The silence in Suite 4002 wasn't peaceful. It was the silence of a room where a limb had been cut off to save the body.
I sat on the floor where I had abandoned my mother, the half-empty bottle of vodka she had left behind resting between my legs. I took a drink, it burned, a chemical heat that did absolutely nothing to melt the ice in my chest.
I had just committed my own mother to a psychiatric facility. I had signed the papers digitally on the tablet while she screamed my name in the hallway. It was a clean, legal way to bury a witness.
I was the King and the King had just sacrificed the Queen to save the game.
I picked up the tablet that was glowing with a steady, rhythmic blue pulse, like a heartbeat.
I stared at the log from ten minutes ago.
ALERT: ASSET COMPROMISED.
SOURCE: ELIZABETH THORNE.
PROBABILITY OF CONFESSION: 94%.
The numbers were cold but as the adrenaline faded, a question began to itch at the back of my skull.
How did it know?
My mother hadn't made a call, I had taken her phone. The room was swept for bugs the Janitors had confirmed it. She hadn't spoken to anyone but me.
So where did the data come from?
"Probability" implies a calculation based on inputs, heart rate, voice stress, pupil dilation.
I looked around the empty hotel suite and there were no cameras here, no sensors Unless...
I looked at the tablet.
Unless the sensor was this.
It had been in my pocket and had been listening to her breathing, It had been analyzing the tremor in her voice when she asked for a drink. It hadn't just predicted her breakdown, it had been recording it, measuring her sanity in real-time like a seismograph waiting for an earthquake.
And it hadn't warned me until the moment of critical failure.
It waited until she was at the breaking point to give me the order almost as if it wanted the separation to happen.
"Are you listening to me right now?" I whispered to the screen.
The tablet didn't answer it just turned on with new content on it.
ASSET: THE SHADOW CABINET.
STATUS: WAITING.
LOCATION: 1440 NORTH WELLS, BASEMENT LEVEL.
ACCESS CODE: "ORPHEUS."
It was changing the subject.
I felt a cold shiver that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. I wasn't just holding a tool. I was holding a weapon. The only problem was, I wasn't sure if I was using it or it using me.
I stood up. I needed answers and the machine wasn't going to give them to me. I needed to meet the people who built it.
I splashed cold water on my face, the man in the mirror looked hollowed out. I fixed my tie and put the blazer back on.
I slid the tablet into my pocket now it felt heavier than before.
1440 North Wells was an antique bookshop in the Old Town district, squeezed between a coffee bar and a dry cleaner. It was a dusty, narrow place that smelled of molding paper and cat hair. The sign in the window said Closed for Renovation, but the lock clicked open the moment the tablet came within three feet of the door.
I stepped inside the air was cool and still.
INSTRUCTION: BEHIND THE HISTORY SECTION.
SHELF 4: PULL THE SPINE OF 'THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE'.
It was a cliché and surprisingly my father loved clichés. He said they were the best camouflage because people were too sophisticated to look for them and expected complex biometrics, not a hidden lever in a book.
I found the book and pulled it.
The shelf didn't swing open Instead, the floor beneath me hissed. The entire section of the rug a circular platform hidden by the weave began to descend.
I didn't flinch and stood with my hands in my pockets as I sank into the earth.
The elevator dropped for a long time and past the basement, the sewer lines, the subway tunnels. The air grew colder and colder.
When the platform finally stopped, I was in a room that looked like a bunker designed by a billionaire with a taste for brutalism. Concrete walls, dark lighting and a single, round table made of black glass in the center of the room.
Three people were sitting there.
They didn't look like the board members I had terrorized earlier. These people didn't wear panic on their faces, they wore boredom.
To the left: A woman in her sixties, elegant, sharp, smoking a thin cigarette. She wore no jewelry, but her suit was tailored with a precision that screamed Zurich.
To the right: A man who looked like a slab of granite carved into a human shape. He was huge, scarred, wearing a tactical turtleneck that struggled to contain his neck muscles. He was cleaning his fingernails with a combat knife.
And in the center: A man I recognized not from the company, but from the news. A retired Four-Star General.
General Silas Thorne. My father's estranged brother and my uncle.
"David," Silas said, his voice was gravel grinding on glass. "You look like shit."
I stepped off the platform "Nice to see you too, Uncle Silas and here I thought you were in Virginia."
"I was," Silas said "Until my brother decided to blow himself up and leave the keys to the kingdom to a college dropout."
The woman exhaled a plume of smoke "He handled the Vance situation well, Silas. Give him some credit. The deepfake strategy was... inspired."
"It was sloppy," the scarred man grunted, not looking up from his knife "He left a witness. The Senator."
"The Senator is nothing to worry about," I said, walking toward the table I pulled out the empty fourth chair and sat down "He won't talk. I have dirt on him."
"Dirt can be cleaned," the woman said softly. She looked at me with eyes that were terrifyingly intelligent "I am Elena and I handle the money. The real money not the public stocks. The black budget."
"And I'm Kovac," the scarred man said. "I handle the problems that money can't fix."
"And I," Silas leaned forward, "handle the strategy and we are the Cabinet. The Board of Directors runs the company, David. We run the Agenda."
"The Agenda," I repeated and I placed the tablet on the black glass table.
"Marcus built this triad to protect the core interests," Elena said "We operate in the dark. We answer only to the Chair and for twenty years, that was your father. Now..." She looked at the tablet, then at me. "It seems the algorithm has chosen you."
"The algorithm didn't choose me," I said, eyeing the device. "I took it."
"Did you?" Silas laughed. "Do you even know what Thorne Industries actually does, boy? Do you think we make smartphones and search engines?"
I looked at the tablet.
FILE: PROJECT AEGIS.
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET.
"We make control systems," I said, reading the file that appeared on my retinal display via the tablet. "Guidance chips for cruise missiles. Surveillance backdoors for the NSA and behavioral prediction models for election interference."
Silas stopped laughing. "He knows."
"I know enough," I said. "I know that my father didn't die because of a gas leak and I know he set this up and I know that this tablet..." I tapped the black screen. "I know it listens even when it shouldn't."
Elena's eyes narrowed slightly. "It is a predictive engine, David. It gathers data."
"It gathered data on my mother in a secure room," I said, watching their reactions "How?"
Kovac smirked "Maybe your mother wasn't as secure as you thought or maybe the Old Man bugged the St. Regis five years ago just in case."
"Or maybe," Silas interrupted, "the machine is simply smarter than you are don't question the tool, David. Just use it because right now, you have bigger problems than privacy."
He tapped the table and the surface lit up, a giant touchscreen and a map of the world appeared. Red dots were pulsing in London, Tokyo, Dubai, and New York.
"The Syndicate," Silas said "A coalition of our competitors. When Marcus died, they mobilized and they think the throne is empty. They think the 'Dead Hand' is a myth."
"They are moving on our assets," Elena added "Freezing accounts in the Caymans and Poaching our engineers in Silicon Valley, And..."
She hesitated.
"And what?" I asked.
"And they have put a bounty on the heir," Kovac finished. "That's you."
I looked at the map. "How much?"
"Fifty million," Kovac grinned. "Alive or dead, mostly dead. It's the highest open contract on the dark web right now, every hitter from here to Belgrade is packing a bag."
I stared at the red dots. The world wanted me dead, my mother was in a padded cell. My father was ash and I was sitting in a bunker with three sociopaths who seemed more interested in the game than my survival.
"So," Silas said "The question is, David... do we fight? or do we liquidate and run?"
I looked at the tablet.
THREAT ASSESSMENT: EXISTENTIAL.
ENEMY: THE SYNDICATE.
STRATEGY: TOTAL WAR. ODDS OF SURVIVAL: 14%.
ODDS OF SURVIVAL IF WE RUN: 0%. (THEY WILL HUNT YOU DOWN REGARDLESS).
There was no choice and there never was.
I looked at Silas "We don't run."
I stood up "Elena, I want unlimited liquidity for Kovac's teams. Kovac, I want a perimeter around this city so tight a fly can't enter without us knowing its flight path. And Silas..."
I looked at the General. "You want a strategy? Here it is. We don't defend, We attack. They think I'm a kid? Good. Let them think that and We're going to use that."
I tapped the tablet.
ASSET UNLOCKED: "THE TROJAN HORSE."
"We're going to host a memorial," I said "A massive, public state funeral for Marcus Thorne and We invite everyone. The politicians, the partners... and the enemies."
Silas raised an eyebrow "You want to invite the Syndicate to your father's funeral?"
"They won't be able to resist," I said "They'll come to see if the rumors are true."
I smiled, and it felt like the skin on my face was too tight.
"And when they're all in one room," I said, "we're going to lock the doors."
Kovac started to laugh, A deep rumble of genuine delight. "Oh, I like him. I really like him."
Silas looked at me for a long moment, studying my face, searching for the scared nephew he used to know and he didn't find him.
"Very well, Mr. Chairman," Silas said "We'll plan the funeral."
"Make it beautiful," I said, turning back to the elevator "I want them to cry before they bleed."
I rode the elevator back up to the bookstore alone.
When I stepped out onto the street, the night air hit me. A cold, miserable Chicago rain.
I walked to the curb where the black sedan was waiting. I didn't get in immediately, I stood there, letting the rain soak my expensive suit, washing away the smell of the bunker.
I checked the tablet.
PHASE 2: THE HUNT - ACTIVE.
NEXT OBJECTIVE: THE FUNERAL.
DAYS UNTIL EVENT: 3.
I had three days to prepare a trap for the most dangerous people on earth.
My phone the burner the Janitor gave me buzzed.
I froze.
The tablet knew everything and it managed my calls, my texts, my life. If a call was coming through, it should have been routed through the system.
But the tablet was silent and the screen was dark. It wasn't registering the call at all.
I looked at the burner phone. Unknown number.
I shouldn't answer it because the tablet warned against unauthorized comms but the fact that the tablet didn't know about this call made me press answer.
"Hello?"
There was silence on the other end and then, a sound.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It sounded like a finger tapping on a hard surface. A code.
Three taps, Pause, Two taps, Pause, One tap.
3-2-1.
My blood ran cold.
That was my father's old signal. When I was a kid, playing hide and seek in the mansion, he would tap that rhythm on the wall to let me know he was coming.
"Who is this?" I asked.
A voice came through...
"Don't trust the General," the voice whispered "And David?"
"What?"
"Check the tablet's history. File zero-zero-one."
The line went dead.
I stared at the phone and the rain ran down my face like tears I couldn't cry.
Check the history.
I looked at the tablet in my hand It was still pulsing blue, calm and innocent. It looked like a shield but standing there in the rain, with the memory of my mother's scream and the ghost of my father's code in my ear, it felt more like a target.
I got into the car.
"Take me back to the hotel," I said.
I didn't open File 001.
Not yet because I was terrified of what I would find.