In Blackwood Estate – High Security Bunker, Tavara
The air inside the interrogation chamber was icy. Silence clung to the walls, thick and suffocating. Damien stood behind a reinforced glass partition, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the figure chained to the steel chair.
Cassian Blackwood.
His cousin. Once a rising tech mogul turned ghost. Arrested moments after the summit attack, found fleeing with encrypted files in a diplomat's convoy.
"I never wanted this," Cassian muttered, voice hoarse. "I wasn't working for Nexus. I thought I was stopping you."
Damien stepped forward, his voice calm but edged in steel. "By leaking summit details and nearly killing over twenty heads of state?"
Cassian's gaze trembled. "You don't understand. Victor… he promised to protect the family. Said you'd tear it apart. He said your ambition would be our ruin."
Behind Damien, Nora watched silently beside Adrian, her brother, who clenched his jaw in disbelief.
"We grew up with him," Adrian said quietly. "He taught me to hack. He helped build the Maddox-Azure firewall."
"And now he almost killed your sister," Evelyne snapped as she entered. "Enough loyalty to ghosts."
Cassian turned toward her. "He said you weren't who you claimed to be. That you faked your coma to spy on us from within."
Evelyne didn't flinch. "And you believed a terrorist over your own blood?"
Cassian's head dropped. "I didn't know who to trust."
Meanwhile – Blackwood Archive Room
Tavara – Two floors below ground
Talia moved swiftly, accompanied by Nora's cousin, Sophia Maddox, a cyber-forensics analyst from Cape Town. Together, they traced Victor's signal across an ancient vault Damien had almost forgotten existed.
"These schematics are decades old," Sophia muttered. "Cold war encryption... and biometric locks keyed to your father's generation."
They reached a sealed vault marked BLACKWOOD—GENESIS INITIATIVE.
"Damien never mentioned this," Talia whispered.
Inside lay something more terrifying than expected: archives detailing a failed experiment initiated by Damien's uncle Victor—a global AI protocol designed to control economic instability. It had been shelved. Abandoned. Until now.
"Victor's trying to reboot this," Sophia said. "Not just to control wealth—but thought, influence, sentiment. Every transaction. Every vote."
Blackwood Estate – Private War Room
The team gathered. Damien, Nora, Adrian, Evelyne, Sophia, and Constantine.
"The leak wasn't just Cassian," Constantine growled. "There's another. Someone in our extended lines. Someone who fed Victor the vault codes."
Adrian leaned over the table. "We need to vet every living relative. Every marriage connection. Even estranged kin."
Sophia spoke up. "There's someone we've ignored—Luciana Blackwood. Married into our Peru branch. Disappeared five years ago after an 'accident.' Nexus might've taken her."
Damien's eyes narrowed. "Then she's our next lead. And if she's alive, she holds the missing piece of Victor's plan."
Evelyne looked at Damien and Nora. "You two are the last hope to stop this. But if you fall... the rest of us won't survive the next chapter of this war."