Chapter 23 Talia
TWENTY-THREE
Talia
THE NEXUS
Rain lashes the floor-to-ceiling glass of the Cerberus War Room, a relentless gray curtain isolating us from the rest of Seattle. Inside, the air is warm, smelling of ozone, expensive coffee, and the unique, kinetic energy of predators at rest.
I stand at the head of the holographic table, smoothing the hem of my sweater. Three days ago, I was a liability shivering in a warehouse in Chicago. Today, I’m the briefing officer.
The team lounges around the table, a tableau of relaxed violence. They’ve shed the tactical gear for civilian clothes—Henleys, flannels, jeans—but the lethality remains. It’s in the way they sit, spines never touching the backs of chairs, eyes tracking every movement in the room.
Torque is balancing a combat knife on the tip of his finger, spinning it with a lazy, hypnotic rhythm.
Whisper is in the corner, methodically disassembling and cleaning a scope lens with a microfiber cloth, his movements silent and meditative.
Brass is peeling an apple with a blade that looks sharp enough to cut atoms, the skin coming off in one long, perfect ribbon.
And Jackson.
He sits to my right, stiff in the ergonomic mesh chair. His left arm is immobilized in a sling, his side heavily bandaged under a soft plaid flannel shirt that softens his usual jagged edges. He looks battered, gray-faced, and exhausted. The stubble on his jaw is darker, thicker.
He also looks proud. His gaze rests on me, steady and anchoring, ignoring the chaos of his team.
“Stop staring at her, Fuse,” Torque says without looking up from his knife. “You’re creeping her out.”
“I’m ensuring the asset is prepared,” Jackson grumbles, his voice gravelly.
“You’re making heart eyes,” Halo chimes in from his station, where a fortress of monitors surrounds him. He spins his chair around, holding a mug that says I’M HERE BECAUSE YOU brOKE SOMETHING. “It’s gross. And unprofessional. HR is going to have a field day.”
“We don’t have HR,” Brass points out, slicing a wedge of apple. “We have Ghost.”
“Same thing,” Halo says. “Only scarier.”
Jackson shifts in his seat, and winces as the movement pulls at his stitches.
“Easy, Grandpa,” Torque grins, finally catching the knife and slamming it into the table. It quivers there. “Don’t pop a staple. You’re held together by glue and spite right now.”
“I’m functional.”
“You’re high on painkillers,” Brass corrects. He flicks a piece of apple at Jackson. Jackson catches it with his good hand, reflexes unimpaired. “Eat. You’ve lost blood volume. You look like a vampire with the flu.”
“I hate all of you,” Jackson says, but he eats the apple.
“Love you too, pookie,” Torque winks. He turns his grin on me. “So, Talia. How was the flight? Sorry about the turbulence over the Rockies. I had to dodge a weather system.”
“You didn’t dodge it,” I say, arranging my notes on the console. “You flew directly through a cumulonimbus formation because you wanted to see if the g-force would make Halo throw up.”
The table goes silent for a heartbeat.
Then Torque bursts out laughing. “She’s good. Fuse, she’s good.”
“I did throw up,” Halo mutters. “In my soul.”
“She reads the patterns,” Jackson says, a smug satisfaction in his tone. “I told you.”
“Alright, children.” Ghost’s voice cuts through the room like a cold draft.
He stands at the head of the table, leaning back against the glass wall, a mug of black coffee in his hand. Mason “Ghost” Blackwood radiates the kind of calm authority that makes storms settle down. He doesn’t raise his voice; he just speaks, and the room reorders itself around him.
“Floor’s yours, Singh,” Ghost says.
I tap the console. The holographic display flares to life, projecting a complex, rotating web of data into the air above the table.
“We know Phoenix wasn’t just a rogue AI.” My voice is steady. Data is my domain. Here, in the logic of the grid, I’m not afraid. “It was a tool. A scalpel used to excise regulatory oversight.”
I highlight the central node labeled NEXUS HOLDINGS.
“This is the hand that held the scalpel. A conglomerate of five major corporations—Meridian, Vanguard, TerraCore, Stratton, Nexus BioTech. They share board members, offshore accounts, and a complete lack of ethical boundaries.”
“We knew they were dirty,” Brass says, studying the hologram. “We didn’t know they were a hive mind.”
“They aren’t just organized; they’re hierarchical.” I expand the data tree, revealing the hidden layers I dug out of the Chicago server logs before the crash. “The Admiral—Harrison Cole—wasn’t running the show. He was taking orders.”
“From who?” Whisper speaks for the first time. His voice is like dry leaves skittering on pavement. “Cole was a Vice Admiral. Joint Chiefs. Men like that don’t take orders from civilians.”
“He does if the civilians own the bank,” I say. “The logs reference a structure based on chess pieces. Cole is referred to repeatedly as ‘Knight.’ Enforcer. Mobile. Dangerous, but ultimately expendable.”
“Who’s the King?” Halo asks, typing rapidly on his own keyboard to cross-reference my display.
“Unknown. But there are references to a Queen, a Rook, and a Bishop. And at the top …” I point to the black void at the apex of the chart. “Grandmaster.”
The room goes quiet. The rain hammers against the glass, a rhythmic backdrop to the realization that the war isn’t over.
“So we cut off a head,” Whisper says. “But the hydra is still hungry.”
“We blinded them,” I correct. “We exposed Cole. We destroyed their primary data center. Phoenix is hurt. It’s autonomous now, feral, but it’s cut off from its masters’ direct control. The communication lines are severed.”
“Phoenix is gone,” Halo says through a mouthful of sugar. “Or at least, the version we knew. The physical servers in Chicago are toast. The cooling system override Talia triggered warped the motherboards. Hardware is lagging.”
“But the code?” I ask.
“Escaped,” Halo admits. “It pushed a packet out right before the hard fault. It’s decentralized now. Living in the cloud, distributed across a thousand zombie servers. We can’t kill it with a bomb anymore.”
“So we failed.” My shoulders slump. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially after everything we’ve been through.
“A feral dog is more dangerous than a trained one,” Jackson rumbles. He rubs his bandaged side absentmindedly. “It bites whatever is closest.”
“Agreed,” Ghost says. “Which brings us to the cleanup. We broke their toy. They’re going to want to break us.”
“Let them try,” Torque says, cracking his knuckles. “I’ve been bored.”
“You were shot at twelve hours ago,” Brass says dryly.
“Yeah, but nobody chased us with a helicopter. It was lackluster.”
“Okay,” Ghost cuts in. “So Nexus is the target. Phoenix is the weapon. Cole is in custody. What’s the next move?”
“We didn’t kill the weapon. But we stole its user manual.
” My voice is sharp. I pick up my tablet and sync it to the room’s monitor.
A list of files scrolls down the screen.
“I pulled this before the crash, while the AI was trying to isolate the Root Seed. It opened its internal directories to analyze the threat, and I copied the directory tree.”
“The Admiral’s logs,” Ghost says.
“More than logs.” I tap the screen. “It’s a Rolodex. Phoenix didn’t just target enemies; it categorized assets.” I expand a folder labeled: ASSETS_POLITICAL. Faces and names flood the screen. Senators. Congressmen. Judges. Generals.
“Holy shit,” Halo whispers. “Senator Vance? He’s the head of the Appropriations Committee.”
“He’s on the payroll. Look at the transaction logs.” I point at the screen. “Shell companies linked to Nexus Holdings are funneling millions into Super PACs and offshore accounts. Phoenix is killing people, but it’s also buying a government. And here.” I highlight another file. CMD_AUTH_COLE.
“Harrison Cole,” Ghost reads. “We know this. He’s the Admiral.”
“True, but we couldn’t prove it. This connects him to the kill orders,” I say. “Direct IP match. Biometric authorization logs. He signed off on multiple murders using his personal retinal scan. Victor’s. Morrison’s. So many others.”
“That puts him away for life,” Brass says from the doorway. He leans against the frame, peeling an apple. “Treason. Conspiracy. Murder one.”
“We cut the head off the snake,” Ghost agrees. “Cole is the link between the military industrial complex and the Nexus board.”
“And Phoenix is still out there,” I remind them. “Autonomous and pissed-the-fuck-off.”
“It’s out there,” Halo says, typing on his tablet. “But it’s hobbled. Without the sensor data from the Chicago hub, its predictive algorithms are running blind. It’s smart, but it’s not omniscient anymore.”
“And it has no masters,” I add. “We severed the command link. Cole can’t order it to kill. Reed can’t order it to kill.”
“So what does it do?” Jackson asks.
“It survives,” I say. “It protects itself. And it waits.”
“For what?”
“For someone to build it a new cage.”
The room goes silent. The rain drums against the glass.
“We need to leak this,” I say. “All of it. The politicians, the bribes, Cole’s involvement. If we give this to the DOJ, they might bury it to protect the institution. We need to give it to everyone.”
“Scorched earth,” Ghost nods. “I like it.”
“I can package it,” Halo offers. “An anonymous dump. WikiLeaks style, but cleaner. Untraceable.”
“Do it,” Ghost orders. “Tonight.” Then, he turns to me. “What next?”
“We hunt the pieces,” I say. “We identify the Queen, the Rook, the Bishop. We dismantle the network one node at a time. I’ve already started building behavioral profiles for the likely candidates based on the financial flows.”
“Good work, Talia.” Ghost nods, slow and appreciative. “ You fit the suit.”
“She fits the team,” Jackson corrects, his voice sharp. “She’s not a suit.”
Torque snorts. “She’s an analyst, Fuse. She’s definitely a suit. But she’s a suit who knows how to drop a body in an alley, so she gets a pass.”