The war room had no clocks.
Time was measured in decisions, in data streams, in lives spent to preserve the illusion of order. The air was thick with tension and cold intelligence. Interactive displays glowed across the room—satellite feeds, encrypted dossiers, floor plans of safe houses and strongholds, all anchored around a single node.
Aldrin.
He stood at the head of the long obsidian table, eyes scanning a holographic blueprint of Dimitrius Renfield's last confirmed location—a fortified compound nestled in the hills outside city limits. Industrial façade. Military-grade heat signatures. Reinforced blast points. A final bastion for a man who had run out of moves.
Behind Aldrin stood his left hand.
Ainsworth.
Composed, expression unreadable, fingers laced behind his back like a scholar attending a sermon. His presence was steady, cold in contrast to the low-simmering fire in Aldrin's stance.
Marek's voice filtered in through the comm-link embedded in the war table, from deep within the Security Division:
"All squads are in position. The back exit is already disabled. Your window is fifteen minutes. No chatter. No survivors. I'm assuming, of course, you still don't plan to rest after this."
Aldrin's response came without looking up.
"He's bled this city long enough."
Ainsworth stepped forward, sliding a new document across the holographic surface. With a gesture, the overlay changed—an interior scan, thermal readings pulsing red like veins across metal walls.
"He won't fight," Ainsworth noted, voice smooth. "That would require honor. He'll run. Or hide behind the illusion of control. But I've narrowed his fallback point. Here—north wing, lower floor. Panic room hardwired into a generator."
Aldrin nodded once, the tilt of his chin more command than agreement.
"He doesn't get a speech," Aldrin said. "No monologue. No second chances."
A long silence followed, the only sound being the ripple of data updating in real-time.
Then Ainsworth murmured with the slightest curve of amusement,
"How poetic. A rat trapped in the walls of his own pride."
Aldrin turned, walking away from the table. His coat shifted with his stride, boots echoing sharply. The doors slid open with a hiss, revealing the hangar beyond.
Marek's voice followed one last time over the comms, distant but razor-clear:
"See you on the other side, Chairman."
Aldrin didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Tonight wasn't about vengeance. It was about closure.
It was about severing the last tie to the empire's old scars.
And it would be done in silence.
As Aldrin stepped onto the helipad, the rain met him like a baptism. Cold. Cleansing. Inevitable.
The rotor blades of the waiting gunship sliced through the storm like prophecy. Marek's unit had already moved ahead—ghosts in the dark, methodical and brutal. Ainsworth stood beside the open hatch, coat flaring like a banner of precision.
But just as Aldrin climbed aboard, a second comm frequency blinked to life. Unauthorized.
Encrypted. Layered beneath the noise.
A woman's voice filtered through, smoky and amused, as if she were watching from some unseen high place.
"Moving without me, Aldrin? Aren't you a darling."
There was no name. There never was.
Just her—the one the underworld called The Scarlett Queen.
A storm in velvet and steel.
"Don't worry," she continued, tone languid. "I'll be back soon enough. Try not to break anything too important without me."
The frequency blinked off before any response could be given. Just static and the low hum of rising altitude.
Ainsworth tilted his head with a smirk.
"Well. That answers the question of whether or not she's still watching."
Aldrin said nothing, but for the first time in the last hour, his grip on the edge of the door eased—if only slightly.
Rain hammered the world below as the helipad shrank from view.
Above the clouds, the Chairman of the Empire prepared to write an ending in blood.