The lab smelled like recycled air and bad decisions.
Miles stood before the holographic map of Cross Corp tower, a glowing, three-dimensional monument to everything he hated.
It was a fortress.
A tomb.
And Gideon was somewhere inside.
"Okay, so, just spitballing here," Leo said, his voice a little too loud in the tense silence.
He was hunched over a secondary console, his fingers a blur across a holographic keyboard.
"Has anyone considered just, you know, not doing this?"
"We could run."
"I hear Argentina is nice this time of year."
"We could open a small alpaca farm."
"I've always wanted to raise alpacas."
"They seem very low-stress."
No one laughed.
The air was too thick for jokes.
Kael, Gideon's second-in-command, was staring at the tower's schematic with the cold, dead eyes of a man who had seen too many good plans go bad.
"The main network is a ghost," Kael stated, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. "It's not on any public or private grid."