.....Michael Creed....
The hum of the servers was the only sound filling the room, low and steady like a heartbeat. Mine didn't beat that way anymore. Not since… no. Not now.
Three monitors lit up the darkness in a soft glow, casting shadows on the wall behind me. I'd been at this desk for sixteen hours straight, sifting through digital dust financial trails, flagged transactions, offshore accounts, bounced IPs. All of it leading back to one name. One shell company.
Syndex Holdings.
I muttered the name under my breath like a curse.
It wasn't registered under anything solid. No board members. No headquarters. Just another ghost in the system meant to launder pain and profit. But they slipped up. People like that always do. A $750,000 transfer meant for "consulting" triggered one of my automated scripts. Stupid. Greedy. Perfect.
I pulled up the account it came from then opened the digital backdoor I'd built months ago in the intermediary bank. It gave me a snapshot of transactions, login IPs, even the device fingerprint used last. The signal bounced through Belarus, but the exit node was in Nigeria.
Interesting.
I leaned back slightly, cracking my knuckles. Nigeria wasn't on our radar for this group. Not yet.
I tapped my earpiece and connected with control, Jason my second in command answered.
"Patch me into sector four. I need cross-traffic data on Syndex Holdings, priority alpha."
There was a pause. Then: "Copy that, Creed. Processing now."
The cursor blinked on the screen while I waited. My fingers tapped against the glass desk unconsciously. Then they drifted lower, brushing the ring on my pinky. A habit. One I never let go of.
My thumb twisted it once.
And just like that, I was back in the dark. Smoke. Fire. Screams. That gut-deep knowledge that something had gone terribly wrong, even before I turned around.
My breath caught.
She'd worn it all the time. Said it made her feel powerful, even though it was too big for her. Stole it from a flea market stall and laughed like it was the cleverest thing she'd ever done.
"Still wearing my lucky charm, Creed?"
My jaw tightened.
I wasn't lucky.
I twisted the ring back into place and forced my eyes to the screen. The Syndex exit point in Nigeria had connected to an encrypted server. Unlisted. Hidden. But not from me.
The screen blinked. Access granted.
And there it was, a list of names, encrypted manifests, locations. A girl's photo flashed across the screen. Seventeen. Malnourished. Gone.
I leaned forward.
The quiet voice in my earpiece snapped me back.
"Creed, you there?" Jason's voice was steady, but I caught the strain beneath it.
"Yeah. What's the status on the cross-traffic?"
"Processing still. But Creed… you need to rest. You're running on fumes. This mission anniversary hitting you hard?"
I didn't answer. Jason always said the right things, but he didn't know what the darkness did to me. Not fully.
"Not now," I said, voice tight.
The office was silent except for the whir of the servers and the distant city hum outside my floor-to-ceiling windows. The New York skyline was beautiful from here. But beauty had no place in this fight.
I glanced down at the ring again, the stolen token from a ghost who used to be my whole world.
Suddenly, the screen blinked, an alert from the Nigerian node. Syndex Holdings had just moved funds again, this time to a shadowed account hidden behind layers of proxies.
I sighed. Every move they made was a message. Like a game of chess played by monsters who thought they were untouchable.
Jason spoke again. "You've got eyes on something else. A new name just popped on the encrypted manifest. Unknown to us. I'm running checks."
The name was unfamiliar, but the photo… it sent a chill through me.
The girl wasn't just a victim. She was a signal. And I was the only one who'd pick it up.
I stared out the window. Nigeria was more than a map point on my dashboard. It was part of me my blood, my past, my fight.
And this time, It was personal.