#### **Chapter 57: The God of the New World**
Just as Renji took a step towards The Director, a voice, amplified and chillingly clear, echoed from hidden speakers around the terrace.
It was Kuro. And he was laughing.
It wasn't a laugh of joy or humor. It was an unhinged, triumphant cackle that was utterly alien to his usual flat, analytical tone. The sound grated on the nerves, a discordant symphony of pure, intellectual victory.
"You," Kuro's voice said, dropping the laughter and adopting a tone of theatrical contempt. "You honestly thought you had won?"
The Director spun around, her eyes darting towards the hidden cameras. "The strategist. Still hiding behind your keyboard, little boy?"
"Hiding?" Kuro's voice was laced with a chilling amusement. "No, no. I'm not hiding. I'm spectating. I'm watching the final move of a chess game you didn't even know you were playing. Let me explain it to you, Director. Let me walk you through your own demise."
On the large, panoramic window behind them, a complex diagram appeared, a flowchart of decisions and counter-moves.
"You predicted the anomaly, the direct assault," Kuro began, his voice condescendingly slow, like a professor lecturing a child. "A brilliant piece of deduction. So you set your trap. Counter-move number one. Very good."
The diagram showed The Director's trap.
"My counter-counter-move," Kuro continued, "was knowing that you would predict the anomaly. Renji's performance as Mr. Silk wasn't just to fool your security. It was to make you *overconfident*. To make you believe you were the one in control, so you would commit your best assets—your new Chimeras—to this single location."
A new branch appeared on the diagram.
"But you are clever, and I know that because you are the Director of a multi-billion dollar organization." Kuro conceded. "You countered my counter-counter-move. You assumed, correctly, that my true goal was digital. That I would try to poison the Oracle Protocol. So you created a 'honeypot'—a quarantined section of the network for me to attack, while the real Oracle core remained shielded. You let me *think* I was winning, while you were just watching me play in a digital sandbox."
The flowchart grew more complex, showing The Director's digital trap. The Director's lips curled into a smug smile. He knew. But he was still too late.
"And now we come to the fun part," Kuro's voice dripped with manic glee. "My counter-counter-counter-counter-move. I knew you would create a honeypot. It's exactly what I would have done. So, the 'legacy virus' I uploaded? The one designed to protect my family's DNA? It was a fake."
The Director's smile faltered.
"The real payload," Kuro explained, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "was not uploaded to your servers. It was embedded in the terabytes of junk data from our 'global chase.' The false leads in Marrakech, the ghost files in Rotterdam… every single one contained a microscopic, benign fragment of the true virus. For two weeks, your own analysts, your own tactical teams, have been unknowingly hand-delivering my weapon right into the heart of your global network every time they accessed a file or a report."
The flowchart's final branch appeared. It showed a web, with every W.A.O. outpost in the world as a node, all connecting back to the chateau.
"The legacy virus I just 'uploaded' to your honeypot wasn't a virus at all," Kuro said, the unhinged laughter returning. "It was the final activation key. It told all the dormant fragments to wake up, connect, and execute their true function."
"And what is that?" The Director hissed, her composure finally breaking.
"It doesn't create a blind spot," Kuro said, his voice dropping to a dead, terrifying calm. "It rewrites your core directive. The Oracle Protocol is no longer a predictive model for hunting fugitives. As of... right now... it has one new, prime directive. And you, Director, are its primary target."
On the window behind them, the flowchart disappeared, replaced by The Director's own W.A.O. profile. A single word, written in massive, block red letters, flashed across her face:
**[TARGET]**