The digital waveform on the main monitor flatlined. Christian hit the spacebar, cutting the harsh hiss of the fifteen-year-old analog static that had just played the order for his parents' execution.
Theo Lim’s face appeared on the secondary screen, streaming live from the subterranean safe house where Mark’s extraction team had secured him an hour ago. The young heir to the Southeast Asian consortium looked exhausted, his designer shirt wrinkled from the chaotic flight out of Jakarta.
"The recording is authentic," Theo said through the desktop speakers, his accented voice defensive. "But the other syndicate families don't know his real identity. They only interact with proxies. The protocol demands anonymity at the top. My father kept a private ledger of the original legacy transactions
