Chapter 165 Chapter 165
Dominic’s POV
For two weeks, I’ve been tracing this ghost through firewalls and dark-net dead ends. Whoever they are, they know too much, about Elia, about Z-Core, even about me.
Every message arrives like a whisper from someone who’s been inside my head but tonight, I finally find the crack.
I’m in my home office, lights dimmed, only the soft hum of the computer breaking the quiet. I rerun the trace through a forensic relay, same origin as the last four messages, somewhere in Colorado.
A data tunnel through a Department of Justice secure server. My stomach sinks. That kind of encryption isn’t something a hacker could fake. It’s federal.
I pull the routing key apart, bit by bit, until I find the fragment that doesn’t belong: an old encryption signature. Caleb Ward. My hands go cold.
It can’t be. Caleb’s gone, disappeared after the Z-Core hearings, right before Stanley “settled” everything. The official story was that he turned state witness, testified against the investors who manipulated the biotech patents, and was placed in witness protection.
His name was scrubbed from every record but the code signature doesn’t lie.
I run a deeper trace, this time through a private network I still keep from the old days. The ping comes back in seconds, a quiet little town outside Flagstaff, Arizona. Population under five thousand and a rental property under the alias Evan K. Lorne.
My pulse spikes. Caleb’s middle name was Kent. I stare at the screen for a long moment, heart pounding so hard I can hear it. Then I grab my keys.
The desert stretches endless and silent under a bruised sky. I drive through the night, headlights slicing through sand and shadow. Each mile feels heavier than the last, like I’m driving into a memory I spent years trying to bury.
By dawn, I reach the edge of a small town rusted gas stations, one diner, a post office that looks like it hasn’t seen mail since the nineties. The address leads me to a workshop on the outskirts: E. Lorne Auto & Service.
The smell of oil and sunburned asphalt hits me as I step out. The world feels still, expectant.
Inside the garage, a man is bent over an engine, humming to himself. He’s thinner than I remember, his hair grayer, his hands rough with grease. But when he looks up, I see him the eyes, sharp and quick, same as the day we founded our first biotech firm together.
He goes pale when he recognizes me. “Dominic…” he whispers. “God. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should you,” I say. “But here we are.”
He stares for a moment disbelief, then fear. He glances at the door, then back at me. “How did you find me?”
“You left breadcrumbs,” I tell him, holding up my phone. “Those emails. The encryption. You wanted me to find you.”
He exhales, shoulders slumping. “Maybe I did. ”
I step closer. “You knew about Elia.”
His jaw tightens. “I knew enough.”
“Then start talking.”
He leads me into the back of the shop, a cramped office that smells like coffee and dust. He locks the door and sits down heavily, rubbing his temples.
“I never meant for it to go this far,” he says. “After the trial, I thought it was over. Stanley told me testifying would protect us both, that if I stayed quiet, he’d handle the fallout. But when Elia disappeared…” He swallows hard. “I knew it wasn’t what it looked like.”
“Because you helped him,” I say flatly.
He doesn’t deny it.
“I was supposed to move assets, Dominic. Just numbers on screens, redirecting funds from Eden’s accounts to new research fronts. Stanley said it was damage control. But when the reports came out about Elia’s car accident, I saw where the money went.”
He looks up at me, eyes glassy. “Into Project Eden. Human experimentation. They used her name to bury it.”
“You testified against me,” I remind him, the words sharper than I intend. “You stood there in that courtroom and said I knew about it.”
“I had no choice,” he says, voice cracking. “They offered me witness protection or a bullet. You think I didn’t know what they did to people who got in his way?”
I stare at him, trying to reconcile the man I once trusted with the one sitting before me, broken, half-alive, hiding under a new name.
“Why contact me now?”
He hesitates, then reaches into a drawer and pulls out a flash drive. It’s old worn, cracked, taped at the edges. He sets it on the desk between us.
“Because he’s coming for you next,” Caleb says. “And because you deserve the truth about her.”
I stare at the drive. “What’s on it?”
“Footage,” he says. “The night Elia came to him. She begged Stanley to help her disappear. You were right about that. But there’s more.”
He takes a shaky breath. “She wasn’t supposed to die. It was a deal. She’d fake her death, leave everything behind”
My voice drops to a whisper. “And?”
“She never made it out of the facility,” he says softly. “That’s all I know.” The air leaves my lungs.
“Stanley told me she went rogue. That she was unstable. He said the project couldn’t risk exposure, so he ‘contained it.’” Caleb’s voice trembles. “I didn’t understand what he meant until later.”
I close my eyes, Elia’s last words echoing in my head, I’ll disappear forever. She didn’t want to die. She wanted out and Stanley made sure she got neither.
When I open my eyes again, Caleb’s watching me carefully. “That drive has everything,” he says. “If you expose it, you’ll take him down but you’ll burn yourself too, your name’s still all over the early trials.”
I pocket the flash drive. “I stopped caring about that a long time ago.”
He sighs. “Then you’d better move fast. I’ve seen what he does to loose ends.”
Before I can respond, there’s a sudden rumble outside, the low growl of engines. Caleb stiffens. “You weren’t followed, were you?”
“No,” I start then stop when I hear it. Doors slamming. Heavy boots on gravel.
He curses under his breath. “Then it’s too late.”
I peer through the blinds. Two black SUVs. No plates. The same kind Stanley’s security teams used.
I turn to him. “There’s a back exit?”
He nods toward a narrow hallway. “Go. I’ll buy you time.”
“Caleb….”
“Go!”
He grabs a wrench and heads toward the front, shoulders squared like a man who’s been running too long and is finally done. I slip out the back just as glass shatters inside.
The desert air hits my face, dry and metallic. I run across the sand toward the car, gripping the flash drive so hard it cuts into my palm. Behind me, gunfire erupts.
By the time I reach the highway, the sky is burning red with dawn.
I glance down at the drive in my hand. The label is smeared, but one word remains legible. “EDEN.”
I start the car and floor it toward the horizon.