The anonymous text glowed on Liam Feng's screen, a digital brand marking him as prey.
"You're digging too close to the ashes, Feng. The Phoenix protects its own. Stop."
He sat in the dim light of his cluttered office, the monitor of his PC flickering. Below, the neon-lit markets of Port Sterling cast vibrant, restless colors against the sleek, dark corporate towers that scraped the sky. Inside, however, Liam felt a profound, analog fear.
The message wasn't a warning; it was a declaration of omniscience.
They knew.
His first instinct was to retreat. He thought of his father. He remembered the night the "bailout" was finalized, seeing his father return from a meeting at Huo Tower. The old man hadn't said a word, just walked to his study and poured a drink with a trembling hand, his face a mask of humiliation. The proud Feng patriarch had been reduced to a vassal, and the weight of that shame had haunted their family ever since. Challenging that power now could bring it all crashing down again.
But then, another memory pushed through the fear: a sun-drenched afternoon in the Feng family garden. A ten-year-old Elara, her hair a wild mane, laughing as she tried to teach him a ridiculously complicated dance step.
"You have to leap, Liam! Like you're not afraid of falling!" she'd insisted, her eyes bright with a fierce, untamed spirit.
He looked at the single white camellia on his desk, a fragile symbol of a truth she couldn't speak aloud. They weren't just caging Elara; they were trying to extinguish that fire. He couldn't let that happen.
The fear didn't vanish, but it was forged into a cold, hard anger.
His phone rang, jarring him from his thoughts. It was his father, his voice tight with panic.
"Liam, it's the Azure Corp contract. The shipment is locked down at the port. They're citing a 'random security flag' from the automated network. They say it could take days to clear. Days, Liam! We default if we miss the deadline by twelve hours. It's the penalty clause, the one Huo's lawyers insisted on. We'll be ruined."
Liam's blood ran cold. The penalty clause. It wasn't random at all. It was a weapon, placed in the contract years ago, waiting to be triggered.
A warning shot, fired with surgical precision.
"I'll handle it, Dad," he said, his voice a mask of calm.
He hung up, his knuckles white.
The attack solidified his resolve. He needed an expert in the digital shadows. He needed Marco Tanaka.
Finding Marco involved using secure dark web channels, a descent into the city's digital underbelly. Finally, he got a reply: coordinates for an abandoned arcade in a forgotten district, its graffiti-covered walls telling tales of a different era.
The air inside was thick with the smell of dust and ozone. A broken Pac-Man machine, its screen dark and cracked, stood like a silent monument. A figure emerged from the shadows. Thin, haunted, clutching a mug of tea. Marco Tanaka.
"Feng," Marco stated, his voice a rasp. "You have five minutes."
"I need to know about Project Phoenix," Liam said.
Marco flinched at the name. "That project is a meat grinder for the soul," he whispered. "It finds brilliant, unstable people and… rebuilds them. Loyal. Pliable. Perfect assets."
He took a long, shaky sip of his tea. "I saw the data. The psychological profiles, the 'emotional re-patterning' protocols. They find a person's deepest fear and turn it into a tool for control."
"I need proof, Marco. Data, files," Liam said, his voice raw.
Marco shook his head. "It's suicide. Their servers are a digital fortress."
"Then help me find a crack," Liam pressed. He showed Marco the anonymous text message.
Marco's eyes widened. "This is their signature," he whispered. "A polite warning, then escalation. Run, Feng. Disappear."
"I can't," Liam said, the image of young, fearless Elara flashing in his mind. "There's someone trapped inside. I won't leave her."
He saw something shift in Marco's haunted gaze—a flicker of the man he'd been before they broke him, the man who had tried to fight back.
"The person you're trying to help… is she a dancer?" Marco asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Liam froze. "How did you know?"
"The first architect of Project Phoenix… the one who built the original systems… she was obsessed with art. With ballet. She believed it was the purest expression of human potential, and therefore, the most perfect thing to control," Marco explained, his voice hollow. "They called her the 'Matriarch'."
Kian's mother.
Marco looked at Liam, a new understanding in his eyes. He saw a reflection of his own past failure, a chance to help someone else succeed where he had been destroyed. "I couldn't save the one I saw them break," he said, his voice thick with old guilt. "Maybe you can."
He took a deep breath. "There is… one possibility. A ghost in their machine. The Matriarch's original server. It's a digital labyrinth, a monument to her madness. They thought they wiped it, but it was too deeply integrated. If any of the old data survived… it would be there."
He scribbled a string of code on a napkin. "This isn't a key. It's the start of a riddle. It will get you past the first gate. What you do after that… is on you."
He pushed the napkin across a dusty air hockey table.
"Just know that the things you find in there… they change you. Now go. And don't ever contact me again."
Marco retreated into the shadows, a ghost returning to his haunt. Liam was left alone in the dusty arcade, clutching a napkin that felt like a bomb. It was a one-way trip into the heart of the beast.
But the Phoenix had threatened his family and caged his friend.
It was time to see if it could burn.