"Seraphina."
The name hung in the sterile air of the underground garage, both a clue and a curse. Elara Meng repeated it, tasting the syllables, a metallic tang on her tongue. It was a name that sounded like secrets.
"Seraphina who?" she asked, her voice tight.
"That's the problem," Julian admitted, rubbing his tired eyes. The lines around them seemed deeper in the dim light.
"No last name. My mentor's notes just refer to her as 'Seraphina.' She was Dr. Thorne's top research assistant and, according to a few redacted notes, a close confidante of your mother, Liana."
"She was the bridge between the science and the funding. Then, poof. Gone."
He started the car again, the engine a low growl. They navigated the labyrinthine concrete passages.
"I'll drop you at a secure location. A small apartment my unit keeps off the books. It's clean. For now." His tone implied "for now" was a very short timeframe.
"Kian Huo will be turning this city upside down. You need to lay low."
"Laying low won't find Seraphina," Elara retorted, her mind already racing, her thoughts a blur of frantic energy. The dancer's discipline she possessed, the ability to focus amidst chaos, was now fully repurposed into a strategist's precision.
"If she was my mother's confidante, she might have attended private events. Galas. Art shows. Things that wouldn't be on an official record."
Julian glanced at her, a flicker of impressed surprise in his eyes.
"You think you can find her in high-society archives? That's a needle in a haystack, even for me."
"I know how that world works," Elara said, a bitter edge to her voice, a memory of sparkling chandeliers and forced smiles.
"I know the names of the photographers, the event planners, the gossip columnists who see everything. It's a different kind of investigation."
***
Meanwhile, Kian Huo was not turning the city upside down. He was dissecting it with surgical precision.
In his office—the one with the burning phoenix painting—he stood before a massive, interactive screen displaying a map of Port Sterling. Data points pulsed across it like a living neural network, each pulse a surveillance camera, a traffic sensor, a listening device.
"Cross-reference all transit records with facial recognition hits from the last six hours," he commanded, his voice calm and lethal, the very air in the room seeming to chill.
"Filter for all known associates of Elara Meng, pre-sequestration. Primary target: Liam Feng."
His aide, pale but efficient, typed furiously on a holographic keyboard.
"Sir, we have a hit. Liam Feng's car was spotted two blocks from the Huo Tower service exit three minutes after the security breach."
Kian's eyes narrowed. *The shade from the past.* Liam Feng. Of course. That old wound.
"Bring him in."
"Sir, the Feng family still has some influence..."
"I don't want him arrested," Kian clarified, his voice dropping to a silken threat.
"I want to have a *conversation*. Find him. And find out what he knows."
He zoomed in on the map, his mind a cold supercomputer. The escape was too clean. Too professional. This wasn't just Elara's defiance. Someone was helping her. A professional.
"And run a search through the Port Sterling Police Department's internal network. Look for any officer accessing cold cases related to Vesper Labs or Liana Meng in the last month. Flag any anomalies, no matter how small." He would cut the puppet strings.
He was hunting not just the butterfly, but the one who opened the cage.
***
In the stark, anonymous apartment, the air felt cold against Elara's skin. She worked with feverish intensity, the only sound the soft whir of the encrypted laptop Julian provided. She dived into the digital ghost world of Port Sterling's elite. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, cross-referencing old gala photos, guest lists from charity auctions, and archived articles from luxury magazines. Hours bled into one another.
For hours, "Seraphina" remained a ghost. No matches. Nothing. A frustrating emptiness gnawed at her.
She pushed back from the laptop, rubbing her temples. Julian's words replayed in her mind: *A bridge between the science and the funding.* She changed her search parameters. Instead of looking for guests, she started looking for staff at scientific foundations, art foundations—anywhere her mother's philanthropic efforts and Dr. Thorne's research might have intersected.
And then, she found it.
A single, low-resolution photo from a grant dedication ceremony ten years ago. Her mother, Liana, stood smiling, shaking hands with a university dean. But it was the woman standing just behind her mother, slightly out of focus, that made Elara's blood run cold.
She was beautiful, with an air of serene, almost unsettling, calm. Her name tag was blurred, a pixelated mess, but Elara didn't need it. It was the name in the photo caption that mattered.
*"The Liana Meng Arts & Sciences Grant is managed by its brilliant director, Ms. Seraphina Huo."*
*Huo.*
The same name as the man who had imprisoned her. Her breath hitched.
Elara's hands trembled as she typed the name into a new search. This time, the results were instantaneous. Seraphina Huo was no ghost. She was the head of the Huo Foundation's most prestigious and private division: The Phoenix Initiative.
The website was sleek, corporate, and spoke of "human potential" and "artistic actualization." On the director's page was a recent, professionally taken photograph of Seraphina. She stood in a minimalist, white office. The only decoration was a single, perfect white orchid in a glass vase. She looked exactly the same as she had ten years ago, untouched by time, her smile as serene and chilling as ever. A cold, knowing smile.
The phone buzzed. It was Julian.
"I have bad news," he said, his voice tense, cutting through the silence of the apartment.
"Kian has Liam Feng. They're taking him to a private location. I don't know where."
Elara stared at the face of Seraphina Huo on her screen. The ghost was found, hiding in plain sight, at the very heart of the enemy's empire. But now, her only potential ally was in the devil's hands.
"Forget Liam for a moment," Elara said, her voice a low, dangerous whisper, a plan already forming in her mind, sharp and clear.
"I've found her. She's been hiding in plain sight this entire time."
She forwarded the link to Julian.
"I need to get to her. I need to get inside the Huo Foundation."