Zayed didn't sleep anymore—not in the way most people did. He rested with one eye open, one hand near his secured terminal, and one mind calculating ten moves ahead. In the center of his mountain estate, high above a world he no longer trusted, he stared at a table littered with satellite images, intelligence logs, financial reports, and surveillance footage. Each piece of data screamed precision. Too much precision.
Too clean. Too staged.
Paris, Ankara, Nairobi—every so-called lead ended the same way—just enough evidence to spark hope but not enough to confirm anything. Digital footprints were always scrubbed. Facial ID signals glitched. Even hospital security footage showed timestamp gaps as if someone had known precisely when to look away.
Zay didn't believe in coincidences. He believed in design. And this chaos- this pattern of near-misses- was too elegant to be accidental.
"They're leading me," he muttered, narrowing his eyes at a red-pinned location in Brisbane. "Feeding just enough to keep me chasing."
Behind him, Marla—the only person he still trusted inside his operational circle—stood quietly with a coffee and a digital scanner balanced in her hands.
"You think it's internal?" she asked, not needing to clarify.
Zay nodded slowly. "It has to be. The intel is being rerouted. Redacted before it reaches me. Whoever's doing it knows our protocols, our language. Could be corporate. Could be one of us."
A bitter thought formed at the back of his mind, but he let it simmer.
"But it's not just the intel," he added. "The money… that's where the truth always hides."
The trail had started faintly—a Luxembourg-based shell company flagged during an unrelated audit. But once he began pulling the string, a web of offshore accounts unraveled: Bermuda, Singapore, Zurich, and finally, Australia. All connected by a single thread: movement through Arkaline International's Southeast Asia development budget.
And within that cluster: a ghost name.
N. Croix.
Zay stared at the memo signed by that name. The tone. The brevity. The controlled aggression is behind every directive.
He didn't need proof to recognize her voice.
Sabrina.
He hadn't said her name aloud in months, but it was never far from the forefront of his mind. Even now, when logic told him she had gone dark, that she was gone—either by choice or force—his instincts told him something else entirely.
Sab wasn't just alive.
She was orchestrating.
Zay leaned back in his chair, eyes locked on the holographic financial model spinning above the table.
But why?
His thoughts drifted, unwillingly, into murkier territory.
Sabrina's agenda was never to torment us. He knew her too well. Sab had always been loyal to a fault. Fierce when protecting those she loved. Forgiving to a degree that none of them deserved. If she had truly gone rogue, if she had turned against them…
No.
Zay's jaw tightened.
Someone wants us to believe she's the enemy. She wants them to think she's out there, pulling strings, laughing in the shadows. But Sab didn't play games like this. And if she let them believe it—even just for now—then she played a much deeper game with higher stakes.
"She's not the threat," he whispered to himself. "She's the target."
Marla glanced up. "Sorry, what?"
"Nothing," he said, waving her off. But his mind was far from silent.
He started listing the members of the Pact, silently grading their loyalty. Malik is obsessively mission-driven. It can be trusted so long as the objective is aligned. Dante is volatile and emotional. He is capable of extreme action but fiercely protective of Sab and in love with her. Leo…
Zay's gaze darkened.
Leo knew more than he was sharing.
He always did. Even then, Leo had been the only one to see things before they happened. The only one who could disappear into digital nothingness, erase trails no one else could see. And now, when everything was falling apart, Leo was the first to claim he had seen her.
She was the first to say she was a mother.
The first to hold information… and keep it.
Why didn't he tell them everything?
What is he protecting—and who?
Zay returned to his command console, typing a new instruction into the mainframe.
:: INITIATE PROJECT OBSIDIAN - GHOST TRACE ACTIVATED
MASK TRUE LOCATION - FEED DECOY INTEL TO LEVEL 3 NODES
:: MONITOR INTERNAL COMM LOGS FOR ENCRYPTION PATTERN ZETA-91
:: FLAG LEO CARTER UNDER PROBATIONARY WATCH
He stared at the last command. It hurt to type it. But he didn't backspace.
If Sabrina were alive and someone was manipulating her, they were already inside.
He couldn't afford unquestioning loyalty. Not now.
Zay pressed his palm to the biometric console and leaned forward.
"You trained us too well, Sab," he murmured. "Now we're all dangerous."
And as the lights dimmed around him, the maze shifted—one Zayden Cross was now building with his own rules.