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The black feather sat on the table like a curse.
I stared at it for minutes—maybe hours—waiting for it to mean something different. For it to vanish. For it to be a prank, a mistake, anything but what it was:
Proof.
Dani wasn’t working alone.
"You sure the perimeter cameras didn't pick anyone up?" I asked.
Theo shook his head. "No sign of breach. Whoever dropped that knew our blind spots. And how to stay out of the system."
Jace stood beside me, jaw locked, eyes burning. "Only one person alive still has that knowledge."
I nodded slowly. "Elias Thorne."
A name we hadn't said aloud in months. A ghost we'd once believed buried in an Albanian bunker. Roman's partner in the original program. The architect of the behavioral conditioning system. The one who created the code.
And now
