Chapter 1
The midnight rain fell like needles, stabbing at the pavement outside **Blackridge Federal Penitentiary**—a fortress so isolated and brutal that locals called it *The Pit*. No one escaped The Pit. Most didn't survive long enough to try.
Kade Vance sat alone in his Lagos apartment, lights off, listening to the rain beat against the windows. His phone buzzed on the table for the seventh time in ten minutes.
Another news alert.
He didn't need to look at it. He already knew what it said.
**"Elias Vance Executed for the Assassination of Senator Halperin."**
The world believed it.
The news believed it.
The government believed it.
But Kade…
Kade had seen too many lies dressed up as truth to ever believe something so clean.
His brother didn't kill that senator.
His brother didn't assassinate anyone.
And most importantly—
**Elias Vance did NOT die tonight.**
Not with the message Kade found earlier.
He stood, walked to his kitchen counter, and stared at the metallic glint burned into the surface. Not carved with a knife. Not scratched with emotion.
Precisely etched with a laser scalpel.
A message that should have been impossible.
**KADE—
MOM WAS SCYLLA.
THEY WANT THE ARCHIVE.
I'M ALIVE.
FIND ME.
— E.**
Kade ran a finger across the letters.
Cold. Smooth. Fresh.
Someone had been in his apartment.
Someone with access to tools civilians never touched.
And only ONE person would sign with an E like that.
Elias.
His older brother.
The same brother the government claimed to have executed six hours ago.
The lights in the room flickered—just once.
His TV powered on by itself, switching to a grainy surveillance feed of a dim prison hallway.
Blackridge.
Cell block H.
And there—barely visible—was a figure being dragged by two guards.
Head covered.
Hands bound.
But the walk…
The posture…
The stubborn tilt of the chin…
**Elias.**
Kade stepped closer to the TV.
The footage distorted, flickered… then cut to black.
A new message appeared onscreen:
**SUBJECT RELOCATED
OPERATION CITADEL PROCEEDING**
Then the TV shut off.
Complete darkness swallowed the apartment.
Kade didn't breathe for a full ten seconds.
Someone was playing a very dangerous game.
And they wanted him to join.
Then his wrist began to burn.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Kade hissed and shoved up his sleeve.
A small circular scar pulsed faintly beneath the skin—something he always assumed was from childhood.
But now it felt alive.
Moving.
He gritted his teeth as the skin split open like a thin seam, revealing—
A metallic dot.
Smaller than a rice grain.
**A micro-implant.**
He dug it out with shaking fingers. The pain was sharp, but the adrenaline drowned most of it.
The implant clicked.
A holographic projection expanded beside him—blue, crisp, perfect.
A blueprint.
But not of Blackridge Penitentiary.
No.
It was something worse.
**Blackridge's underground extension.
A secret incarceration wing not listed in ANY public architecture plans.*
And at the bottom corner of the hologram—
A code signature.
**EV-27**
Elias Vance.
A timestamp showed the file's creation date:
**13 years ago.
The day their mother died.**
A chill crawled up Kade's spine.
Elias didn't just get caught up in something.
He had been playing a long, hidden war.
And now Kade was in it too.
His phone buzzed again—this time with a private, unknown number.
The message was blunt:
**IF YOU WANT THE TRUTH
GET ARRESTED.
TONIGHT.
— E
Kade closed his eyes.
A normal person would run.
A normal person would hide.
A normal person would break.
But Kade Vance was not normal.
He had spent years building systems that could disappear identities, rewrite digital histories, and expose the rot inside governments. His brother was the only person who understood how dangerous that knowledge made him.
And now, someone wanted that knowledge for themselves.
The world thought Kade was a quiet engineer.
Nobody knew he was the architect behind **Parallax**, the encryption method rumored to be unbreakable—even by military grids.
Nobody except Elias.
Kade took a deep breath.
Elias wasn't asking him to get arrested.
He was telling him the only way to survive was to go *into* Blackridge.
Into the hidden wing.
Into whatever hell the Citadel Division had built.
A storm rumbled outside.
Thunder cracked the sky open.
He whispered to the empty room:
"Alright, Elias.
If you're alive…
I'm coming for you."
He grabbed his backpack, a burner phone, and a drive filled with enough classified data to make sure the authorities would come for him quickly.
Not for a petty crime.
No.
He needed **federal-level charges**.
The kind they never let people walk away from.
He walked out into the rain, pulled his hood over his head, and approached the armored federal bank on Lagos Island—a bank protected by digital firewalls he himself designed for a contractor years ago.
Breaking in would be child's play.
He whispered one last thing before stepping inside:
"Blackridge…
Open your doors."
And with that, Kade Vance committed his first intentional felony.
The path to hell had begun.
---