The rain began an hour after the Karet Syndicate left.
It was not a tropical Jakarta deluge; it was a cold, alien rain that hammered the penthouse windows for three days, sealing them in a premature twilight. The city vanished behind a wall of grey. The world shrank to the dimensions of the penthouse.
Maher was energized. He was a predator who had fed well, his power settling over the apartment like a tangible static.
And Rossie… Rossie was a tool returned to its box.
She existed in the white, sterile silence of her room, waiting for the cycle to begin again.
She was the engine. She had a protocol.
On the first day, he "fueled" her.
He entered her room without a word and commanded her to stand by the window. He placed his hand on her head. He showed her a vision. Tio, on a date. Laughing with a new girl.
Rossie's despair was a clean, sharp, predictable spike.
Maher absorbed it, his expression one of detached satisfaction. "Sufficient," he stated, and left.
On the second day, he "maintained" her.
The fueling had left her hollow and vibrating. He brought her to his den, laid her on the furs, and placed his hand on her forehead. The "protocol."
He fed the power back into her—the warm, refined energy that stabilized her system.
It was clinical. It was invasive. It was agonizingly intimate.
On the third day, the anomaly occurred.
It was a "maintenance" session. The storm was raging. The only light in the den came from the cold, grey windows and the crackling fire.
Rossie lay on the furs, a passive instrument, waiting for the calibration.
Maher sat beside her. He placed his hand on her forehead. "Endure," he commanded.
The familiar, warm energy flowed into her, pushing back the cold, hollow static.
But this time, it did not stop.
The circuit did not close.
He was pushing power in, but something else was happening.
A connection, forged in the trauma of the boardroom and reinforced by the protocol, had remained open.
It was a feedback loop.
Rossie's consciousness, instead of just receiving the energy, was pulled back along the current.
She gasped, her eyes flying open.
She was not in her body.
She was in his.
No—that was wrong. She was not in him. She was connected to him.
She felt, for a fraction of a second, the vast, cold, ancient power he held.
She felt the penthouse—not as rooms, but as a structure of pure will, anchoring itself to the physical world between two skyscrapers.
She felt the fire in the hearth, not as heat, but as a commanded element, forced to obey.
And then, she felt Jakarta.
Not the city of smog, traffic, and people. She felt the other city. His city.
It was a vast, glittering, three-dimensional web of contracts, hanging in the darkness beneath the physical streets. She saw threads of power, lines of debt, glowing nodes of oaths and promises. She saw the Karet Syndicate, a tangled, messy knot of energy. She saw her family's line, a single, bright-gold thread that led directly to—
Him.
It was too much. The scale of it. The age of it. The crushing, dominant power.
It was the consciousness of a god.
And it was touching her mind.
A strangled sound, half-scream, half-sob, tore from her throat.
The sensation vanished.
She was back. She was on the bed, shaking, hyperventilating.
Maher had ripped his hand away from her forehead. He was on his feet, standing across the room, his back to her.
He was perfectly still.
Rossie stared at his rigid silhouette against the stormy window.
She had seen him. She had felt him.
He turned, slowly.
His silver eyes were not analytical. They were not calm.
They were wide, blazing with a terrifying, primal shock.
He had not just been maintaining an engine.
The engine had looked back.
He stared at her, this broken, human thing on his bed.
He saw her terror. He saw her knowledge. He saw that she had, for one second, touched his mind.
A new, terrible expression crossed his face.
It was not anger. It was not fear.
It was hunger. A new, deeper, more dangerous hunger.
He had been satisfied with the fuel of her emotions.
Now, he had tasted the source.
"Rossie," he whispered, and the name on his lips was not a command. It was a discovery.
He walked toward her, slowly.
"What," he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble, "have you done?"