Leo's office on the 55th floor had become the launch silo for a data nuke. In the center of the room, the holographic globe was gone, replaced by a single, stark interface. On one side was the Legacy Dossier, a dense, encrypted file pulsing with a soft, venomous light. On the other was a list of targets: the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FBI's white-collar crime division, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times of London, and the Nikkei in Tokyo.
A single, virtual button hovered in the air between them. It was crimson red and bore one word: EXECUTE.
Evelyn Reed stood beside him, her arms crossed, her reflection a pale ghost in the floor-to-ceiling glass. She had been silent for the past hour, watching as the final components of their weapon were put into place.
"The projected market disruption is… unprecedented," she finally said, her voice a low, clinical murmur. "The financial models predict a minimum 40% drop in TitanCorp's stock value within the first hour. It will trigger automated sell-offs across the entire tech sector. The collateral damage will be in the trillions."
"Destruction is a prerequisite for creation," Leo replied, his eyes fixed on the button. "This is not an attack on a stock price. It is an attack on a reality that should not exist."
He looked at her. "Are you ready?"
Evelyn met his gaze, and in her eyes, he saw the fierce, burning light of a zealot standing before the altar of her god. Her god was Truth. And this was to be its final, glorious sermon.
"Burn it all down," she whispered.
Leo reached out and pressed the button.
There was no sound, but the effect was deafening. The interface showed the dossier fracturing into a thousand pieces, each one a hyper-encrypted packet of information that shot across the globe. He saw the confirmation pings, milliseconds apart: DELIVERED: SEC.gov, RECEIVED: FBI.gov, CONFIRMED: WSJ.com.
The world now had the truth. For a few, long seconds, there was only silence. Then, the chaos began.
Leo's multiple news feeds, which had been a placid stream of market data, exploded simultaneously. The ticker for TitanCorp (TITN) froze, then was replaced by a stark HALTED - PENDING NEWS. A breaking news banner from a major financial network flashed across one screen: TITANCORP CEO ALISTAIR FINCH ACCUSED OF DECADES-LONG FRAUD SCHEME IN MASSIVE DATA LEAK.
His phone began to vibrate, a ceaseless, frantic buzzing as every executive, board member, and terrified investor in the company tried to reach him. He ignored it.
He was watching for Finch's move. The old king would not go quietly.
Suddenly, the System interface in his vision flickered violently, the familiar blue text dissolving into a shower of corrupted, silver static. A new, terrifying notification burned itself into his view.
[WARNING: PRIMARY USER HAS INITIATED A REALITY REWRITE PROTOCOL.] [TARGET: THE LEGACY DOSSIER]
He watched in stunned horror as the metadata on a key file within his copy of the dossier began to change before his eyes. An incriminating memo, originally authored by one of Finch's closest aides, flickered. The author's name, A. HARRISON, dissolved and was replaced by L. ZHANG.
Finch wasn't trying to delete the evidence. He was trying to rewrite it. He was framing Leo for forging the entire conspiracy.
Before Leo could react, the walls of his office dissolved. The city, the sky, the very concept of physical space bled away into a black, featureless void, gridded with faint, pulsing lines of silver code. He was no longer in his office. He was inside the System itself.
Across the void stood Alistair Finch. He was not the old, weary man from the office, but a towering figure of pure, immense power, the System's code flowing around him like a celestial cloak. He looked at Leo with the disappointed expression of a god looking upon a flawed creation.
"You should not have challenged the architect of your own reality, boy," Finch's voice echoed, not as sound, but as pure data resonating in Leo's mind. "I gave you the tools to become a king. And you used them to try and burn down the kingdom."
Finch raised a hand, and the code of the dossier swirled around him, the names and dates twisting, the truths becoming lies.
But as he tried to force the final change, to permanently brand Leo as a forger, a new skill activated within Leo, unbidden. It was not a tool to be wielded, but a fundamental law of his own nature.
[Passive Skill Unlocked: Results Never Lie] [Description: Truth derived from verifiable, audited results possesses its own intrinsic reality. It is highly resistant to narrative and reality-altering effects. A fact, once proven, cannot be unproven.]
The metadata on the memo flickered, but it did not change. L. ZHANG dissolved, and A. HARRISON snapped back into place. The truth, backed by the irrefutable, audited work of Evelyn's global team, was fighting back.
Finch's eyes widened in genuine surprise. He had tried to rewrite a line of code, and the code had refused.
Leo and Finch were now locked in a silent, metaphysical tug-of-war. In the void, Finch tried to corrupt the past, to turn truth into lies. And Leo, anchored by the sheer, unyielding weight of the facts he had gathered, held the line.
In the real world, the emergency board meeting was minutes away. But the very nature of the evidence they were about to see was being forged and reforged in a battle no one else could see. The final confrontation had begun.