Page 150 of Fractured Loyalties
“Name won’t mean much. Not yet,” he says. “But it will.”
“Try me.”
He hesitates. Then: “Aras Volker.”
The name lands like a dropped blade.
I don’t recognize it. Not from Elias. Not from the data I’ve seen. But something about the way he says it—sharp, reverent, like he’s naming a ghost that still bleeds—makes my skin crawl.
“Who the hell is that?”
He exhales. “The architect behind everything you’ve stepped into. Vale is his smoke screen. His scalpel. The real hand never casts a shadow.”
My pulse stutters.
Because I don’t need to know the name to feel its weight.
“You’re going to show me everything,” I say. Low. Flat.
He nods. “I will. But not here.”
“Why not?”
He looks up. “Because in three minutes, this room burns. Auto-kill on all files. Deep-scrub. And whoever triggered the Marseille node already knows you’re in here.”
I freeze.
He lifts a second passkey and offers it like an afterthought. “Come with me, Mara. You want to know the truth? I’ll hand it to you. But you’ll never be able to unsee it.”
I don’t take the key from his hand. Not yet. I look at it like it might bite me. Because I know what this means. What it could cost.
Behind us, the screen starts a soft countdown in the upper right. Two minutes, forty seconds.
“You built all of this to erase it,” I say.
“Everything that matters lives outside the record,” he replies. “The rest is noise.”
The seconds bleed down. My feet feel heavier than they should. My body knows something my brain hasn’t caught up to yet. Maybe it’s the look in his eyes—the calm. Not the kind that comes from safety. The kind that comes from resolve.
“I don’t trust you,” I say.
“Good,” he answers. “That’ll keep you alive longer than trust ever could.”
I take the key.
He exhales like he didn’t know he was holding his breath.
The exit isn’t through the main door. It’s through a narrow seam in the wall I didn’t see until he pressed a coded panel near the floor. The whole thing shifts inward with a quiet hydraulic hiss. He ducks through first. I follow.
We enter a tight corridor that smells like old stone and ozone. The light is low, with red emergency stripes marking the floor. The hum of servers fades behind us.
“Where does this go?” I ask.
“Deeper. Then sideways. Then out.”
“Out to where?”
His smile is tight. “You’ll see.”
