The mountain cave was dark, but their minds were sharp and focused. They had bought themselves exactly 72 hours of safety by sending the spare tire—with the tracking chip—tumbling down the mountain. Sol-Ah was focused on the crash site, hunting for bodies that did not exist. This was their only window to strike back.
"She will realize the trick in 72 hours," Eliza (in Julian's body) stated, her voice deep and precise. "She'll send her best team back here to sweep the area. We need to do something in the digital world to make sure she keeps her security far away from this mountain, even after she realizes the trick." Eliza felt a cold, hard logic guiding her words—Julian's logic.
Julian (in Eliza's body) nodded, his small hands already typing rapidly on the operative phone. "She's using a private security network for this hunt—her family's money, not Titan's. If we attack that private network, she won't go to the police; she'll just assume we're attacking the Titan connection she's using." He felt a rush of excitement over the technical challenge, a feeling he knew came from Eliza's operative mind.
The Scapegoat Gambit
Eliza, using Julian's massive corporate memory, saw the opportunity immediately. "We don't just attack her network; we frame a rival." The plan was already fully formed in her mind, cold and complete.
Julian's body now hummed with a cold, financial plan: "We access Julian's secret offshore accounts. We use that money to launch a sudden, massive attack on one of Sol-Ah's corporate partners—a fake attack designed to look exactly like Julian's Uncle is trying to sabotage her."
The goal was simple: Force Sol-Ah to stop hunting the 'bodies' and start defending her family's corporate position from her own ally (the Uncle). This would buy them weeks, not just days. It was a beautiful, terrible plan of pure financial destruction.
The CEO's Digital Fingerprints
Executing the attack was complex. They needed to bypass the security rules that Julian himself had written. Eliza sat at the stone altar, using the Ancestral Interface as a secure computer. She typed with Julian's speed, her mind racing with banking codes and firewall logic. The smell of the hot electronics was intense.
"I need your field data," Eliza instructed Julian. "Every hidden backdoor, every secret server, every fake bank account you ever set up for the Syndicate. I need to make this attack look absolutely convincing, like it came from the inside."
Julian quickly provided the data. Eliza felt a wave of disgust, a flash of her own operative morality, but Julian's corporate ambition quickly overpowered it. The memory swap had given her the ruthlessness needed to use the information, even though she hated what she was doing.
Eliza found the perfect weak spot: a loophole Julian had designed years ago to give the Uncle remote access in an emergency. She used that same backdoor, now leveraging Julian's own code to bypass the Titan security perimeter.
She began moving enormous sums of money—tens of millions—into a temporary holding account, only to immediately redirect it into the rival corporation Sol-Ah was protecting. This was a classic Julian power move: destroying trust by showing that the Uncle had the power to empty the rival's accounts at will.
The entire digital operation took less than forty tense minutes, but it was grueling and stressful. Every keystroke felt like a betrayal of their original moral codes.
The Operative's Misstep
While Eliza was deeply focused on the digital war, Julian (as Eliza) was nervously watching the ancient temple's power output. The complexity of the financial code Eliza was executing was creating digital ripples that were dangerously close to exposing their location.
Julian, trying to divert power away from the Ancestral Interface, misread a subtle gauge. He didn't use Eliza's practiced precision; he applied Julian's brute-force, "fix it with overwhelming power" approach. He slapped the power conduit with Eliza's small hand.
Instead of diverting power, he overloaded a secondary lighting bank. The stone temple was briefly illuminated by a series of harsh, flickering spotlights that lasted only three seconds but were bright enough to be seen for miles. They were totally exposed.
The Link Rebalance
Eliza nearly screamed in frustration, her massive CEO body tensing with rage. "You idiot! That was unnecessary! We just gave Sol-Ah a visual confirmation of movement!"
Julian recoiled, but before he could offer an apology, the sheer emotional intensity of the moment triggered a Link Rebalance. It wasn't a full Memory Swap, but a rapid, forced exchange of feelings.
Eliza felt a crushing wave of Julian's inadequacy—the fear of failing in his smaller, unfamiliar body. Julian felt a burning spike of Eliza's overwhelming responsibility—the sheer terror of having to carry the weight of both their lives. The emotional exchange immediately calmed them down, forcing them to see the error from the other's perspective. They understood the mistake, and the rage disappeared.
The Confirmation Email
The distraction caused by the flicker was dangerous, but the digital attack was already a success.
A short time later, Julian's operative phone, still tuned to Sol-Ah's private network, beeped. It was an intercepted, encrypted message from Sol-Ah to her head of security. The content confirmed their success: "Cancel the mountain sweep. Immediately divert all resources to stabilizing the financial breach. The Uncle has declared war. We will deal with the fugitives later; our family assets are paramount."
The threat to Sol-Ah's personal wealth and corporate stability was a much more compelling target than hunting two bodies in the wilderness. The False Flag Gambit had worked perfectly. They were safe for now.
The Price of Survival
Eliza leaned against the cold altar, physically drained. "We won this round," she whispered, her deep voice rough. "But every time we use one of Julian's moves, I feel less like myself. I feel… cold. Like a perfect machine."
Julian sat beside her, resting his small head against Julian's large leg, seeking the Link's comforting proximity. "And every time I use one of your moves, I feel the fear," he confessed. "I feel the need to hide, to disappear. We're trading our strengths, but we're also trading our burdens."
They had secured their immediate freedom, but the cost was accelerating the inevitable: soon, the fusion of their personalities would be irreversible. They were becoming one powerful, compromised entity.