**The Rain Had Not Stopped in Forty Hours**
Across the skyline of New Delta, the city wore a wet sheen like a dying promise—lights refracted in puddles, neon bleeding across concrete veins. The storm had settled into the bones of the metropolis, a relentless downpour that blurred the edges of reality. Inside Apex Tower, however, the mood was far from subdued. The air hummed with quiet urgency, the kind that precedes a storm of a different kind—one not measured in rainfall, but in calculated moves and unseen battles.
Lin Feng stood alone in the war room, his silhouette framed against the shifting glow of the holographic projection before him. A rotating globe pulsed with color-coded spheres, each marking infiltration points, newly acquired assets, and zones of escalating hostility. His gaze locked onto one particular node—Stockholm—where an amber light throbbed like a slow, steady heartbeat. The data tag beside it was succinct, yet it carried the weight of an entire strategy:
