Vale didn't answer.
The System auto-responded with a scrambled voice edit.
'Mister Nexus will be in touch soon. Prepare your equity file in advance.'
Vale leaned back, folding his hands behind his head. The dominoes had begun to fall.
And Merrill Voz?
He was already reaching for the hand that would push him.
***
Vanessa Whit didn't believe in ghosts. But she believed in glitches.
And Vale had always been a little bit of both.
She sat in a sun-drenched cafe that was far from the York core. There were no glass towers, no clickbait CEOs, no social currency floating in the air. Just cracked ceramic mugs, scratched wooden tabletops, and the best cover for real work: obscurity.
Her nails tapped nervously against her Samsung tablet screen. The image still haunted her. Nothing Dez said eased her nerves. The image from the anonymous message.
Vale in the bar. Not quite Vale, though. Leaner. harder. No longer fumbling over himself in a pitiful spiral. He looked like he belonged at the center of someone else's downfall.
He had smiled. A new smile. A mean one.
Dex told her it was all doctored. "Artificial Intelligence do these things easily now. You should know that, V," Dez had said. That it was someone playing games with them.
Yet, Vanessa trusted her guts more than she trusted any man still using the word 'synergy'.
She opened a secure chat.
'You said Vale worked on an encryption breaker. The one you said scared even you. What was the code name again?'
The response came in seconds.
'MitchKey'
'But that wasn't the scary part. It was what he used to say when he tested it.'
"If I ever disappear, follow the glitch."
Vanessa sat up straighter. She returned to her terminal, connected through three proxies, and ran a spider scan on historical spaces under Vale's known names.
Nothing.
Next, she scanned for discrepancies instead. And she found something.
A ghost signature.
'File origin: Unknown'
'File Name: symbol_echo.return.7z'
'Hash: Encrypted but tagged with an old marker from Vale's earliest projects'
Vanessa opened it.
It was a single line of code that was displayed like a poem.
'I didn't disappear. evolved. The System always leaves a back door.'
Beneath the message was a audio file that looked like it was buried. Whit played it.
It was Vale's voice. Distorted. Half of it, static.
"This is not a resurrection. It's a rewrite. If you're hearing this, it means you looked where you shouldn't have. You're in the story now."
Vanessa slowly closed the terminal. Her heartbeat wasn't hers anymore. It belonged to the past. And the future. Somewhere in between, Vale Holmes was building something. And she had just stepped inside its shadow.
***
The restaurant was too expensive to even have a website. That was the first sign. It was perched on top of a rooptop garden no one ever saw being watered. It was the kind of place that didn't accept reservations -- it accepted reputations. The lighting was minimal, the wine list exceptional, and the music played in chords designed to make you feel expensive just by sitting down.
Merrill Voz was already two bourbons in by the time Vale arrived.
He stood as Vale approached, arms wide in that way men do when they want to disguise desperation as charisma.
Vale returned the smile with clinical warmth. "I'm older in the ways that matter."
He took a seat without waiting to be offered it.
Merrill chuckled. "That's good. That's very good. I like that. Older in the ways that matter."
Vale placed a sleek black folder on the table. It had no label or brand. No embellishments. Just weight.
Merrill eyed it like it was an engagement ring or a bomb. Maybe both.
"You said you were from... Nexus R.?"
Vale didn't respond immediately. He glanced at the waiter, ordered nothing, and returned his gaze to Merrill like he was reading a particularly predictable book.
"Nexus R. is a name. Names are for appearances. I'm here because you need what I am. Not what I represent."
Merrill's grin slipped, just a little. "I'm not sure what that means."
Vale leaned forward slightly, his voice was as smooth as glass. "It means your VCs are preparing an exit that doesn't include you. It means your favorite offshore account is being flagged for audit. And it means that, in approximately forty-eight hours, the Garside story is going to leak -- unless someone who already controls the leak lets it happen."
Merrill Voz's smile died completely and his eyes hardened. "Are you threatening me?"
"No," Vale replied. "I'm here to save you. But I only rescue people who know they're already falling."
Merrill reached for his third bourbon as his hand trembled.
"I didn't- I mean, the thing with Priya, that was blown way out of-"
Holmes raised a single finger. "Don't explain. Not to me. Not tonight." He pushed the folder toward Merrill.
"Inside, you'll find a proposal. My firm absorbs your majority share under a ghost trustee contract. You remain the public face. We clean the data, reforge the investor trust, and keep your name in lights. No courtroom. No scandal."
Merrill's voice went low. "And what do you get?"
Vale smiled. "Control."
Silence filled the space between them.
The waiter brought a tray of something that was both artistic and unpronounceable. Neither of them touched it.
Vale sipped his water like it was wine and watched the gears turn behind Merrill's eyes. Panic was a slow-motion event in the powerful. It didn't come all at once -- it arrived in stutters.
Merrill finally opened the folder. His eyes widened and his throat went dry even more.
"You already drafted the contract?"
Vale's smile didn't falter. "I drafted it twelve hours ago. I just needed to know if you'd be predictable enough to open the door."
Merrill hesitated.
"Who are you, really?"
Vale's eyes flashed like a shutter closing. "Someone who remembers your history and rewrites futures." Vale rose, buttoning his jacket.
"Sign it by midnight. Or don't. Either way, I'll own what's left."