The wind hissed against the window like a warning.
Liam stood still, hand hovering over the now-closed laptop, his breath quiet and shallow. Somewhere behind him, the system pulsed with that subtle hum it always made when it was waiting—for blood, for action, for another mistake to exploit.
But the room remained dark except for the dim light spilling through the blinds. That, and the ever-faint glow from the burner laptop.
Then it pinged.
JIN: I'm in and you're not going to like what I found
Liam didn't sit down right away. He just stared at the screen. Whatever Jin found, it had her typing slower than usual—her syntax clipped, no clever banter.
He slid back into the chair, cracked his knuckles once, and typed.
LIAM: Show me.
Then a cascade of decrypted files poured into the screen. Folder after folder labeled with dry, emotionless names: "INTERDEV INTERNALS." "FIELD INTEGRATION – PHASE 3." "TRIAL COHORT LOGS."
At first, it looked like logistics—shipment routes, client invoices, names he recognized from his previous digging. But it wasn't weapons or money transfers this time.
It was test data.
Vitals, brainwave metrics, behavioral deviation charts.
LIAM: This isn't arms trade. What the hell is this?
JIN: They call it biometric compliance software. But it's not for regulation. It's for control.
He clicked open a file named FieldTest_Sierra2.log.
There were surveillance feeds, time-stamped photos, embedded notes from field agents. The footage looked like it was taken in some underfunded, overpopulated sprawl—no IDs, no badges, just drones sweeping low over city blocks while people barely looked up.
"Subject 12 began self-reporting abnormal dreams post-implantation."
"Minor agitation when exposure to dissenting voices increased."
"Adjustment complete: Re-alignment with pre-determined value metrics at 86% efficacy."
Liam's stomach turned. He clicked through more logs, each entry grew colder. The language more detached.
The kind of distance you'd expect when talking about lab rats, not people.
His eyes caught on a red tag in the corner of one file: MATRIX-Z0.ACCESS.
He opened it without thinking.
This time, the window glitched before stabilizing. Lines of code scrolled fast, then froze. A single message blinked at the top in a bright red banner:
PROJECT ZERO – CLASSIFIED
What followed wasn't just data. It was a puzzle—half of it redacted, whole chunks blacked out even at root level. But Jin was already ripping into it.
JIN: Found traces of neural map testing. Cross-linked to Maddox's private server. All roads lead to Zero.
Liam scrolled.
There were scattered documents—an image of a prototype headgear, field agent transcripts, bodycam footage of a man seizing violently before flatlining.
And at the bottom: a single name.
Mary Maddox.
His mother.
LIAM: Wait, she was involved in this?
JIN: Not just involved. One of the early funders.
A chill climbed his back like ice under the skin. Liam stared at the name longer than he should have, as if it would blink and disappear.
His mother hadn't just been laundering money through ghost accounts or playing the queen with politicians.
She was funding human experiments.
Liam's hand twitched over the burner laptop. His fingertips tapped the edge of the desk rhythmically, trying to keep his nerves in check.
But he couldn't stop staring at the raw footage. One clip showed a subject shackled to a bed, their eyes wide, and mouth sewn shut—not figuratively, literally.
Another showed the aftermath: the bed was empty, only a stain left behind.
And in the corner of the report: Trial Deemed Acceptable.
He pushed away from the desk and stood up immediately, his facial expression unreadable behind the darkness.
It wasn't about revenge anymore. Wasn't about getting back at a family who left him to rot.
They were building something. Piloting it on people who couldn't fight back, on ghosts who'd never show up on missing persons lists.
All while cloaking it in legal paper and backroom deals. Maddox Industries had stopped being a business a long time ago—it was a more than he'd expected.
He looked back at the laptop and Jin was still typing.
JIN: Project Zero's name popped up around the time your mother went dark. Your fathers personal logs show irregular behavior: paranoia, neurological spikes, a collapse of memory threads.
LIAM: You're saying this killed him?
JIN: I'm saying she found the perfect test subjects for one of their creations
The room felt different with the new information he was getting, his skin itched like the walls were pressing inward.
He remembered those last few days with his father—the way Smith had wandered the house like a stranger in his own life. The way he'd stared too long at Liam's face, like he couldn't remember who he was.
Liam used to think it was just age or illness.
But now?
Maybe it was a prototype, maybe they tested it on him too.
The system chimed again.
[System Update: New Branch Unlocked]
Operation: Zero Option
Objective: Expose and neutralize Project Zero's core server.
Location: Unknown. Estimated Trace Progress: 4%
Warning: This operation is irreversible once initiated. Proceed with caution.
He read it twice.
From the looks of things, there'd be no walking back from this once he tapped on the innitiate icon.
Liam turned back to the laptop, and typed in new words
LIAM: What happens if we succeed?
JIN: The empire falls. Everything comes out—every test, every partner, every secret.
LIAM: That's gotta be better than what's happening right now.
JIN: Then let's move. I'll start digging into server pings—there's a cluster of reroutes in southern Norway. That might be our lead.
Liam stared at the city again. It looked the same from here—lit windows, traffic buzz, artificial life.
Everything was slowly getting serious and there was no going back this time.
If he was going to go into this, he'd have to go all in and not think of going back because a lot will be lost along the way.
And that meant he had to inform Mia and Sera about his decision and know about their next move if they'll follow him or leave him at this point.
The future was still forming, but with what he had dug out. He was in the lead for now.