The USB drive sat on Amelia's desk like a live grenade. For two days, she avoided it, trying to bury herself in the familiar comfort of fiction. But the real-world story, the one spelled out in cold, hard data, was too compelling, too horrifying to ignore. Late on the second night, she opened the files again.
This time, she didn't just skim. She pored over them, cross-referencing the project names with public news articles. "Project Aether," a multi-billion-dollar sustainable energy initiative that had garnered Vale Corp glowing press, showed no permits, no hiring notices, no procurement records beyond the shell companies Maya had identified. It was a ghost, a fiction that generated very real profits on paper.
Her blood ran cold. This wasn't just cooking the books; it was building an entire imaginary empire. And Adrian was in the middle of it, forced to learn its rotten architecture.
