As Aryan Spencer finally emerged from the glass and steel canyons of Umbrella Tower, the air was thick with the scent of impending rain and the sharp tang of ozone. The streets below were a frantic mosaic of light and noise but his mind remained a fortress of silent calculation, layered with the contingencies of the three phase plan that would soon rewrite the digital landscape of the world.
He stepped into the shadowed expanse of the underground parking garage, the rhythmic echo of his own footsteps the only sound in the concrete tomb until a voice cut through the gloom.
"Aryan."
Sharon Carter stood a few meters away, illuminated by the flickering glow of an overhead fluorescent lamp. She held two paper cups of coffee, the steam rising from them in twisting ribbons.
"I didn't know how you took it," she said, her voice carrying a warmth that felt dangerously out of place in this cold space. She raised one cup slightly, a peace offering. "So I guessed. Black. No sugar."
Aryan stared at the offering, his mind immediately scanning for the subtle poison or hidden agenda. "I didn't ask for coffee."
"I know," she replied, her expression unperturbed by his coldness. "You never do."
The answer irritated him. It suggested a level of observation that he had not authorized. "I have somewhere to be," he said, his tone a clear dismissal.
She walked closer anyway, bridging the distance until the rich aroma of the brew reached him. She held the cup out to him. "Then drink it on the way."
He took the cup because the cold logic of efficiency dictated that refusing would only prolong this unwanted intimacy. "Thank you," he said, the words feeling foreign and stiff on his tongue.
She smiled as if that single word was a hard won victory. They walked in silence for several paces, the sound of their footsteps falling out of sync on the grimy concrete.
Finally, she spoke into the quiet. "You remind me of him."
Aryan stopped, "...Of whom?"
"Your grandfather."
His fingers tightened around the paper cup until it groaned in protest. "Looks like you knew him quite well."
She smiled, but it was a smile tinged with the bittersweet grey of a memory, something that was hers alone.
In that moment, a memory surged from the depths of his mind, triggered by the bitter scent of the coffee.
Aryan had been younger then, still a student at a Swiss boarding school, still burning with an adolescent impatience to conquer the world. He had returned home to the mansion late, his heart filled with the petty irritations of a long day, only to find his grandfather sitting in the study room.
He remembered Aryan's grandfather looking up from a leather bound book, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "Aryan," he had said, his voice a low rumble. "Have I ever told you about someone I know? An agent with the FBI?"
He remembered Aryan's youthful arrogance. "You know people everywhere, Grandfather. What is special about this one?"
Edward Spencer had chuckled as he closed the book. "She's… different. She's young. Brave. Perhaps too brave for her own good." He had poured a cup of the dark tea for Aryan. "She works dangerous jobs. Jobs where people don't always come back. And yet, every time she does, she visits. She sits in the garden. Sometimes she doesn't say much at all."
"So you adopted her too?" Aryan had asked jokingly.
Aryan's grandfather had looked at him for a long moment then, his eyes filled with a weight that Aryan couldn't measure at the time. "If she needed it," he had said quietly, his voice deadly serious, "I would."
Before Aryan had gone to his room that night, his grandfather had added, "If you ever meet her, son, be kind."
He looked back at Sharon now, standing in the dim light of the garage.
Her easy familiarity with the inner workings of his company. The way the veteran security guards in the lobby looked at her with a quiet respect. He realized that she was approaching him as the carrier of a promise made to a dead man.
She was a responsibility passed down like an unspoken codicil in a will. Aryan's grandfather had known their paths would cross. He had trusted her enough to ask, without ever needing to say the words. Watch over him. Do not let him walk this path alone.
That didn't mean Aryan trusted her. Trust was an expensive currency, and in this life and the last, he had learned to be a miser. But he understood her now. She was dangerous in a way he hadn't prepared for because she might genuinely care.
"Why are you really here?" he asked, his voice cutting through the pretense. "At my side. In my company."
"Because I chose to be," she answered without hesitation. "I could have stayed where I was."
"Yet you applied to be my secretary."
"Yes."
"That doesn't make sense."
She laughed quietly, a sound that was surprisingly soft in the harsh acoustics of the garage. "Not everything does, Aryan. You don't trust me. I know that."
"I don't trust anyone," he replied, the words a simple statement of fact. "It's efficient."
"It's lonely," she countered, her voice just as certain. She stopped and turned to face him fully, the flickering light catching in her eyes. "Aryan... do you ever actually grieve?"
He felt a flash of cold anger. "That is none of your concern."
"It becomes my concern," she said, her voice unwavering, "when the man I work for looks like he's carrying a coffin inside his chest."
The silence stretched between them. "Grief is a distraction from the work that must be done."
"So is denying it," she whispered.
He was the first to look away. They reached his car, a black machine that was as silent and severe as he was. As he opened the door, she spoke one last time.
"He was proud of you. Immensely. But he was worried, too. He said you were brilliant but you were building your towers alone. He wanted you to live, Aryan. Not just build."
The words landed with the weight of a physical blow, striking a place deep inside him he thought had long since turned to stone. He closed the door slowly and looked at her over the roof of the car. "You are either very brave, Sharon... or very careless."
She smiled faintly, a flicker of the agent finally showing through. "Occupational hazard."
He studied her for a long moment. If she was acting, her performance surpassed the greatest sorceries of the fog. "Get some rest," he said finally, his tone softening by an almost imperceptible fraction. "Tomorrow will be busy."
Her eyes widened slightly at the lack of a harsh dismissal, an unguarded reaction. "Good night, Aryan."
As he drove away, he watched her in the rearview mirror. She didn't reach for a radio to report to her superiors. She didn't pull out a phone to debrief. She simply stood there in the shadows of the garage, holding an empty paper cup, watching him leave.