The air over the Port Sterling docks tasted of brine and diesel. It was the taste of a dead end. Julian hated it.
Floaters. The water washed away evidence, blurred timelines, and pointed to a life that had already slipped through the cracks. A cold case from the moment it bobbed to the surface.
But this one felt different.
He could still feel the phantom weight of the keycard in his pocket, the one with the phoenix symbol. That wasn't evidence washed away by the tide. It was a breadcrumb, and Julian was determined to follow it, no matter how deep into the corporate forest it led.
His first stop was the victim's last known address, a sterile, soulless apartment in one of Port Sterling's sprawling mega-complexes. The air inside was stale, holding the scent of microwaved meals and loneliness. The man's name was Arthur Vance, a mid-level data archivist who, according to his employment records, had recently been terminated from a subsidiary of Sterling Dynamics.
The apartment was disturbingly neat, almost staged. No personal photos, no clutter, no life.
The apartment of a man trying to be invisible.
Julian's instincts, honed by years of walking through crime scenes, screamed that this was wrong. People, no matter how lonely, left traces.
He moved to the small desk in the corner. A high-end computer tower sat beside the monitor, but its side panel was pried open. The hard drive was gone. A professional job. Someone had come here before him, looking for the same thing he was: data.
But they had missed something.
Tucked beneath the desk, almost out of sight, was a small, external hard drive. It was shattered, its casing cracked open as if it had been stomped on in a hurry.
The perpetrator likely thought it was destroyed beyond recovery. Amateurs.
Julian bagged the broken drive carefully. This was his only lead. As he stood to leave, he glanced out the window. Down in the street, a black sedan with tinted windows sat parked across the road. It wasn't a police vehicle. It hadn't been there when he arrived.
A prickle of unease ran down his spine. The same feeling Liang used to call "the hunter's hunch." It meant you weren't the only one hunting.
He left the apartment building through a rear service exit, deliberately avoiding the main entrance. He got into his unmarked police cruiser, his eyes fixed on the rearview mirror. As he pulled into traffic, the black sedan followed, maintaining a consistent, professional distance.
Not a random tail. This is a message.
Julian's heart began to pound, a steady, controlled rhythm. He made a series of turns, testing his theory. Left. Right. Another left. The sedan shadowed his every move, a sleek, black predator.
They're warning me off.
The same way they had likely warned off Arthur Vance.
He had to lose them. He couldn't lead them back to the precinct, not with the drive. He saw his opportunity: a multi-level parking garage for a neon-lit shopping plaza up ahead. He swerved into the entrance, tires screeching, and sped up the spiraling ramp. The sedan followed without hesitation.
On the third level, Julian cut his lights, pulling into a tight space between two large SUVs. He killed the engine, his car plunging into darkness. He watched in his side mirror as the sedan's headlights swept past his hiding spot, continuing its ascent.
They're checking each level. I have moments.
He grabbed the evidence bag with the drive and slipped out of the car. Moving quickly and silently, he navigated the concrete labyrinth, exiting onto a pedestrian sky-bridge that connected the garage to the plaza. Below, the bustling streets of Port Sterling seemed a world away. He didn't look back.
An hour later, he was in the cluttered, dimly lit workshop of a man named "Gizmo," a freelance data recovery specialist who owed Julian a very big favor.
"This is bad, Julian," Gizmo said, peering at the shattered drive through a magnifying headset. "The platters are scratched to hell. They really wanted this gone."
"Can you get anything?" Julian asked, the tension still coiled in his gut.
"Anything? No. A fragment? Maybe. It'll take time. And it'll cost you more than just that favor you've been holding over my head."
"Just do it," Julian said, his voice tight.
He spent the next two days working the official side of the case, filling out paperwork, chasing dead-end leads, playing the part of a diligent cop for Captain Davies. But his mind was on the shattered drive. On the third day, Gizmo called.
"I got something," he said, his voice tired but triumphant. "Just a tiny, corrupted fragment. But it's something. I'm sending it to your secure server now."
Julian rushed to his terminal. The file appeared: PD_Test_7.mp4.corrupted. His finger hovered over the mouse. He clicked.
The video player opened, the screen a blizzard of digital snow and distorted colors.
Then, for a few seconds, the image coalesced. It was grainy, shot from a fixed, high-angle camera in what looked like a dance studio or a laboratory. A lone female figure stood in the center. Her face was obscured by shadow, but her movements were unmistakable. She was a dancer, her body a study in fluid, controlled grace. She executed a series of movements that were both beautiful and strangely unsettling, almost convulsive. A dance of resistance.
Then, the video cut out, replaced by static.
Julian stared at the screen, a chill running through him.
PD_Test_7. Phoenix Dance?
The dancer in the video… could it be Liana Meng? Was this a recording of one of their "tests"?
He felt like he was standing at the edge of a vast, dark chasm. The floater in the harbor, the powerful corporations, a dead ballerina's ghost, and a mysterious dance all swirling in a conspiracy that had already cost his mentor his life.
He didn't have proof, not yet.
All he had was a cold trace, a ghost on a broken hard drive.
But it was enough.
It pointed him in a direction, towards the one person who might unknowingly hold the key to it all: Elara Meng. And towards the one place where this dance might be performed again: the Phoenix Foundation.