Darkness, that was the first thing John felt when he woke — thick and heavy, like it had weight. The second was the cold, the kind that crept into the bones. He opened his eyes to dim light bleeding through metal bars.
The room was small, windowless, its walls a blend of concrete and steel. A single camera blinked red above the door. He was still in his suit, though the jacket was gone, his wrists bound by metal restraints.
He sat up slowly, his head pounding. The faint hum of machinery thrummed beneath the floor. He recognised the sound, underground ventilation. He was deep beneath Sovereign headquarters.
A voice crackled from a hidden speaker. "Good morning, Mr Raymond."
Harrison.
John looked up, his voice dry. "You've changed your hospitality standards."
Harrison's chuckle echoed through the intercom. "Don't take it personally. Everyone who threatens my empire gets a private suite. You, however, deserve something more… meaningful."
John's jaw tightened. "You call this meaningful?"
"I call it poetic," Harrison said. "You're sitting in the same cell your father once visited. He came here to negotiate peace. He left in pieces."
John's pulse quickened, but he kept his tone calm. "You built this place for men like him. You'll die in it, too."
Harrison ignored the threat. "You'll stay there until I decide otherwise. Consider it time to reflect on legacy — yours, and the one you ruined."
The intercom went silent.
John leaned back against the wall, breathing slowly. His mind began to calculate the position of the camera, the sound of footsteps outside, the spacing between the air vents. Every second in captivity was a second closer to strategy.
He had been in worse cages before, cages built by humiliation, betrayal, and grief. But none had held him for long.
Hours passed. The lights dimmed to simulate night. John's thoughts ran like clockwork. Shack's last words echoed in his mind: It was never your father. The truth was still incomplete, but somewhere in this place, it waited for him.
The door clicked suddenly. A narrow slit opened, and a tray slid through — bread, water, and a folded note.
He frowned, picking it up. The handwriting was precise, unfamiliar.
If you want to live, do not drink the water.
He glanced at the bottle. The seal was already broken. His eyes lifted to the camera. "You're making mistakes, Harrison," he murmured.
He dumped the water into the corner drain and pretended to sip it, leaving half the bread untouched. Then he waited.
An hour later, the footsteps returned. The door opened again — this time fully. A woman in a Sovereign uniform stepped inside, eyes darting to the camera. She looked no older than thirty, her badge reading Elara Voss.
"Who are you?" John asked quietly.
"Someone who's tired of surviving monsters," she said. She slipped a small keycard into his palm. "This opens the maintenance tunnel behind the vent. You have six minutes before the next patrol."
"Why help me?"
She hesitated. "Because my brother worked at The Imperial Crest. He died in the explosion Harrison caused. He said you tried to save him."
John's eyes softened briefly. "Collins."
She nodded once. "He was a fool. But he believed in you."
John looked toward the vent. "How far does the tunnel go?"
"All the way to the data centre," she said. "If you reach it, you'll find the archives. Everything Harrison's ever hidden — Project Crestfall, your father's death, Shack's deal. It's all there."
He stood, the chain clinking softly. "Then I'm not dying here."
Elara handed him a small blade and unlocked his cuffs. "Be quick," she whispered. "They'll notice soon."
As she turned to leave, John said quietly, "If I make it out, I'll burn him for what he did and for your brother too."
Her eyes glimmered with something between sorrow and hope. "Then burn it all."
The vent was narrow, cold, and suffocating. John crawled through in silence, every scrape of metal echoing like thunder. The tunnel bent downward, the air growing warmer. Somewhere beyond, the hum of servers pulsed faintly — the heart of Sovereign's digital empire.
He emerged behind a steel grate overlooking a room filled with glowing monitors and humming machines. A lone technician sat at the console, headphones on, oblivious.
John pushed the grate open and dropped silently to the floor. One swift motion, a strike to the neck, and the man went down.
He sat at the console, his fingers moving instinctively. The system demanded credentials — he bypassed them using Shack's old cipher key, still stored in his mind like muscle memory.
A folder appeared on the screen: Project Crestfall.
He opened it.
Lines of data, names, dates, and financial logs. It was all there, the blueprint of Harrison's crimes. The project had been designed two decades earlier, a systematic purge of every Raymond successor to secure ownership of The Imperial Crest. Harrison's signature appeared on every document.
One file stopped him cold.
Subject: J. Raymond — Termination Failed
Secondary Directive: Psychological Containment Protocol Initiated
He scrolled further, reading the chilling details. Harrison hadn't simply tried to kill him as a child — he had orchestrated every downfall, every betrayal since then. Shack, Rose, even the financial sabotage — all were fragments of a larger plan to break him from within.
His hands tightened into fists. "You wanted to cage me," he whispered. "You forgot I built myself out of cages."
He downloaded everything to the flash drive and began the upload to Rita's secure server back at The Crest.
In the control room at The Imperial Crest, Rita watched the data feed begin to download. Her heart raced. "John, what are you doing?" she whispered into the comm.
Static answered, then his voice came through, low and calm. "Ending this."
She closed her eyes briefly, relief and fear twisting together. "I'm ready on this end. Once it's complete, we expose Sovereign globally."
"Do it," he said.
But before the transmission finished, alarms blared through the data centre. Red lights strobed. The screens turned crimson.
Harrison's voice boomed through the intercom. "Did you really think I wouldn't watch my own house?"
John spun, gun drawn. Guards flooded the corridor beyond the glass. The exits sealed with metallic thuds.
Harrison's image appeared on the central monitor. "I should thank you. You've just proven Shack right — lions never learn."
John pocketed the flash drive. "You talk too much for a dying man."
"Dying?" Harrison laughed softly. "You're still in my vault, boy."
The door exploded inward. Smoke filled the room. John fired twice, taking down the first two guards, then ducked behind the console as bullets shredded the air.
He moved fast, breaking toward the emergency hatch. But a familiar voice stopped him.
"John!"
He turned. Elara stood at the opposite door, holding the control override. "Go!" she shouted. "I'll hold them off!"
"You'll die!"
She smiled faintly. "Someone has to."
She slammed her palm onto the release panel. The steel hatch slid open, revealing a maintenance shaft leading upward.
"Go!" she screamed again.
John ran. The door sealed behind him just as more guards swarmed in. Gunfire echoed. Then silence.
He climbed the shaft, muscles burning, every breath ragged. The alarms continued above. When he reached the top, he forced the grate open and stumbled into a hallway of mirrored glass.
He straightened, sweat and blood streaking his face. At the far end of the hall stood Harrison, waiting.
"Persistent," Harrison said. "Your father had the same flaw."
John's grip tightened on the pistol. "And his last one was trusting you."
Harrison smiled thinly. "You can't escape this building."
John lifted the flash drive. "I don't have to. The world already knows."
For the first time, Harrison's smile faltered.
But before John could take another step, a sharp hiss filled the air — gas vents opening in the ceiling.
His vision blurred instantly. The floor tilted beneath him. He stumbled, the world spinning.
Harrison's voice echoed through the haze. "Sleep again, Raymond. You're not ready to wake up."
John fell to his knees, the flash drive slipping from his fingers.
As the world faded, the last thing he saw was Harrison picking it up with a calm smile.
"Now," Harrison said quietly, "let's see how much of your empire burns before dawn."
The lights dimmed. The vault doors sealed.
And somewhere across the ocean, in the heart of The Imperial Crest, the servers flickered — half the upload corrupted, half still alive.
Rita stared at the fractured screen, whispering, "Hold on, John… please hold on."