Page 13 of Cipher: Lethal Algorithm

Three shell companies, named aloud in the exact order I built them. He traced the architecture backward and located the oldest layer. Nobody finds the oldest layer.

“Your broker in Singapore handles the burn rotation.” He continues. “Forty-eight-hour cycles.”

He continues into the unsettling detail.

“Room 1418. Venetian. Three days ago.” He pauses. “You didn’t take the shuttle. Walked to the ferry terminal, water taxi to Taipa landing, walked back. Ninety minutes.”

A counter-surveillance route I’ve run eleven times without a tail.

He wasn’t behind me. He already knew the exit.

I focus on the steering wheel.

“You want the HSM?”

“Task Force 9 needs the HSM.” The distinction seems to matter to him. “The ledger inside is the single point of failure for their financial architecture. We intend to use it to dismantle their network.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing. For three years.”

“Alone.”

“Alone works.”

“Six hundred million burned. Eleven server breaches. Zero arrests.” Level. Not sharp. “Every node you’ve damaged, they rebuilt. You’ve been cutting back Kudzu.”

The vine comes back stronger every time.

I don’t offer a response, because he’s right. I’ve burned through a little over half a billion dollars and they just keep printing more.

The ventilation system hums. Somewhere on Level C a vehicle moves. The fluorescent light turns everything the color of insomnia. My left thumb is tapping the wheel—the opening bars of a piece of code I’ve been writing for six years and haven’t finished.

He knows the HSM exists. The way he landed it, not questioning possession, but forward-assuming it.

That’s the only card I hold.

But there’s a more pressing matter. If Julian Rhodes found me in eleven weeks, the Consortium’s Southeast Asia cell will be faster. They have more bodies and fewer standards, and in a foot race that closes the gap.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t have to tell me now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Same sentence. Same cadence.

Something moves across his face—there and gone. We both understand I’ll do this as many times as he wants to try it.

“Okay.”

The Consortium pushes. Every hostile actor I’ve dealt with in three years pushes—harder when they sense resistance. Because the model they’re running assumes resistance is a negotiating position.

He accepted the wall and stopped. Either this is a very sophisticated tactical move, or he actually means it. He’ll wait. He’s waited eleven weeks. Patience like that isn’t a technique. It’s a characteristic.

Or, a character flaw. Jury’s still out on that one.

“Tell me what Task Force 9 actually is. Not the org chart. The real version.”

“Off-books unit inside WITSEC.” He glances toward the exit ramp. “High-threat, high-value assets that can’t go through the standard grid. We operate with the legal cover of people who don’t exist in any paperwork that’d survive a FOIA request.”

“So you’re rogue.”