The night air was colder than usual.Wind hissed against the glass panels of Vance Tower, carrying with it the low hum of the sleepless city below.
Adrian stood before the wall of monitors in his private office, the faint glow casting harsh shadows across his face.
He'd replayed the anonymous message a hundred times in his head.
"She's lying. The Wards didn't kill him. You did."
Every possibility gnawed at him — sabotage, misdirection, planted guilt.But deep down, a small part of him whispered the one thing he didn't want to believe:
What if it was true?
He turned as the door opened. Lydia entered quietly, holding a folder against her chest.Her expression was tense — not afraid, but alert.
"Sir," she said, "you need to see this."
He gestured for her to continue.
"I intercepted a relay transmission early this morning. It was routed to your personal server, but the sender ID was spoofed."
"From where?"
"Internal node," she said, handing him the file. "Our building."
Adrian frowned, scanning the metadata.IP address… encrypted layers… and then one familiar code signature.
"Department Six," he murmured.That department didn't even exist publicly anymore — it was disbanded years ago, after his father's death.
"What's inside the file?" he asked.
"Audio logs," she said. "But they're fragmented."
He connected the drive to his monitor. Static filled the speakers, followed by faint voices — distorted, overlapping.
Then, through the noise, a few clear words surfaced:
"…not supposed to know…""…clean up Vance senior…""…make it look accidental…"
Adrian's pulse slowed. His father's death, again. Every road led back to it.
Lydia swallowed. "Sir, there's more. Someone accessed our security feed this afternoon. They weren't trying to steal files — they were looking for me."
He turned sharply. "You?"
She nodded, her voice steady. "Whoever's behind this knows I found the relay."
Adrian's eyes narrowed. "Then you're not going home tonight."
"Sir—"
"No arguments," he said, his tone hard. "Use the east elevator. Go down to Sublevel Two — safe room access code is 4189. Stay there until I say otherwise."
Lydia hesitated. "You think this is coming from inside?"
"I know it is."
As soon as she left, Adrian switched his terminal to manual trace mode.Each line of code lit up across the holographic display — digital trails branching out like spiderwebs.
He followed the internal network threads until one looped back into a restricted partition labeled:
[Ops Archive – Closed Node]
He cracked the access layer and froze.
There it was again — the name he'd come to dread.
Project Nadir – Classified Level 1.
And below it, another label he'd never seen before:
Assigned Handler: L. Harris.
His breath caught. "Lydia…?"
Before he could process it, the lights flickered — once, twice — then the entire floor went dark.
The emergency power kicked in a second later, casting the room in dull red glow. The system beeped:
Security breach detected. Network override in progress.
He grabbed his earpiece. "Lydia, report!"
Static.
"Lydia!"
No response.
He pulled open the safe, taking out a small drive — the backup of his father's data.If someone wanted it, they were getting closer.
Meanwhile, down in Sublevel Two, Lydia stood in the dim corridor, her breath visible in the cold air.She'd followed his instructions, but as she approached the safe room, her phone buzzed.
Unknown number:Don't trust him. He's hiding the rest of the recordings.
She froze. "No… that's not possible."
The next message came instantly.
Check Folder N-Delta. You'll see the truth.
Hands trembling, she accessed her backup terminal — and there it was, hidden deep inside the system: N-Delta.
The moment she opened it, her face went pale.
The recordings weren't from Ward Corporation.They were from Vance Holdings' internal board — twelve years ago.And the voice ordering the "containment of Raymond Vance" wasn't a stranger's.
It was Adrian's father.
Upstairs, Adrian's phone vibrated with a single message from an unknown sender:
She knows now.
His blood ran cold.
He looked toward the security feed — and saw movement on Sublevel Two's camera before it cut to black.
Someone else was down there.