As Elias clicked through Part 1, he realized the bank’s HR department wasn't just managing staff—it was managing a private security force designed to protect a massive, off-books laundering operation. The "Part 1" specifically covered the North Ridge facility, a building Elias had been told was a decommissioned storage unit.

As a junior forensic auditor at Silver Ledger (SL) Bank, Elias was used to boring spreadsheets. But this file hadn’t come through the official server. It had been dropped into his private cloud drive by an encrypted, anonymous sender.

The file sat on Elias’s desktop, a nondescript icon labeled .

Elias looked at the zip file, then at the elevator bank. He realized "Part 1" wasn't just data. It was a warning. If he went up to the 42nd floor, he wouldn't be coming back down.