[POV: Sofia Lanka]

"Step away from the console, Emerald. The truth is already out, and no amount of shadow-play or mercenary muscle is going to erase the fact that you’ve been sheltering the very man who tried to turn my mother into a memory."

Sofia’s voice cut through the hum of the sanctuary’s server banks like a surgical blade. She stood in the center of the reinforced observation deck, her silhouette framed by the flickering data screens that displayed the sins of the Monroe patriarch. Behind her, Jack stood as still as a statue, his breathing heavy and rhythmic, his eyes fixed on the grainy holographic image of his father—the...