“I knew she wouldn’t take it smoothly,” Cane says, far too calm for someone whose employee just tried to murder him with her stare. His fingers drift across the scattered papers, brushing their corners.
The Order’s meetings are strictly regimented: seven members, always the same, always present. Invitations arrive encrypted, buried under layers of misdirection, passed from man to man until the original sender might as well be a ghost—exactly the kind of system built to be impenetrable.
From The Heir to The Founder, they run the organisation, each driven by their own obsessions. The first, The Heir, clings to the power he never wanted. Then there’s the so-called Ghost General, who thrives on precision and control—a former military legend once feared on the battlefield. The third is The Oracle, pulling strings from behind the screens, a tech prophet with a God complex. The fourth, The Diplomat, is a politician with bloodless hands, the man above the rest of his marionettes, smiling as he conducts deadly deals.
They even have The Collector, a person who transforms chaos into art, seeing death as the final signature, dealing in illegal art—just like the target Estella and I eliminated back in Vienna.
The last two are The Surgeon, who reshapes bodies without mercy, giving them completely new identities, and The Founder—the one whose name no one dares speak—who rules it all from the shadows, watching and analyzing, intervening only when something truly urgent arises.
Seven minds, seven obsessions, one world molded to their will.
It’s nearly impossible to trace them. They scatter breadcrumbs and phantoms, never patterns. But with Cane’sconnections—and the fragments of intelligence my team and I pulled from the cracks—we managed to pinpoint the next meeting’s location and the exact date they’ll all be in the same room.
The place is a fortress. Cameras jammed into every corner, surveillance running twenty-four hours a day, armed guards sweeping the grounds on a rotation tight enough to snap bones.
Breaking in and shooting them in cold blood isn’t an option. Even if we could take out a handful of guards, it would only take one lucky shot, one missed angle, one second too slow before one of us ends up with a bullet in the skull.
It would be suicide.
So I suggested something else—riskier in a different way, but possible. We’d have to disappear for a while, move quietly, and prepare meticulously. It’s frustrating, but operations like this demand patience and time.
“Technically,thisis how it’s going to go,” I begin. The muscles in my neck tighten, and I roll my head to the side until the faint crack releases some of the pressure. “A few of our people will enter the building disguised as electricians, data center techs, or fire safety inspectors. Depending on the situation, they’ll target either a dry-type transformer or an oil-filled transformer.”
“I’m guessing the second option is the more dangerous one?” Cane asks.
I nod once. “Yes. Much more volatile. And if it goes off, it will go off violently. But either way, once they’re inside, they’ll need to access the control cabinet.” I tap the map, outlining the enclosure with my finger. “That’s where the relay controls and monitoring electronics are housed.”
“And that’s where they plant the bomb, right?” He mirrors my gesture across the table. “Slip it in and walk out?”
I shake my head, wiping the bead of sweat forming on my forehead. We’re safe here, and yet it feels like danger has its hands around our throats. Talking about this rips old fear wide open and feeds new anxiety until it swells in my chest.
I reach for the water glass, hands steady only because I force them to be, and take a sip before continuing. “They’ll need to install several components. A hardware module disguised inside a junction box or a control relay casing, wired directly into the transformer’s thermal sensor and trip circuits. After that, they add a bypass loop. That disables the automatic shutdown, the system designed to prevent overheating.”
Cane’s brows shoot up. “Smart.”
“The rest will be a remote ignition module triggered by a timer.” I pause, eyes drifting upward as the possibilities spool through my mind. “Or maybe by a wireless signal. Both will do the job.”
I move to the other side of the table, fingers gliding over loose papers until I find the sheet I need—the layout of the building in stark lines and symbols. My gaze sweeps across it, hunting for what matters.
“Okay. They have a central control system here.” I tap the diagram. “For that, I’ll write code that overrides every safety shutdown, buries rising temperature readings, and triggers the overload at the exact moment we choose.”
Cane scrubs a hand over his face, eyes blown wide, like he’s trying to drink in every word and failing. I can practically feel the question perched at the edge of his tongue—Can you repeat that slower?—but he doesn’t dare voice it.
“The module will force the cooling fans to shut down, along with everything else, right?” he asks instead. “We need to handle every single component for this to work.”
“Wewillhandle it,” I assure him. “All of it. From the fans shutting down to the thermal trips being bypassed. Once thathappens, the mineral oil begins superheating, vapor pressure spikes, and then—boom.”
I clap my hands together, the sharp sound slicing through the air. “A fucking industrial explosion. Their next meeting location couldn’t be more perfect. The headquarters has a basement transformer vault directly beneath an executive boardroom.”
Silence drops over us like a weighted sheet. The tension thickens the air, pressing into my shoulders. The taste of anxiety is metallic on my tongue, sharp enough to sting.
“Estella will take that freelance opportunity,” Cane finally says, breaking through the quiet. I snap my head toward him, and he only lifts a shoulder in a faint shrug. “She’s in shock. She just needs time to process. Don’t push her. Give her space to cool off.”
Before we reached the point of discussing how to dismantle The Order, he and Estella had been arguing about their futures. He promised her she’d always have work, but not from him. Not anymore. When the time comes and The Order is wiped out, her new handler will find her.
Of course she exploded—because in that moment, she understood that Cane would be gone.
He told her he barely survived this. The real reason for his disappearance was that he was relocating his family somewhere safe. And after everything is finished, he’ll disappear too. Settle down with them. Leave this world behind for good.
