Lorenzo coldly stripped Vera of her highest security clearance, handing the master data card to Mia. He condemned her as terrifying, oblivious that just weeks ago at the banquet, Vera had covertly swapped their glasses, swallowing the fatal poison meant for him. Now, with failing organs, she accepted her exile in total silence. Instead of defending herself, Vera calmly surrendered the empire's last physical keys. She bound the offline mainframe to her subcutaneous biometric monitor, turning her impending death into the ultimate trigger. The cost was absolute: she would succumb to the toxin alone in an abandoned snowy mountain safe house, permanently severing all ties without seeking salvation. As the system's red light pulsed in sync with her fading heartbeat, an irreversible countdown began. When her pulse finally flatlines, what will remain of the fragile empire Lorenzo thinks he has saved?
The diagnosis was delivered in the sterile silence of the med-bay, a place I had built deep beneath the estate, shielded from any signal, any listening device. The air hummed with the soft whir of filtration systems, a sound I had designed to be calming. Today, it felt like a death rattle. “Thirty days, Vera,” Dr. Alistair said, his gaze fixed on the datapad in his hands, unable to meet my eyes. “At best. The toxin has cascaded. Your organs are entering a phased shutdown. It’s irreversible.” I remained still on the examination table, the thin paper crinkling beneath me. I felt nothing. The monster they whispered about, the cold engine that ran the Romano empire’s defenses, had no time for sentiment. “And it remains untraceable?” He finally looked up, his expression a mixture of awe and
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