THE PRUNING HOUR
The shell corporation that didn't exist was called Aegis Reclamation, and its digital signature traced back to a Unseen Hand protocol that had been buried so deep in the old infrastructure that not even Selene had found it.
Marcus stood in the research center beneath the Spire, staring at the holographic display that showed the money trail. It wound through seventeen dummy corporations, three defunct banks, and a routing algorithm that had been designed to evade exactly the kind of investigation Leo was conducting. But Leo had spent two years in the Blindspots learning to track data that didn't want to be tracked. The shell had cracked.
"Aegis Reclamation," Leo said, his gray eyes bright with the focus of someone who had found a puzzle worth solving. "The name alone tel
