Year: 2002 | Location: Manhattan, New York

  Skyscrapers glinted under the wintry sun as black sedans lined the private entrance of The Silver Heron—a lavish event space above ValenCorp’s East Coast headquarters. Inside, a charity gala buzzed with murmured deals and champagne-fueled lies. But none of them suspected that the woman orchestrating it all wore a sharper mask than any of them.

  Kira “Sable” Valenova stood poised at the top of the grand staircase, dressed in a sleek crimson gown that whispered danger. Her calculated smile disarmed governors, billionaires, and foreign diplomats alike.

  “Senator Albrecht, you’ve lost weight. Or is that just the guilt thinning you out?” she teased with perfect poise.

  The man chuckled nervously. “Still as sharp as ever, Ms. Valenova.”

  Behind the smirks and subtle threats, Dominion was moving money. ValenCorp’s New York gala wasn’t for orphans or clean water—it was a veil for financial redirection, a controlled injection of funds into shell firms that had just acquired defense contracts and software deals.

  In the mezzanine above the ballroom, Shade observed silently behind a two-way mirror. Miguel Navarro had just intercepted an NSA internal memo about a data breach originating from within the city.

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  “Kira, the Whisper says we’ve got a window. Twenty-eight minutes before the Feds recompile their trace routes.”

  Kira turned, her face still smiling toward a venture capitalist. “Then let’s dance.”

  Downstairs, waiters carried trays with encrypted flash drives in their jacket linings. One held surveillance data from DARPA’s predictive war-model testbed. Another? Records of corrupt officials being bought out by members of the newly forming Aurelian Pact.

  The party was the performance. But upstairs—on hidden floors only accessible by retinal scan—the real transfer of power took place.

  In a derelict building leased under a ValenCorp child initiative, three gang leaders knelt, bruised and trembling. Standing before them was Gutter, finishing a sandwich.

  “Tell Rex I’ve delivered the message.”

  He lit the fuse of a small device and strolled out whistling.

  The explosion rattled nearby warehouses. The lesson? This district was no longer neutral. Rex had planted his flags in the underworld.

  Kira stepped onto the rooftop helipad. Raz was already waiting, silent as always. She handed him the names of five individuals from the gala—each secretly funding AI defense projects tied to the Aurelian alliance.

  “No more speeches,” she said coldly. “Rex wants them gone within the month.”

  Raz nodded once. That was all it took.

  “Power wore heels that night. It smiled, laughed, clinked glasses. But it also killed deals, erased names, and redrew financial maps. The masquerade wasn’t the lie—it was the business.”