The yacht's interior glowed in pale blue light, the screen before Kael displaying a map so ancient it required three translation layers. Hieroglyphs. Latin. And finally, a cipher system used by Cold War cryptographers.
But none of it made sense—until Kael saw the emblem.
A serpent devouring its own tail, encircling the letter W.
His father's mark.
"Confirmed," Trix said, wiping sweat from her brow. "Coordinates match a known but sealed excavation site in Luxor, Egypt. The satellite tags it as a UNESCO-protected tomb, but that's a cover."
Kael didn't blink.
"That's where we go next."
Two days later, a private jet outfitted like a surveillance war room descended into the blistering Egyptian air.
Kael stepped out wearing a linen suit and dark shades, flanked by Thalia and a local contact named Farouk, a former tomb raider turned intelligence broker. He had dusty boots, a silver tooth, and a voice like gravel soaked in rum.
"Whatever your father hid, it's older than WexleyTech," Farouk said, leading them through winding paths. "They say the site was closed after several workers went blind. Others disappeared. And one archaeologist… well, they found his body mummified from the inside."
Kael said nothing.
But something cold stirred inside him.
The tomb was located beneath a ruined temple deep in the Valley of the Kings—far from tourist eyes. They descended stone stairs carved before recorded history, flashlights flickering across walls painted in blood-colored ink.
Then they found it: a vault door with biometric locks—but unlike anything modern.
This one needed genetic resonance.
"What does that mean?" Thalia asked.
Trix's voice buzzed through the earpiece. "It means only someone carrying the Wexley genome can open it."
Kael stepped forward.
A pulse of light scanned his hand.
Then…
CLACK.
The door opened.
Revealing a chamber of machines older than time.
Inside were sarcophagi wired with gold-fiber cables, screens that shimmered with alien code, and holographic relics hovering in defiance of physics.
Kael walked forward like a man seeing his past bleed into the future.
A pedestal stood in the center—on it, a cube bearing his father's handwriting, etched into alloy.
He touched it.
It activated.
A recording began—his father's voice, decades old.
"Kael, if you're hearing this, then the world as you knew it has ended. What you seek is not vengeance. It's correction. The bloodline wasn't just a legacy of wealth. It was a design. We were built for this."
Kael stared, breath frozen.
"Project Archon was never meant to fall into the Syndicate's hands. But they learned enough to kill me. What they don't know is the final key lies in you. In your DNA. I built Vault Omega to awaken it. And the world will need you when the true war begins."
The recording ended.
Silence fell.
Kael turned.
Thalia looked shaken. "Your father built this?"
"He built everything," Kael said. "Including me."
Then Trix screamed through the comms:
"INCOMING! You've been tracked—Blackline drones descending—GET OUT!"
Kael grabbed the cube.
The vault began to collapse.
What followed was madness.
Ceiling stones crashed. Dust blinded. The team sprinted through tunnels as autonomous drones flooded the passage. Farouk was hit—his body vaporized by plasma rounds.
Thalia fired, clipped two. Kael ducked, vaulted a column, launched a timed grenade. The explosion rocked the tomb.
But they were losing ground.
Then Kael did something insane.
He activated the cube.
A shockwave pulsed outward—every drone froze mid-air, their systems screaming.
"EMP pulse!" Thalia shouted.
"More than that," Kael said. "It's intelligent."
They escaped into the desert just as the tomb sealed itself again, vanishing beneath a triggered collapse.
Back aboard the yacht, Kael stared at the cube.
"I know what I need to do," he said.
Thalia narrowed her eyes. "And what's that?"
"Find the architect. The one who designed Project Archon for the Syndicate. He goes by a code name—The Weaver."
"And where is he?"
Kael looked at the cube again.
It displayed a single location:
Black Sun Tower, New York City.
Kael smiled grimly.
"Time to go home."