as though someone had removed the corresponding storage. Then he found another reference buried beneath an old directory.PROJECT: NEURAL LEGACYARCHIVE NODE 07PHYSICAL STORAGE REFERENCE: CAR-NEU-07STATUS: OFFLINE STORAGERaiden stared at the screen for several seconds. A phys

Raiden stood in the middle of the road, surrounded on three sides by men who had clearly been prepared for exactly this moment. The sedative had already begun affecting his body, making every movement heavier than it should have been, while the stabilization protocol from Legacy worked to slow the drug's effect and keep his consciousness clear.He studied the vehicles blocking the road, then the men positioned around them. Their formation was too organized to be improvised, and unlike the group inside the warehouse, these men had been waiting specifically for him to break through the first perimeter.Someone had planned this carefully. A vehicle parked farther behind the others suddenly opened. Raiden's eyes narrowed when the man who stepped out became visible beneath the dim streetlights. Johny Randal.For a moment, neither man moved. They had crossed paths through the chaos surrounding Aurora and Bolt Group, but this was different. There were no business meetings, no lawyers, and no