Dominic’s POV
For two weeks, I’ve been tracing this ghost through firewalls and dark-net dead ends. Whoever they are, they know too much, about Elia, about Z-Core, even about me.
Every message arrives like a whisper from someone who’s been inside my head but tonight, I finally find the crack.
I’m in my home office, lights dimmed, only the soft hum of the computer breaking the quiet. I rerun the trace through a forensic relay, same origin as the last four messages, somewhere in Colorado.
A data tunnel through a Department of Justice secure server. My stomach sinks. That kind of encryption isn’t something a hacker could fake. It’s federal.
I pull the routing key apart, bit by bit, until I find the fragment that doesn’t belong: an old encryption signature. Caleb Ward. My hands go cold.
