# Chapter 36
A new discovery
The data from the hidden server racks wasn't disappearing—it was being redirected. Every time Krist tried to trace it beyond the school's primary terminal, however, he hit the same digital dead end.
Someone had designed the system specifically to make sure nobody could follow it.
Krist leaned back slightly, thinking.
*If the data is being sent downward... then there has to be something below me.*
Krist had already reached an inevitable conclusion: something massive was running underneath the floorboards of the Stark Institute. All the encrypted data streaming out of those hidden secondary server racks vanished into a digital dead-end the exact microsecond it hit the primary master terminal.
With that realization driving him forward, he abandoned the fourth-floor server room and headed for the institute's only subterranean level—the massive underground parking deck.
Moving with swift, silent precision, he took the service stairs down to the ground floor and slipped through the heavy fire door leading directly into the school garage.
Krist surveyed the wide-open space. At this hour, the massive subterranean garage was mostly empty, with only two or three luxury vehicles parked in the vast expanse. Designed to comfortably accommodate up to eighty cars, making it feel even larger now that most of the spaces were vacant, with only a series of thick structural concrete pillars breaking the sightlines.
Rows of pillars stretched from one end of the garage to the other, supporting the massive building above.
Krist slowly scanned the area.
There weren't many places to hide something down here.
The only enclosed room on the entire level was the small security checkpoint booth built right beside the primary garage shutter doors—positioned to monitor vehicles entering and exiting the campus. Because of this setup, vehicle theft or unauthorized abductions inside the academy were practically impossible without external coordination.
Pulling a compact signal-tracking device from his tactical pack, Krist flipped the toggle switch.
Instantly, the handheld screen lit up, pulsing with a steady red wave pointing toward the security station. A night-shift guard was asleep inside, so Krist ignored the booth. Instead, he began sweeping the open garage floor, testing for independent transmissions outside the security network by walking deeper into the garage, watching the device carefully.
Near the dead center of the spacious parking deck, the signal flickered.
Krist stopped.
The signal was weak—but it was there.
He slowly turned toward the massive pillar standing in the middle of the garage.
Unlike the others, three pillars in the garage were unusually large. One stood near each end of the building, while the third stood directly in the center.
And the signal was coming from the one in front of him.
Krist approached it cautiously.
his tracker suddenly chimed. The signal spiked sharply, originating directly from the base of the massive central structural pillar.
Krist approached the concrete column, running his gloved hands along the rough surface, searching for hidden seams, digital transponders, or access panels. Finding nothing, he slipped behind the bulk of the pillar, using its concrete girth as cover from the sleeping guard's direct line of sight
He attempted to digitally intercept the transmission loop, but his device flashed an error code. Following the data stream outward, he discovered that the signal didn't just terminate locally—the moment it left the parking deck, it fractured into dozens of micro-burst fragments, scattering across multiple randomized proxy relays throughout the city.
"Sophisticated," Krist muttered under his breath. "If I don't harvest every single fragment simultaneously, the decryption string turns into useless garbage."
As he stared at the heavily encrypted loop, a new hypothesis formed in his mind. The sheer complexity of the hardware, the multi-layered proxy routing, and the military-grade encryption protocols were far beyond standard corporate espionage.
Piece by piece, something began to make sense.
Or at least, part of it did.
Krist's expression changed.
He lowered his device, a sudden realization dawning on him.
*This isn't Bellatrix's work.*
Bellatrix might be using the school for her own purposes. She might be involved with Adams, Vane Industries, and whatever else was happening behind the scenes.
But this?
This was something else.
Something far more advanced.
Packing up his gear, Krist retraced his steps, slipped back into the main building, and ascended the stairwell until he reached the fourth floor once more.
Moving down the corridor, he stopped in front of a heavy, double-paneled mahogany door. Pulling a heavy ring of master keys from his tactical pack, he selected an old-school brass key, unlocked the deadbolt, and stepped inside.
The moment he crossed the threshold, his posture stiffened, and a cold, dark fury surged through his chest, His hands slowly curled into fists. He closed his eyes, taking a deep, ragged breath to steady his pulse. "When I finally drag this bitch to a federal penitentiary," Krist whispered into the quiet room, "I'm stripping this office down to bare concrete and burning every trace of her existence."
The room he had just entered was the largest administrative suite in the institution. It was built more like a private suite than a workplace. Originally, Grayson Stark had custom-built the sprawling office for himself and his wife, kailani. For reasons Krist had never fully understood, his parents had always enjoyed spending time at the academy. When they weren't at home or working at one of their facilities, they often worked from this office, the suite had been designed as a private sanctuary that belonged to them.
Two days after their deaths were announced, Bellatrix had forcefully seized the space, converting it into her personal office while leaving her actual principal's suite vacant.
The hostile takeover sickened Krist, but he forced his emotions down. He walked toward the massive executive desk and noticed immediately that Bellatrix had scrubbed the room clean of his family's history. The framed photograph of his parents had been ripped from the wall, replaced by a massive vanity portrait of Bellatrix accepting an industry innovation award. On the desk, a framed picture of Krist with his mother and father had been displaced by a snapshot of Bellatrix and her sister.
There was nothing he could do about it.
Not yet.
His eyes narrowed.
*Or maybe I'll turn this place into my own personal space.*
Walking into the room Krist reached out, intentionally letting his knuckles brush against the frame of Bellatrix's desk picture. It flipped forward, sliding off the edge and shattering against the hardwood floor.
A small smile appeared on his face.
"Much better."
He turned away before his anger could make him do something more noticeable.
He didn't bother looking down. He turned his attention to the towering mahogany bookshelves lining the back wall.
There was a reason he had come here.
Determined not to waste a second, Krist decided to test a security feature he had only ever seen his mother use once or twice. He reached out, grabbed a heavy textbook at the far end of the bottom shelf, and slid it out.takeing off his glove he Reach out his hand into the empty gap, his fingers swept along the raw rear wooden backing, searching for a recessed manual toggle.
He felt nothing at first. He pulled out two more books, widening the gap, and swept his hand deeper.
Then, his fingertips brushed against a subtle, perfectly flush seam in the wood. The texture difference was microscopic—a localized patch of polished micro-grain that would have felt like a phantom anomaly to anyone not actively hunting for it.
Krist pressed his fingers against the smooth surface. The wood didn't budge. As he maintained downward pressure, a soft, ethereal blue luminescence flickered beneath his fingertips, silently scanning the thermal and dermal ridge patterns of his four fingers.
He pulled his hand back, staring at the shelf with a thoughtful frown.
His initial instinct was to clear the entire bookshelf to check for secondary triggers, but he hesitated—if Bellatrix possessed an obsessive, paranoid eye for detail, she might notice if a row of textbooks was displaced.
Fortunately, he didn't have to make that decision.
With a low, pneumatic groan, the entire masonry wall behind the bookshelf slid forward, sealing the gap against the shelf before gliding smoothly to the left, revealing a dark, hidden corridor entrance.
Krist smiled faintly. "I knew it was tucked away in here. But what triggered it doe?"
He stepped across the threshold.
*(GREETINGS, YOUNG MASTER KRIST.)*
A synthetic, deeply familiar male voice chimed through hidden speakers the exact second his boots crossed the inner perimeter.
"Okay..." Krist murmured, blinking in surprise as he looked around.
The hidden space was compact, engineered like a residential panic room. Every square inch from floor to ceiling was reinforced with high-density ballistic steel plating. The interior was furnished like a cozy living room, complete with a massive three-person sleeper sofa and an adjacent walk-in wardrobe.
Krist walked up to the wardrobe and pulled the sliding doors open.
Neatly hung on the left side were his father's tailored suits; on the right, his mother's professional blouses and coats. Interspersed between them were several small, outgrown wool jackets and shirts—clothes sized specifically for a ten-year-old boy.
His clothes. From years ago.
"I guess this was one of the emergency contingencies Dad built to keep us safe," Krist whispered, a lump forming in his throat. His eyes reddened as old memories rushed forward. "Too bad it wasn't enough to save them."
He reached out to close the wardrobe doors, wanting to block out the overwhelming wave of grief. But as his hand brushed past a heavy winter coat, a small, hard object caught on his sleeve.
Hanging discretely from a hidden inner hook was a small leather lanyard holding a matte-black access card.
Krist picked it up, turning it over in his hand. His breath caught in his throat.
It wasn't an ordinary security badge. It was a primary Stark Master Override Card. Anyone holding possession of this physical key possessed Level-1 clearance across every single active Stark facility on the planet, capable of unlocking blast doors, bypassing firewalls, and overriding lockdown protocols without requiring facial or biometric verification.
Only two such cards had ever existed: one belonged to his father; the other, to his mother.
"Why would he leave his master card hidden here before flying out?" Krist muttered, his brow furrowing. "That means... he was physically standing in this room the morning of the flight."
He examined the hanging bracket more closely and noticed a hidden magnetic card slot recessed into the steel paneling directly behind the wardrobe's structural frame—a port completely obscured by the hanging garments until the clothes were physically pushed aside.
Moving the winter jackets out of the way, Krist stepped fully into the back of the walk-in closet, aligned the black card with the hidden slot, and slid it home.
*CLACK-WHIRR.*
The back steel wall of the wardrobe hissed, shifting forward. Krist instinctively flinched, stepping back as the heavy plate slid aside to reveal a tight, vertical shaft—a secondary private elevator just wide enough to fit a single adult comfortably.
He stepped inside the small cabin. The doors sealed shut instantly.
For three seconds, absolute darkness enveloped him. Then, without warning, the floor dropped out from under his feet.
*WHOOSH!*
The elevator plummeted downward with terrifying velocity, the sudden G-force knocking Krist off his feet and sending him crashing hard onto the metal floor.
After what felt like an endless freefall, the cab decelerated with a smooth, magnetic thud. The hydraulic doors parted with a crisp chime.
Brushing himself off, Krist struggled to his feet, wincing as he fought to regain his physical coordination. He stepped past the threshold, looked out into the brightly illuminated subterranean space beyond, and froze.
His jaw dropped. His eyes dilated in sheer, paralyzed shock.
"Looks like..." Krist whispered, his voice trembling in the empty air as he stared at the impossible sight before him, "...this really wasn't Bellatrix's work after all. It was Dad's."