The board beeped. A soft, pleasant chime. A notification popped up in the corner: "You have discovered a Level 4 anomaly. Do you wish to initiate counter-measures? Y/N"

Ethan’s blood ran cold. "It's just a whiteboard," he said, the lie tasting like ash.

Orlov was supposed to be dead. A ghost. A rumored puppet master who controlled three percent of the world's rare earth minerals.

Not because Ethan drew them, but because the board drew them for him .

He looked at the two men. He looked at the board. And for the first time in his career, Ethan Cross realized he wasn't the one analyzing the data.

He frowned. "Trace source," he murmured. The MaxHub’s far-field mic array picked it up. A thin, silver thread of light appeared, spiderwebbing from the Shanghai contract back to a shell company in the Caymans, then to a numbered account in Zurich, then to a name he recognized: Viktor Orlov.