Chapter 17 - The Master Ledger
The revelation hung in the heavy, silent air of the warehouse.
I stared at General Vance, my breath catching in my throat. “Sofia? What are you talking about?”
“Sofia wasn't just a civilian researcher, Gabriel,” Vance said, typing a rapid sequence into the console. A holographic data file flickered to life above the desk. “Before she married you, she was a lead biochemist working on civilian diagnostics for the Department. But when she realized Aegis was repurposing her research to engineer synthetic pathogens, she copied their entire financial and operational ledger onto an encrypted drive and hid it.”
Maya stepped forward, her eyes fixed on the glowing data streams. “Is that why they targeted Daniel?”
“Exactly,” Vance nodded. “They believed Sofia passed the decryption key to her son before she died. They wanted the boy to extract the files, or eliminate the bloodline entirely to protect their operation.”
I felt a cold, lethal rage wash over every fiber of my being. For six years, I had believed my wife died of a tragic medical complication during childbirth. Now I knew the truth: the shadow agency had poisoned her world, hunted her, and ultimately caused her death.
“Where is the ledger, Thomas?” I asked, my voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper.
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“It’s stored on a secure server buried three floors beneath the Federal Reserve building in lower Manhattan,” Vance replied grimly. “Protected by military-grade encryption, bio-scanners, and a private security force controlled entirely by Aegis operatives.”
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