"Threads of power "
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Sleep was a fractured thing, a shallow pool I skimmed across without ever diving deep. Visions, half-dream and half-resonance, flickered behind my eyelids: the cold gleam of Lena's smile, the ghost of my father's hand on a workbench, the deep, unsettling hum of the obsidian stone pulsing like a dormant heart on my nightstand.
I woke before dawn, not to the shrill cry of an alarm, but to a profound inner silence. The city outside my window was still draped in a deep blue pre-dawn hush. The frantic, scattered energy of the previous night was gone, burned away by the strange communion in the alley. In its place was a cold, sharp focus. A purpose.
Kael was right. The rage was fuel. But uncontrolled, it was a wildfire. I needed to be a laser.
I made tea, the ritual of boiling water and steeping leaves a grounding, normal activity in a world that had ceased to be normal. I sat at my kitchen counter, the obsidian stone sitting between me and my laptop like a paperweight from another dimension.
I opened the laptop. The screen glowed to life, a gateway to the digital world where my war had begun. My fingers hovered over the keys. This was the test. Could I operate in both worlds at once?
My first instinct was to dive into the dark web, to find a hacker-for-hire, to start clawing back my access through brute force coding. The old Elara's solution. But that was a trap. Lena would be expecting that. She'd have tripwires and digital snipers waiting for any sign of me in the systems I'd built.
I needed a new strategy. A resonant strategy.
I sipped my tea, my gaze drifting from the lines of code on a cybersecurity forum to the dark, glassy surface of the stone. Listen without forcing it, Kael had said.
I let my hand rest near it, not quite touching. I closed my eyes and sought that quiet place I'd found in the alley. The hum was fainter now, a steady, background radiation. I focused not on a specific question, but on Lena. On the complex, fear-tainted signature of her triumph I'd felt before.
An idea, cold and clear, formed in the stillness. I didn't need to break into Veridian's servers. I needed to understand the architect of my downfall. I needed her weaknesses, her patterns, her secrets. The digital fortress was impenetrable. The human one was not.
My fingers flew across the keyboard, but with a new direction. I wasn't hacking; I was researching. I pulled up every public record, every interview, every social media post Lena had ever made. I cross-referenced company filings with property records, looking for anomalies, for shadows.
It was tedious, methodical work. The sun rose, painting my apartment in streaks of pale gold. I fell into the familiar, comforting rhythm of data analysis, the stone all but forgotten.
And then I hit a wall.
A shell company. "Aethyr Holdings." It showed up in a convoluted property deal for a derelict warehouse in the industrial district, a deal signed off by Lena herself two years ago. It made no sense. Veridian was a tech giant; it didn't deal in crumbling real estate. The paper trail was impeccable, legally airtight, and utterly nonsensical. A dead end.
Frustration bubbled up, the sharp, familiar taste of a blocked code path. My hand, moving on its own, brushed against the obsidian stone.
The hum intensified instantly, a sharp, sympathetic vibration. The sterile data on my screen seemed to blur. Instead of frustration, I felt a sudden, inexplicable pull. A direction.
It wasn't a voice. It was an impulse. A deep, intuitive knowing that bypassed my logical brain entirely. Look deeper. Look older.
I navigated away from the financial databases and into the city's public archive servers. Dusty digital records, decades old. I searched for the warehouse's address, digging back through time, through scans of old permits and land surveys.
And there it was.
Fifty years ago, the plot of land wasn't a warehouse. It was the site of a foundry owned by "Croft & Son." Jameson Croft's grandfather.
The connection was a live wire. Lena wasn't just hiding a bad investment through a shell company; she was hiding a connection to her investor's family. Why?
The resonance from the stone pulsed, a low thrum of confirmation. I was on the right path.
A soft knock at my door shattered my concentration.
My head snapped up. No one visited me. Ever. Paranoia, sharp and immediate, clamped around my throat. Had Lena already made her move? Sent someone to ensure my silence?
I slid off the stool, my heart hammering. I crept to the door and peered through the peephole.
Kael stood in the hallway, holding two cardboard cups of coffee and a paper bag from a bakery. He looked utterly ordinary and completely out of place. He lifted one of the cups in a small, apologetic gesture.
I exhaled, a shaky breath I didn't realize I'd been holding, and unlocked the door.
"I come bearing peace offerings," he said, his voice a quiet rumble. He assessed my face, my probably wild hair, the laptop glowing on the counter. "You didn't sleep."
"I was working," I said, stepping back to let him in. The apartment felt different with him in it. Smaller, more charged.
He placed the coffee and the bag on the counter. His eyes immediately went to the obsidian, then to my laptop screen, which still displayed the old land survey. His eyebrow quirked up.
"Following a lead?" he asked, his tone neutral.
"Trying to." I gestured helplessly at the screen. "It's a dead end. A shell company, an old warehouse, and a connection to Jameson Croft's family. It feels significant, but I can't see the pattern."
Kael didn't look at the screen. He looked at the stone. Then he looked at me. "You're trying to solve an emotional, resonant puzzle with pure logic. You're using one language to translate another. It won't work."
"What am I supposed to do?" I asked, frustration leaking into my voice. "Meditate on it until the answer magically appears?"
"Yes," he said, simply.
I stared at him.
He picked up the stone and held it out to me. "The data is the 'what.' The resonance will give you the 'why.' You found the thread. Now stop pulling it with your hands. Feel its vibration."
Hesitantly, I took the stone. I closed my eyes, pushing back my skepticism. I focused on the thread I'd found: Aethyr Holdings, the warehouse, the Croft name.
The hum shifted, not toward Lena's signature, but toward something else. Something older. A whisper of ambition, but not the sharp, modern kind. This was heavier. Dirtier. A gritty, determined ambition stained with soot and iron. The ambition of a man building an empire from nothing. Jameson's grandfather.
Beneath that, like a faint, foul odor, was a tremor of shame. A secret buried deep.
My eyes flew open. "It's not her secret. It's his. Jameson's. She's hiding it for him."
Kael nodded, a slow, approving smile gracing his features. "Now you're listening."
The pieces didn't just click together; they fused, illuminated by a light logic couldn't produce. The shell company, the useless property—it wasn't a business move. It was blackmail. Lena was protecting Jameson Croft's family legacy, and in return, he had handed her my company on a silver platter. She hadn't just framed me; she had bought the silence and compliance of her most powerful investor with his own dirty secret.
I had my leverage. Not on Lena. Not yet. But on the man who had endorsed my crucifixion.
I looked from the resonant truth in my hand to the logical proof on my screen, and finally to the man who had brought me coffee and the key to understanding it all.
The path to my revenge wasn't through the front door. It was through the foundations, and I had just found the first crack.
"Thank you," I said, my voice thick with a new kind of emotion.
Kael just handed me a coffee. "The bakery's almond croissants are also an excellent source of clarity." He took a sip of his own coffee, his eyes never leaving mine. "Now, tell me what you're going to do with this crack in the world."