Alison pushed open the boardroom door. Morning light slanted across the charred conference table—once a battlefield for Richard and Jack's power struggles, now reduced to ruins with lingering smoke. Shareholders wore varied expressions; some stared at the merger agreement copy in her hand, others pored over encrypted emails.
"Ladies and gentlemen." She activated the holographic projection, and a map of the black market data chain spread like a spider's web. "Three years ago, our company's technology was used in cross-border data trafficking. Richard and Jack's revenge game was merely a pawn controlled by the consortium."
Murmurs rippled through the shareholders. A white-haired director slammed his fist on the table: "Evidence? Just a tampered agreement?"
Alison inserted the USB drive into the port. The original logs from the server explosion night played frame by frame—Jack's authorization operations, Richard's data transfers, and encrypted access from the transnational consortium's IP.
"I've submitted the complete evidence chain to regulators." Her traced the red warning lines in the projection. "Starting today, all company technologies will be bound by an ethics agreement. Any data flow to black markets will automatically trigger the board's dissolution mechanism."
Objections mingled with applause. She glanced outside—Sophia was walking through the ruins on crutches, mechanical veins faintly visible under her bandaged arm. In that fire, she'd used her prosthetic limb to forcefully shut down the detonation switch.
After the meeting, Alison found Sophia in the lab's reconstruction zone. New servers were being with biological neuron chips; Sophia's prosthetic limb pulsed with light where it connected to the machine interface.
"Why did you save me?" Alison stared at the mechanical arm. "Your loyalty should've ended three years ago."
Sophia smiled, sliding a stack of encrypted files across the table. "My 'deal' wasn't to help Jack—it was to help you. These are the consortium's infiltration lists for other tech companies. Your first step in rebuilding needs allies."
Alison's pupils contracted. The corporate codes in the files spanned global AI, medical, and energy sectors, each name tagged with timelines of data tampering.
"You've been planning this." she murmured. "Long before Richard and Jack."
Sophia's prosthetic suddenly blared an alarm—a warning email from the consortium popped up: "Cease investigation, or we'll expose your 'rebirth' secret."
Alison deleted the email and turned to activate the lab firewall. The mystery of her rebirth—the medical experiment exploited by Richard and Jack—finally revealed its mastermind.
The next day, regulators raided the consortium headquarters. Alison testified at the hearing, but the room suddenly went dark as she presented the data chain. In the darkness, Richard's voice emerged from hidden speakers:
"You think destroying one consortium frees you? Your rebirth code… is already in global black market databases."
When lights returned, Richard was gone—but multiple senators on the hearing panel had received anonymous emails containing Alison's "illegal rebirth" medical reports. A media storm erupted online, with #ImmortalityExperiment trending instantly.
Alison returned to the company in the downpour, finding Connor waiting at the door. He handed over a memory chip: "Jack gave me this before imprisonment. He said… you need truth, not revenge."
The chip displayed video logs from Jack's late wife: "Darling, I chose to be the bait. But remember—Alison's rebirth isn't a mistake. It's the key to rewriting fate. Find that lab, and you'll understand."
She raced to the underground archives, pulling dusty folders to find "Rebirth Experiment" records. Sophia's name was listed as lead researcher—and the experiment sponsor was…
Her phone —Sophia's urgent voice: "Consortium hackers breached the lab firewall! They're deleting the rebirth code database!"
Alison and Sophia sprinted to the data center. Hackers' quantum attack programs were devouring the servers. Sophia's prosthetic suddenly resonated with the system, her mechanical arm bursting with blue light—she was the "matrix" of the lab's AI defense system.
"Let me access the main network." she,driving the prosthetic into the core interface. Code streams cascaded like star rivers, reversing the hack—but her mechanical heart began overheating.
"Stop!" Alison tried to pull out the interface, but Sophia held her wrist. "This is my penance. Your rebirth secret… is in the code's . Extract it quickly!"
In the final moment before her mechanical heart exploded, Sophia locked the rebirth code's hidden layer. Decrypting it, Alison discovered: her "rebirth" wasn't a medical miracle, but a living experiment by the transnational consortium for immortality technology—and she and Jack's wife were its first test subjects.
As the media storm raged, Alison held a global press conference, exposing the rebirth experiment's truth. She projected the code evidence chain onscreen, announcing the company's into an Ethical Tech Alliance with fully open-sourced technologies.
"We are not commodities or experiments." her voice cut through the cameras. "Technology should serve humanity, not devour it."
As the news feed cut away, she received an encrypted text from regulators: "Consortium core members arrested, but mastermind identity remains unknown."
Alison looked outside, where city neon blurred into blood-red light again. She finally understood—the wager to rewrite the cycle had never truly ended.