The elevator doors parted like a verdict, spilling Ethan into a silence too heavy to breathe.
The CEO's office was nothing like the rest of Graywood.
It wasn't an office — it was a kingdom.
A room so wide you could build a house inside it.
Floor‑to‑ceiling windows towered over the skyline, the city miniature beneath Evelyn's feet.
No clutter.
No warmth.
Just power — polished, sharpened, displayed.
Ethan stepped forward carefully, each footfall echoing louder than it should.
In the center of the room, behind a desk carved like a throne, she sat.
Evelyn crowe.
Her back faced him, posture too perfect, still as a statue.
Sunlight poured over the curve of her shoulders, painting her like something carved from ice.
She didn't ask him to sit.
She didn't even turn.
Minutes passed — or maybe only seconds. Time felt fragile here.
Then—
Her voice split the silence like a blade sliding through cloth.
> "Ethan Cole, do you know Dawson Reeve?"
No greeting. No buildup.
Just a name that hit like a punch to the ribs.
Ethan blinked.
His mouth opened, closed again.
He didn't know the name — but the way she said it made it feel like he should.
His pulse climbed his throat.
"…No," he managed.
Evelyn turned her chair slowly — elegantly — like a queen granting audience.
Her eyes met his.
Cold.
Precise.
Alive in the way a predator is alive.
One look and Ethan felt small.
Like he had dirt under his nails while she lived above the clouds.
She stood, walking toward him with the kind of quiet confidence taught only to people who never lost.
Her heels made no sound.
Her gaze never broke.
When she reached conversational distance, she stopped — not close enough to touch, but close enough to command.
> "You're lying," she said softly.
Ethan's stomach dropped.
Her voice was smooth — not accusing, just observant.
She spoke like she was reading a file, not a man.
> "You don't know the name consciously. Yet when I said it, your pulse spiked. Your left hand tightened. That is memory, Ethan. Deep memory."
He swallowed — hard.
His body answered before his mind could.
And Evelyn noticed everything.
> "That reaction… interests me."
She began to circle him — slow, thoughtful.
Not threatening — worse.
Evaluating.
He felt like x‑rays were peeling him open, thought by thought.
> "Keep the people around you safe," she murmured behind him.
"Because if I reach them…"
she stopped — right at his shoulder —
"you will feel pain in ways you do not have vocabulary for."
The threat was quiet, elegant, unshakable.
Ethan's breath trembled.
He didn't dare turn.
Evelyn continued, voice a calm river with a knife inside it.
> "You touched something of mine, Ethan. Something Helix did not authorize."
"And now I want to know why."
She stepped in front of him again, meeting his eyes with glacier precision.
> "If you ever touch what belongs to me…"
Her voice dipped lower.
> "Then keep it secret."
A beat.
A breath.
A sentence that felt like a sentence.
> "Because if I discover it—"
She smiled.
Small. Beautiful.
Terrifying.
> "I will erase you. Quietly. Permanently. No evidence. No echo."
Ethan's knees almost buckled.
The air in his lungs turned thin.
He realized something terrible in that moment:
No machine.
No masked figure.
Evelyn was the real threat.
Because she didn't need poison or surveillance to kill him —
she only needed intention.
And she had it.
She returned to her desk like a queen returning to her throne, dismissing him with only her eyelashes.
> "You're dismissed, Mr. Cole."
He didn't move.
He couldn't.
> "And Ethan?"
His heart stopped.
> "Don't make me curious again."
The dismissal was colder than any weapon.
He turned — legs weak — and walked out of the office.
He made it to the hallway before breathing again.
Not relief.
Not safety.
Just survival.
Evelyn knew a name he didn't remember.
She knew his pulse, his lies, his weaknesses.
And worst of all—
She owned the game.
He wasn't running from Project Helix anymore.
He was running from her.