[...Julian Vance.]
The name flashed bright red across Elara's retina, sending a shock wave that froze the blood in her veins. Julian Vance. The sole heir to Vance Industries, the largest technology conglomerate controlling the digital infrastructure network across half the metropolitan world. The man who, in her previous life, had been her father's sworn enemy—and someone who had never had anything to do with her this early.
How could that man's technology detect the Absolute System? The System operated purely through underground fiber-optic cables and Metropolis's local server infrastructure. There were no space transmissions, no orbital satellite relays—just a closed terrestrial network that conventional radar should have been unable to track.
[Warning: Level 3 firewall breached. The attacker is attempting to download the Host's optical coordinates.]
"Block the connection. Cut off all external data flow now," Elara ordered silently, her breath catching slightly.
[Disconnecting from external network... Successful. Entering stealth mode.]
The red warning screen slowly faded, restoring Elara's view of the boardroom. A bead of cold sweat the size of a corn kernel slid down her temple, but her expression quickly settled back into an impenetrable marble mask. She drew a deep breath. Julian Vance's threat would have to wait. Right now, there was a pest in front of her that needed to be exterminated.
"Elara? You look pale. Is there something wrong with the document?" William's deep voice broke the silence as he stared at his daughter, brow furrowed.
Adrian smiled with false sympathy. "Maybe Elara's just tired, sir. This is her first meeting. The document is pretty complicated for a beginner to understand."
Elara raised her face and stared straight into Adrian's eyes. She lifted the fifty-page document and threw it onto the center of the table, making it slam down with a loud crack. The entire board of directors gasped.
"Complicated? No, Adrian. It's not complicated at all," Elara said coldly, her voice echoing through the tense air. She turned toward her father. "Dad, open page 42. The third paragraph from the bottom. The legal language was deliberately made convoluted, but the point is very simple."
William frowned and flipped through the document in front of him, followed by the other directors.
"Clause 14, Section B," Elara announced, making sure every syllable was heard clearly. "It states that if the asset value in the southern-sector development project fluctuates by more than five percent, full voting rights for thirty percent of our company's shares will automatically be transferred to the guarantor. And guess who the guarantor listed on a separate page is—oh, what a coincidence—that page just happens to be missing from this draft?"
The room fell completely silent. Adrian's face turned pale, his smile vanishing in an instant.
"That guarantor is Vanguard Holdings," Elara continued mercilessly. "A fictional shell company founded just last month and legally registered directly under your personal name, Adrian."
"That's slander!" Adrian shot to his feet and slammed his hands on the table. They trembled slightly. "Mr. William, this is nonsense! Elara must have misread—"
"I verified the company's registration data through the city's legal department this morning," Elara cut in calmly, crossing her arms. Of course, that was a lie. The System had hacked into and cross-referenced the city's database in a matter of milliseconds. "You tried to frame my father into legally surrendering one-third control of this company. This isn't an investment proposal. It's an attempted corporate robbery."
William stared intently at the document, his jaw hardening until the veins in his neck stood out. As a veteran businessman, he needed little time to dissect the filthy legal language once its loophole had been exposed. The middle-aged man slowly raised his face and fixed Adrian with a murderous glare cold enough to freeze an ocean.
"Get out," William hissed softly, but his voice carried absolute pressure.
"Sir, listen to me. There must have been some misunderstanding with the legal team—"
"I said GET OUT, Adrian!" William roared, his voice booming against the walls of the boardroom. "Before I call security to drag you out and report this to the prosecutor's office on fraud charges!"
Adrian swallowed hard. He looked at Elara with naked hatred, no longer hiding his fangs. The perfect plan he had spent months arranging had been shattered into pieces within five minutes by the woman he had always considered naive. With rough movements, he snatched up his jacket and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
The meeting was adjourned ten minutes later. William canceled the entire project and ordered a massive internal audit. Her father patted Elara's shoulder proudly before hurrying back to his office.
But Elara had no time to celebrate her first victory. Her heart began pounding again as she remembered the invisible threat waiting on the upper floor.
Julian Vance was in the VIP penthouse of this building.
Elara strode toward the private executive elevator. She swiped her access card and pressed the button for the top floor. As the elevator ascended, she closed her eyes and summoned the System in her mind.
"System, what are the odds Julian Vance learned my identity from that hack?"
[Visual identification probability: 0%. However, the signal bounced locally from the forty-fifth floor. The enemy knows this anomalous device is inside the same building as him.]
Ding!
The elevator doors opened, revealing a luxurious hallway carpeted in dark red that led to the double doors of the VIP Suite. Elara stepped out. She couldn't run. If Julian Vance realized that an unknown quantum technology was operating freely in this city, he would never stop hunting her. Rather than become prey, Elara preferred to meet him face-to-face and take control of the game.
Two large guards in black suits blocked her path in front of the doors.
"Sorry, miss. This area is restricted," one of them said flatly.
"Tell your boss," Elara said calmly, staring straight at the micro security camera lens in the upper corner of the door, "that the network anomaly that just forcibly severed his connection unilaterally is waiting outside."
There was a brief silence. The guard touched the communications device at his ear, gave one stiff nod, and opened the double doors wide.
Elara stepped into an extraordinarily spacious room. Its walls were dominated by panoramic glass showcasing every corner of Metropolis from above. In the center of the room, seated on a black leather sofa with a transparent computing device resting on his lap, was Julian Vance.
The man wore a pitch-black shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His face was sharply angled and aristocratic, radiating an aura of absolute dominance. His ice-cold gray eyes lifted from the screen and scanned Elara from head to toe with terrifying interest.
"Elara Sterling." Julian's voice was deep and low, vibrating through the air around him. He slowly set his device aside. "William Sterling's only daughter. It's quite surprising to learn that the heir to a conventional real estate company possesses a ghost-network device capable of deflecting penetration from my primary algorithm."
Elara forced her feet forward, keeping her back perfectly straight. "It's even more surprising to learn that the CEO of Vance Industries spends his morning illegally hacking the local servers of a building owned by his competitor."
Julian smiled crookedly, a thin smile that didn't reach his eyes at all. He slowly rose to his feet and approached Elara with deliberate, measured movements, exactly like an apex predator mapping out its prey's weaknesses.
"Your network is very interesting, Miss Sterling. Its architecture is strange. Instead of using wireless relays, you routed it through dead fiber-optic cables in the underground passageways of this city. Very... isolated from the outside world, yet impossible to detect." Julian stopped exactly half a meter in front of Elara and looked down directly into her eyes. "What engineer designed that hardware for you?"
"That's none of your business," Elara replied coldly, keeping her voice from trembling. "I didn't come here to be interrogated. I came to offer you—"
Suddenly, Julian's large hand shot forward. His long, powerful fingers seized Elara's lower jaw with precise force, locking her movement in place. The man dipped his head slightly, forcing Elara to tilt hers back until their breaths nearly mingled.
Julian's thumb moved slowly, gently brushing the area just beneath Elara's left eyelid, where traces of the Absolute System's microscopic energy still rippled beneath her skin.
"You're not lying," Julian whispered, his voice now dangerous. The man's gray eyes narrowed sharply, as though they could dissect every cell in Elara's face. "This technology... isn't in your pocket. It isn't on your wrist. It's implanted directly inside