Detective Miller left the office with heavy, rhythmic strides, a lingering sense of wrongness gnawing at his gut—but he had no proof. The moment the door clicked shut, Arthur turned toward Leah. His eyes held a predatory chill, watching her like a scientist observing a lab rat trying to find a way out of a sealed maze.
"You did well, Leah," Arthur said, sipping his coffee with a provocative, calculated calm. "You chose life. That is the first true test of intelligence."
Leah didn't answer. She was experiencing a searing internal combustion of rage and terror. The image of the blinking red light under Miller's car flashed in her mind like a recurring nightmare. She realized that if she didn't act now, Miller's blood would be a permanent stain on her soul. With a mask of artificial coldness, she excused herself to "finish the paperwork," but the moment she hit the hallway, she sprinted toward the emergency stairs.
Her breath came in jagged, torn gasps. Her muscles vibrated with the high-voltage adrenaline of pure panic. She reached the underground parking garage just as she saw Miller's sedan begin to pull away. She ran with everything she had, her voice a strangled cry: "Detective! Stop!"
The car screeched to a halt. Miller stepped out, his hand instinctively hovering over his sidearm, his eyes filled with lethal suspicion. "Leah? What the hell are you doing down here?"
"There's a device... under the car... Arthur... he—" She couldn't finish.
Suddenly, Arthur's voice erupted from the garage's PA system, sounding horrifyingly serene, like death itself. "Leah... you've disappointed me with record speed. I truly hoped you were too smart to play the role of the martyr."
In that instant, Leah looked beneath the car. It wasn't a conventional bomb. It was a sophisticated digital override fused to the vehicle's braking system. Suddenly, the sedan began to move on its own, possessed by a malicious digital soul.
"Miller! Get out of the car!" Leah screamed, but the doors locked automatically with a decisive, metallic thud.
Arthur, watching from his monitors upstairs, leaned back in a state of sadistic, god-like euphoria. "Miller isn't the target, Leah. Miller is merely a 'test element' to see how human nerves react to the proximity of an inevitable end."
The car accelerated with a violent roar inside the confined garage, heading straight for a massive concrete pillar. Miller hammered against the reinforced glass with the despair of a trapped animal, his eyes meeting Leah's for a fraction of a second—a second filled with a silent, devastating accusation.
A microsecond before impact, the car stopped dead. The tires screamed, leaving black streaks of burnt rubber just millimeters from the concrete.
A terrifying silence followed. The doors hissed open. Miller stumbled out, trembling, stripped of his speech and his dignity. Leah turned toward the nearest security camera, sobbing in a state of total psychological collapse. "Why? Why are you doing this?"
Arthur's voice came through the speakers, colder than the concrete. "So you understand that their lives are in my hand... and yours. Now, get back to the office. The next guest in the 'Glass Room' might be Miller's wife... if you fail my next command."
Leah stood there, amidst the acrid smell of burnt rubber and the stench of fear, realizing the bitter truth: Arthur didn't just want to kill his enemies; he wanted to turn Leah into his personal weapon of execution. That was the "sin" he had engineered for her today.