The two days that followed were a war fought in silence. Sterling didn’t mention Julian again, but his fury seeped into the very air of the penthouse, a cold, pressurizing force. He didn’t chain me, but he built a cage around me, its bars forged from his unrelenting gaze. I worked exclusively on his studies. Thorne, my ever-present shadow, stood guard outside the door. My digital life was an open book to him. I was his prisoner, displayed under glass.
A cage, however, is the perfect place to plot.
While Sterling watched me, I was watching him. I dissected every file he’d given me, searching for a weapon. Project Nightingale remained a ghost, but I found something else: the unreacted psychological profile of Dr. Alistair Finch—a blueprint of a man's soul, commissioned by the Prescott Grou
