The fallout from the bloodless conquest of The Rusty Anchor had been handled with brutal, flawless corporate efficiency. True to Lorenzo Rossi’s terrified promise, three heavily armored transport trucks had arrived at the VanceTech loading docks precisely forty-five minutes after we left the slums. The three tons of refined palladium and the ten crates of hijacked military-grade micro-semiconductors had been quietly secured in the underground vaults of Floor Twenty-Four.
Paman Marcus’s orchestrated supply chain crisis had been entirely dismantled, and Nathaniel Kain’s syndicate had been sent a clear, deafening message: the Titan Project was untouchable.
But victory in the shadow war exacted a heavy physical toll.
It was 2:30 AM. The towering VanceTech headquarters was entirely dark, sav
