I tossed the sapphire-glass phone onto the obsidian desk. It landed with a dull thud, the blood-red screen fading back to the golden amber of the Genesis System. My heart was a steady, rhythmic thrum against my ribs—no longer the frantic, panicked fluttering of a man who had lost everything. The biological optimisation was doing its work. I felt cold. I felt precise.
"He's terrified," I said to the empty, titanium-walled room. "I could hear it. He’s already looking for me."
"His terror is a logical byproduct of your interference, Leonard," the System’s voice vibrated in my head. "But Mark Kross is not a man who remains terrified for long. He is a predator. He will mobilise every legal and illegal asset in his reach. You are currently a man with a quadrillion dollars and no shadow. You ar
