The Proscenium was dying.
Margot Delaine stood at the window of her private suite, watching the lights of Portmorris glitter across the black water like scattered diamonds. The yacht was anchored three miles offshore, far beyond the reach of the city's jurisdiction, its hull a fortress of reinforced steel and encrypted communications arrays. It had been her sanctuary for years—a floating kingdom where she had brokered the deals that built an empire, where she had financed the research that became Project Eidolon, where she had pulled the strings of politicians and generals and the directors of intelligence agencies who answered to no one but her.
Now it was a tomb. The financial leak had spread like a virus through the global markets, exposing shell companies, offshore accounts, the intr
