Chapter 69
The hum of machines filled the office. Dozens of monitors lined the wall, each flickering with grainy CCTV footage, transport logs, and security feeds pulled from across the city. This was not an ordinary office—it was a command center dressed in oak and steel. The glow of screens washed across the broad frame of Duke Richard Roderick, his shadow stretching long against the polished floor.
On the desk before him lay a printed still frame: a bus station camera. The quality was poor—washed out, pixelated—but it was enough. A slim figure hunched in a secondhand coat, bad haircut unevenly hacked short. The boy's head was bowed, shoulders tucked in as though the world itself might swallow him whole.
