The air in Valerian was thick with palpable tension. I stood beside Lianna in the main server room, which now felt more like a state-of-the-art fortress than a regular data center. We had spent two full days working intensively, dissecting every layer of digital security Cyrus had left behind.
"We managed to disable the spyware, Cassian," Lianna said, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. Her eyes were weary, but there was a flicker of triumph in them. "It was embedded directly in the firmware of the old system Cyrus installed when he was still head of IT ten years ago."
"Did he plant it when he was genuinely working for your father, or when he was already colluding with the Coven?" I asked, scanning every line of code.
"It's hard to tell. The traces were deliberately ob
