the executive floor, my heels clicking softly against the polished marble. It was quiet for this time of day—too quiet—and that alone made me pause. Offices flanked the hallway, their glass walls reflecting the soft hum of fluorescent lights. Everything looked normal. Too normal.
And that's when the hunger hit me. Not for food. Not for power. But the hunger to know. To see. To catch the first sign of a move I couldn't yet predict.
Ethan had been meticulous, precise, calculating every step to flush out the enemy. But from what I could see now, the enemy was watching, learning, and waiting. And they were close.
I moved toward the central security hub, where the IT technicians were clustered around a bank of monitors. Screens flickered with lines of activity, access logs, and timestamps.
"Someone tried to get into the activity history system," one of them said quietly, eyes glued to the screen. "Executive floor terminal. Within the last hour."
