THE FALLEN BILLIONAIRE BUILDING A DEAD ZONE EMPIRE

4

Zhara didn’t answer. She stood frozen in the middle of the cold warehouse, staring at Aiden as if the man before her were a ghost that had just crawled out of hell. And perhaps, for Aiden, that was exactly the truth.

"Ten minutes," Aiden said, walking toward the central terminal of Sovereign. "I’m giving you ten minutes to decide. You can leave this place, go back to your rotting apartment, and remain a copper wire thief until Lewis decides to eliminate you forever. Or..."

Aiden pressed a button. The blue hologram in the center of the room bled into a deep crimson. Rows of real-time transaction data from Crowne Tech, currently being executed by Lewis in the city center, flickered across the display.

"Or you sit in this chair, and we begin erasing Lewis’s existence from the financial world, one cent at a time."

Zhara stepped forward, her eyes locked onto the screen. "You’re insane, Aiden. You’re hacking your own system? If Lewis or his security team detects this backdoor, they’ll trace the signal here in seconds. District 13 will be leveled to the ground."

"That’s the difference between me and them, Zhara," Aiden said, pulling out a heavy iron chair and gesturing for her to sit. "They use the public internet monitored by government satellites. Me? I’m using a low-frequency transmission network that utilizes the sewage pipes beneath this district as antennas. They won’t find us, because on their radar, this place is a black hole."

Zhara hesitated for a moment, then slowly sat down. Her trembling fingers touched the mechanical keyboard in front of her. The moment her skin made contact with the hardware, Zhara’s aura shifted. Her fear vanished, replaced by the sharp instincts of a data predator.

"This... the architecture is different," Zhara whispered. "You’re not using standard binary logic. This is a neural pattern."

"It’s called the Sovereign Code," Aiden stood behind her, his hands resting on the back of her chair. "Lewis has Neural-Wealth—the attention-seeking child that will eventually destroy its father. But here, you hold the reins of the Mother. Sovereign is the original owner of every algorithm Lewis runs."

"What’s the first command?" Zhara turned, her eyes now burning with a calculated thirst for vengeance.

Aiden smiled coldly. "Lewis just won a massive tender to build a data center in the Northern Territory. He feels untouchable right now. I want you to infiltrate his procurement accounts. Don’t take the money. That’s too obvious."

"Then what?"

"Change the hardware specifications," Aiden commanded. "Replace their primary vendor with a shell company I just purchased through Marcus. We will supply them with servers that look luxurious on the outside but secretly transmit every bit of their backup data directly to this warehouse."

Zhara began to type. The clacking of the mechanical keyboard filled the silence of the warehouse like the sound of a machine gun. "You’re going to let him build his palace on a foundation that you own."

"Exactly. Let him build the tallest building in the world, Zhara. Because when the time comes, I only need to press one button to bring it all down."

Amidst their work, Marcus approached with a grave expression. "Sir, a message from the mansion. Gina is asking for your whereabouts. She says there is a dinner banquet tonight with several high-ranking officials, and Lewis will be in attendance."

Aiden glanced at his smartwatch. His time for acting wasn't over yet. He had to return to being the "weak" and "devoted" Aiden in Gina’s eyes.

"Get the car ready, Marcus. We’re heading back to the city center." Aiden stripped off his hoodie, revealing a slightly rumpled white shirt. He donned his expensive blazer once more, as if the mud of District 13 had never touched him.

Aiden looked at Zhara, who was still deeply focused on the screen. "Zhara, you stay here. Marcus has prepared food and a place to rest upstairs. Do not leave this building without an escort."

Zhara stopped typing for a moment. "Aiden."

Aiden paused at the door. "Yes?"

"If you get caught... if Gina or Lewis suspect you over there..." Zhara looked at him with an unreadable gaze. "Do you have a backup plan?"

Aiden gripped the door handle, staring out into the darkness being swallowed by acid fog.

"My backup plan is ensuring that when I die for the second time, I won't be going alone," Aiden replied without looking back.

Aiden stepped out of the warehouse, leaving Zhara silenced within the blue glow of Sovereign.