That name shouldn't have been there.
A flicker danced through the dim lab, sending a shiver down the steel surfaces. One of the central screens blinked to life again, its gentle glow brushing across Isabella's face in soft pulses—as if it were trying to catch her attention. She stayed frozen. The message had shown up before. Same peculiar pattern. Same quiet defiance. She gazed at it, feeling an unexpected sense of familiarity this time. This wasn't an error. It wasn't even a slip-up. Someone had intentionally planted something in her system. It was purposeful. Hidden beneath a routine update, cleverly disguised to trick every surface protocol, except for the ones she had crafted herself. And when she finally uncovered the signature, her stomach twisted—not in shock, but in recognition.
She knew that name, and she hated that she did. Lizzy. Of course, it was her. Always reaching into things she didn't understand, always pushing where she didn't belong. This wasn't sabotage. It was arrogance. A child testing fire, assuming it won't burn, like touching a live wire, expecting no shock.
Isabella turned from the screen slowly, her jaw tightened. "She thinks she can play with this," she said aloud, voice flat. "She doesn't even know what it is." Her gaze drifted upward, not to the code, but beyond it—to a memory so sharp it felt like breath in winter. Anna had stood in this room once, her voice low and precise, tracing invisible lines in the air as they debated design ethics and system thresholds. Anna hadn't treated her like a subordinate, not like a tool. They'd built things together—clean logic, elegant frames, the architecture of clarity. Anna understood restraint. Power wasn't something you reached for. It was something you chose not to use. Lizzy… had never understood that. Now, her fingerprints were all over this intrusion—untrained, reckless, and driven by emotion. Lizzy hadn't rewritten a single line of code, hadn't hacked in or broken anything—no, what she did was worse.
She used a key she didn't earn to open doors she didn't understand. She dug through layers she had no business touching—like flipping through an old drawer of their father's, thinking it held nothing more than memories.
But this wasn't sentiment. This was ignition, and she had no idea what she'd just lit.
Isabella sat at the console, and shadows crossed her face like old scars. She stared at the name blinking on the screen and almost laughed at the absurdity. Was this the girl who couldn't explain a basic system call? Who thought access equaled comprehension? Who didn't even realize some files weren't locked to keep people out, but to keep the system from tearing itself apart?
GDI wasn't a photo album to be casually thumbed through. It wasn't a legacy to be browsed through on a whim. It was structured. Balance. Tension is held in place by choices made in silence. Someone like Lizzy—filled with nostalgia and guided by her instincts—would never intentionally harm it. Instead, she might unknowingly cause its downfall simply because she doesn't realize the impact of her actions.
Isabella thought of the sentence Anna had said, quiet and unforgettable:
"Power isn't about what you can do. It's what you choose not to."
Lizzy never understood that. She acted, then justified. She opened what was sealed, not because it was time, but because she felt like it should be.
This wasn't just a breach. It was a deliberate provocation. A move dressed in memory, whispering without shame: "I'm back. Try and stop me."
A cold laugh escaped Isabella's lips. "You're back?" she muttered. "Good. Let's see how long you last. You think you're claiming a legacy—when all you've done is start cutting wires on a live bomb."
Isabella didn't ask for details. She didn't need to. If Lizzy had seen what she suspected, then this wasn't just a breach—it was a signal. Lizzy, impulsive as ever, would go straight to the one person she thought still owed her the truth.
Miles away, under the quiet hum of the upper finance tier, Nicholas had no idea she was coming. But she was already inside the building.
The chamber felt cold, despite the temperature. Glass walls breathed with data projections—real-time asset heatmaps, volatility curves, redacted account flows. None of it is ornamental. This was a room for people who believed numbers said more than words.
Nicholas stood alone, running an audit across old accounts linked to a dormant defense project. Nicholas worked late into the night, fingers moving methodically over the translucent interface as streams of financial data flickered before him. The same anomaly that had nagged him for weeks was still there—a subtle but persistent irregularity buried deep within GDI's shadow accounts. He wasn't sure what it meant yet, but it refused to be ignored. Tonight, he was determined to crack it open. He didn't hear Lizzy until she was already inside.
"You still work late," she said.
He glanced over, only mildly surprised. "Habit."
She took another step in, gaze flicking over the data. "Or hiding."
That made him pause.
"You always were good at assuming," he replied.
"I found something," Lizzy clenched her fists at her sides, "Something I don't think I was meant to see."
Nicolas set his tablet aside, eyes never leaving her.
"I'm listening."
"It was buried in a flagged archive. A will. Or a draft of one. One handwritten line: 'If Lizzy chooses to return, do not stop her.'"
Silence. No blinking data. Even the glass felt tense, holding back sound.
Nicholas nodded slowly. "So that line's what brought you back."
"It's what kept me here," she said. "Everyone else treats me like I've already been dismissed. But he didn't dismiss me, did he?"
Nicholas's voice dropped. "No. He didn't confirm you either."
"That's not the same."
"No," he agreed. "It's not."
She stepped closer, and her tone grew sharper. "You all talk around me like I'm made of glass. Like I'll break if I'm told the truth. So tell me now—who was I supposed to be in this family?"
Nicholas gave a small, tired smile. "You want to know?"
"I do," Lizzy replied.
"Then you need to understand who Anna was first." He swiped across a panel, dimming the data walls, replacing them with a slow-scroll dossier. Not files. Photos. A young Anna—dark blazer, clipped hair, notebook always under one arm.
"She wasn't trained for empathy," Nicholas said. "She was trained for execution. Zurich. Long, sterile conference rooms. The kind where numbers rule and empathy is a liability. Private sessions with risk managers who previously managed entire ghost funds. She could chart a tax loop through six countries by the time she was twenty. Do you know what she did when the Orion strike happened?"
Lizzy shook her head.
"She was nineteen. Your father was being questioned about offshore proxies. Everyone was scrambling. Anna didn't panic. She created a fictional holding entity in a defunct Swiss canton, then fabricated a decades-old merger to bury two directors under corporate inheritance law. It worked."
Lizzy's face hardened. "So she was cold. Good at burying things. And that made her worthy."
"It made her useful," Nicholas said. "She didn't ask if something was fair. She asked if it was traceable."
"And me?" Lizzy asked quietly. "What did I do that was so wrong?"
Nicholas didn't answer immediately. Then he said, "You made things personal."
She blinked. "Like what?"
"You took a systems diagnostics project and rewrote it to flag managers with emotional instability. You presented it as 'care-driven compliance.' You thought it would protect the team. But it flagged Olivia. Publicly."
"She was collapsing under pressure—"
"It wasn't your place," he snapped. "That wasn't protection. That was a moral judgment wrapped in amateur code."
Lizzy clenched her jaw but said nothing.
Nicholas softened slightly. "Look, you're not incompetent. You see things most people miss. Your act. That matters. But this company doesn't survive on instincts. It survives on discipline."
Lizzy stepped back, something shifting in her eyes. Not retreat—but clarity.
"So I wasn't passed over," she said slowly. "I was filtered out."
"No," Nicholas replied. "You were never in the plan."
Lizzy bit her lower lip—paused—and then slammed her palm on the console. The sound cracked like judgment in the sterile air. She wasn't trying to persuade him anymore.
"So you filtered me out for caring too much? For not being cold enough to inherit your silence?"
Nicholas didn't flinch. He just watched her, quietly.
"Well," she said, voice clipped but certain, "plans can be rewritten."
She turned without waiting for permission.
Nicholas didn't try to stop her. Maybe he knew. Maybe he finally saw what Anna had warned them about.
Plans can be rewritten.
And this time, she was the one holding the pen.
As she turned to leave, Nicholas called after her. "Olivia knows you're not just here to watch. She knows what you might do. That's why she's scared."
Lizzy paused. "Why?"
"Because you remind her of Anna," he said. "Before she learned to stop feeling."
A beat. Lizzy didn't turn around. "That's the version I'm keeping," she said.
And then she was gone.
The data streams kept flowing—cold and precise—but inside her, everything was fracturing. The logic she'd clung to dissolved, leaving only noise. No balance sheet could fix this. The system outside ran flawlessly, but inside, she was unraveling.