The Silent Dominion

Chapter 3 – Seventy-Two Hours

Union Street – Warehouse 16 – 6:07 A.M.

Ethan’s pulse was steady, but his mind was racing. Seventy-two hours. Three days. That wasn’t enough time to untangle a conspiracy—especially one tied to The Dominion, the most powerful covert organization in the world.

He turned the laptop toward him, scanning the encrypted files Evelyn had pulled. Lines of code flashed across the screen—sensitive documents, blueprints, communication logs. But one file caught his eye. A single word.

“Solstice.”

Ethan frowned. “What the hell is Solstice?”

Evelyn hesitated.

“That’s what I was trying to figure out before you got here,” she admitted. “Whatever it is, The Dominion has poured billions into it over the last five years. Black budget funding. No paper trail. Just encrypted transactions and a countdown clock that ends in three days.”

Ethan’s stomach tightened. Three days until what?

“We need to decrypt these files,” he said.

Evelyn shook her head. “This level of encryption would take weeks to crack, even for me.”

Ethan clenched his jaw. There had to be another way.

Then it hit him.

The Dominion’s operations were global, but every major move they made had one thing in common—a financial trail.

And there was only one person on the planet who could trace it.

Soho, Manhattan – 7:15 A.M.

Leo “Cipher” Marquez was a legend in the cyber world. A former NSA hacker turned rogue, he now operated in the deepest layers of the dark web, selling information to the highest bidder.

Ethan and Evelyn arrived at a nondescript brownstone, the kind of place that blended into the city like a ghost.

Ethan knocked twice. Paused. Then three times.

A slot in the door slid open. A bloodshot eye peered out.

“The hell do you want?”

Ethan smirked. “I thought you’d be happy to see me, Cipher.”

A long pause.

Then the door unlocked.

Inside, Leo’s apartment was a paranoid tech geek’s dream—multiple monitors glowing with lines of code, dismantled circuit boards, and at least five different signal jammers to block surveillance.

Leo, a man in his mid-30s with scruffy brown hair and a five-day beard, leaned back in his chair.

“You got a lot of nerve showing up here, Cross. You know every federal agency is looking for you, right?”

Ethan pulled out a flash drive and tossed it on the desk. “I don’t have time for small talk. I need this decrypted.”

Leo picked up the drive, examining it like it might explode.

“Where’d you get this?”

Evelyn spoke before Ethan could. “That’s classified.”

Leo smirked. “Cute. You do know this kind of thing isn’t free, right?”

Ethan leaned in. “I don’t need free. I need fast.”

Leo studied him for a moment, then sighed. “Fine. Give me six hours.”

Ethan shook his head. “You have two.”

Leo swore under his breath but plugged in the drive.

As the data began decrypting, Ethan turned to Evelyn.

“We need to prepare,” he said. “Because the second The Dominion realizes we’re onto them—”

“They’ll come for us,” she finished.

Ethan nodded grimly. “And they won’t stop until we’re dead.”