Two days had passed since the collaboration meeting in the assembly hall. Grayson should’ve been dealing with a long list of words, but he found himself staring outside at the city skyline.

His mind was preoccupied.

He felt that there was something wrong, but he couldn’t quite grasp it.

The door slid open, and Bryan Stewart stepped inside.

"Sir," Bryan Stewart said. "There’s been a development you should know about."

Grayson turned from the window, one hand still resting against the cool glass. He didn’t speak but raised an eyebrow.

Bryan Stewart turned on the external holographic screen of his light brain and showed something. It was the official statement from the Imperial Military.

"Old Cox is dead." Bryan Stewart said.

In the midst of the silence, Grayson looked at it and read the statement with his eyes.

Director Elias Cox, former Chief Technology Officer of Maxwell Corporation, was found deceased in his cell.

Cause of death: apparent suicide by ingestion of contraband substances.

"Figured," Grayson said flatly. "He knew far too much to stay."

Bryan Stewart’s brow furrowed. "But the official statement said it was suicide."

Grayson let out a short, humorless laugh. "Do you think that man had the guts to kill himself?"

Director Cox had been many things: ambitious, ruthless, greedy, and willing to sacrifice others for something beneficial to him. But he was also a coward at heart.

"I’ll tell them to take a closer look at it," Bryan Stewart said, his jaw tightening. He crossed his arms, the gesture betraying his frustration more than any words could. "Who the hell would mess with you? You’re not even in the military anymore. No one in your family does now, right?"

Grayson moved to his desk, where a porcelain teacup sat cooling on his table. He lifted it to his lips and took a measured sip, then immediately set it back down. The tea was bitter, making him furrow his eyebrows.

It didn’t taste the same as when Hope made it for me. Grayson found himself frowning at the cup as if it had personally offended him.

"Yeah," he said, forcing his attention back to the matter at hand. "But it doesn’t mean that those who killed my father will just rest easy and leave me alone."

Bryan Stewart’s expression changed from frustrated to grim.

"This is really annoying," Bryan Stewart muttered casually, but the anger was there.

He had served under Grayson long before either of them entered the military. Some debts weren’t paid with money or even blood—they festered in the dark, waiting for the moment to strike. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Grayson drummed his fingers against the desk, his mind already thinking of several probabilities and connections.

"Why was Director Cox imprisoned in the first place?" he asked out loud.

Bryan Stewart blinked, caught off guard by the question. Then a strange look of concern and confusion crossed his face. "Sir, don’t you remember? There was a collaboration meeting in the assembly hall. The one where—"

"There was a collaboration meeting?" Grayson interrupted, his voice sharp with genuine surprise.

Bryan Stewart stared at Grayson incredulously.

"You... don’t remember?"

The question struck something deep within Grayson’s chest. It seemed that there was another hollow space where his memories should have been.

Grayson tried to recall what had happened in the past few days. He tried to think of anything related to the collaboration that Bryan Stewart described, but—there was nothing. Just an empty void as if they had never happened at all.

He pressed his fingers to his temple as a dull ache began to pulse behind his eyes. The pain started small, almost negligible, but it grew with each passing second. It spread like cracks on ice. His vision blurred at the edges, and for a terrifying moment, he felt himself leaning sideways.

"Sir!" Bryan Stewart was at his side in an instant.

One hand steadied Grayson’s arm while the other reached into his inner pocket. He took a small pill case. It contained the medication Grayson had been prescribed after his discharge from the military.

"Here, take this," Bryan Stewart said, lifting the pill closer to Grayson’s mouth.

Grayson accepted the medication without protest, swallowing the pills dry. He closed his eyes and waited until the pain in his head subsided a little. It took several minutes for the throbbing to subside to a manageable level.

"You haven’t had an attack during the daytime for a few months," Bryan Stewart said quietly. There was a relief and worry in his tone. "I thought you were already fine."

"Apparently not," Grayson replied, his voice rougher than he would have liked. He opened his eyes, finding Bryan Stewart’s concerned gaze fixed on him. "Tell me what happened at the collaboration meeting."

Bryan Stewart hesitated, clearly weighing his words. Then he took a deep breath and began.

"It started as a standard collaboration meeting about Project Aegis and Black Ocean Project. Everyone was present there and then..." Bryan Stewart paused, roughly summarizing what happened. "Then Hope presented phase 1, and then a little bit of phase 2. He presented evidence that he had compiled, and things escalated from there."

Grayson listened in silence, his expression betraying nothing of the turmoil beneath the surface. He listened through it all, but what he heard that unfolded sounds incredibly absurd to believe.

According to Bryan Stewart, the assembly had been nothing short of a corporate battlefield, and at the center of it all had been none other than Neville Hope.

"He did what?" Grayson asked, his voice flat with disbelief.

"He cornered Director Cox and the others publicly," Bryan Stewart explained, a note of grudging admiration creeping into his tone. "He exposed the whole damn conspiracy, and when Old Cox and the others tried to fight back, the military came in. The military came halfway with disappointing results in their own investigation, and Hope somehow managed to corner them, too. Made the Imperial Military look like fools for not doing their job properly."

Grayson leaned back in his chair, his expression unreadable.

Bryan Stewart confirmed, "Hope single-handedly uprooted every scum that had been festering in this corporation for years. He had even more evidence that none of us knew existed. He even had recordings and visual documentation. In short, he had ’everything’."