Level Zero
LOCATION: CROSSTECH PENTHOUSE — SOPHIA'S BEDROOM — 4:03 A.M.
Raven hadn't slept.
Not really.
She'd just laid there in Sophia's king-sized coffin of a bed, draped in thousand-thread-count silk that felt more like a snare than a comfort. The penthouse around her whispered in soft mechanical sighs—hidden servers breathing behind the walls, sensors watching without blinking.
Living here felt like sleeping inside the brain of something waiting to wake.
Barefoot and pulse-thin, she sat cross-legged now at the foot of the bed, Sophia Blake's sleek obsidian iPad resting in her lap. The device was warm. Breathing. Almost smug.
She entered the override Theo had given her.
A whisper of code. A backdoor long buried.
[Accessing CrossTech Executive Ledger…]
[Decrypting Node: Finance — Core Pathways…]
[Error: Level Zero Access Required.]
Raven frowned.
Level Zero?
That wasn't real. Not in any official documentation. Not in any chain of command.
She was Level One—Chief Financial Officer. The second-most powerful executive at CrossTech. She should've been the final wall. And yet the system stared back at her like a locked vault smirking.
Then something flickered.
A tiny heartbeat of data. A subroutine, half-suffocated beneath audit logs and asset reports.
PROJECT MOTHER: Asset Health, Loyalty, and Surveillance.
Raven's breath caught.
[Unauthorized Attempt Logged.]
[Alert Sent to: MOTHER]
The cursor blinked.
And for a moment—so did her heart.
What the hell was "Mother"?
She stared at the screen, pulse ticking like countdown code. This wasn't a firewall. It was a gatekeeper. Something buried so deep, even she hadn't known to look for it.
And now… it knew she had looked.
She shut the iPad. Slowly. Carefully. Like it might bite.
Underneath the expensive perfume of the sheets, she could smell it now.
Code. Secrets. Rot.
---
LOCATION: CROSSTECH PENTHOUSE — RESTRICTED WING — 4:47 A.M.
The floor plans Theo had decrypted weren't just blueprints. They were a confession.
According to official CrossTech specs, the penthouse ended at the third hall. But Theo's map showed more—hidden partitions, ghost-coded panels, a corridor that didn't exist on paper but hummed beneath the architecture like a secret trying not to be heard.
Raven moved slowly through the quiet opulence. Even her own footsteps felt intrusive.
The hallway curved behind a glass wall that had once held wine. A flick of code, and the cellar dissolved—revealing a matte steel corridor, slick with cold light.
No cameras.
No security panel.
Just silence.
At the end of the hall stood a door—thick, seamless, and reinforced with something that shimmered like obsidian under starlight. Not just biometric. This thing looked sacrificial.
A plaque above it read, in delicate script etched by hand:
"Authorized Soul Required."
Raven stared.
Her thumb hovered over the scanplate. She hadn't expected this—not emotion, not hesitation. But the air shifted around her, like the hallway remembered things she didn't. She felt like she was trespassing through someone's grief.
She placed her hand on the plate.
The door didn't open.
It shuddered.
And then—
—FLASH.
Her knees buckled. Her vision swam.
A girl's laughter. A voice. Hers—but not.
A mother's perfume. A crash of glass. Hands that weren't hers, reaching for someone who was already falling.
Sophia's memory.
It hit her like a shard to the skull. Uninvited. Unforgiving.
The door clicked.
Then hissed open with a sound like breath escaping a grave.
Raven stumbled forward, blinking away static in her mind.
Inside… was a room wrapped in silence. Darkness lapped the edges like oil. A single terminal sat in the center, its screen already active. A video paused at the first frame.
A woman—Sophia Blake—stood in the penthouse.
Alive.
Afraid.
This wasn't a record.
This was surveillance.
This was the last footage of Sophia.
She hadn't died peacefully.
The terminal's screen blinked, ready to play.
Raven stared at the paused image—Sophia's lips parted mid-word, her eyes wide, her hand reaching toward the camera like she'd just realized it was watching her. Or that someone was.
She didn't press play.
Because someone else moved in the penthouse.
A footstep.
Not hers.
Soft. Careful. Too careful.
Raven stepped back from the terminal, letting the shadows claim it again. She slipped out of the hidden hall the way she'd come, heart drumming, memory burning. Whoever was there… she wasn't about to find out dressed in borrowed silk and half a soul.
---
LOCATION: CROSSTECH — CFO'S OFFICE — LATER THAT MORNING
The windows wore their usual skyline disguise—polished reflections and the illusion of transparency. Raven sat behind the desk like she belonged there. She was starting to get too good at pretending.
Sophia Blake's iPad buzzed once, discreetly.
> 🔐 ENCRYPTED MESSAGE FROM: M-THREAD
"CrossTech isn't a company. It's a cage. You're just the prettiest prisoner."
She inhaled sharply.
Another ping. This one with coordinates.
"The Glass Garden. 11PM tonight. VIP level. Come alone. You need to see what she saw."
Raven minimized the message, glancing toward the camera embedded in her office's light fixture. It didn't move, but she'd already learned it didn't need to.
Sophia hadn't just been a CFO.
She'd been a target.
And now? So was she.
---
LOCATION: THE GLASS GARDEN — VIP FLOOR — 11:06 P.M.
It didn't smell like danger. That was the worst part.
It smelled like floral perfume, expensive smoke, and secrets dipped in champagne.
The Glass Garden sat atop one of the old Core District's oldest towers, shrouded by augmented ivy and walls of real glass that shimmered with one-way privacy filters. Everyone inside was wealthy, or dangerous, or both.
Raven walked in dressed to match—swan-black gown, a fake smile, and eyes that said don't look too close. She found Theo in a shadowed corner booth, sipping something violet and illegal.
He looked up at her with tired eyes and a grin that didn't quite reach them.
"You made it," he said. "Did the machine let you out, or did you pick the lock?"
Raven sat. "Both."
He slid a datapad across the table.
"People who ask too many questions about CrossTech end up erased. Like, not just fired or jailed. Gone. Sophia wasn't just a suit—she was looking into something under the company. Something called—"
He tapped the datapad.
[PROJECT MOTHER – Asset Anomalies: Subject SB-01]
SB-01.
Sophia Blake.
Raven felt something in her chest twist.
"She went to war with something she couldn't name," Theo murmured. "You're already in the blast radius."
She didn't look away. "Then I guess I better find the trigger."