CHAPTER 11: THE NIGHT OWL'S WHISPERS

The Night Owl Cafe smelled of burnt coffee, day-old grease, and desperation. It was a 24/7 establishment tucked away in the shadow of Harbor City's bustling port, a haven for dockworkers, insomniacs, and the occasional plainclothes detective. Julian chose a booth in the back, the cracked vinyl cool against his skin.

Celeste Vaughn slid into the seat opposite him, placing a thermal mug on the table with a soft thud. She looked more at home here than in her own apartment, her sharp eyes scanning the room with the practiced ease of a predator.

A young waitress with tired eyes and a name tag that read "Mina" came over.

"The usual, Detective?" she asked, her voice weary.

"Yeah, Mina. Black coffee," Julian said. "And whatever she's having."

"Nothing for me," Celeste said, tapping her mug. "I bring my own. Tastes less like regret."

Mina managed a weak smile. "Tell me about it. Hey, you haven't seen Old Man Hemlock around, have you? Used to come in every night around 3 a.m. Hasn't shown up in a week. Weird."

"Probably just found a new spot," Julian said, though he made a mental note of the name. In Harbor City, even small disappearances could mean something.

"Yeah, maybe," Mina sighed, then shuffled off to get his coffee.

The brief interaction hung in the air, a small slice of the city's everyday tragedy, a world away from the gleaming towers where their targets resided.

"So," Celeste began, pulling a thin laptop from her bag. "I spent the night digging through my old Liana Meng files. After you left, I remembered something. An anonymous source who contacted me back in 2016, two years after the accident. He was a low-level technician at Sterling Dynamics. He was terrified, said he was being transferred, but he wanted to get a message out."

She turned the laptop towards him. On the screen was a transcript of an encrypted chat.

SOURCE: It wasn't an accident. They were testing something on her. A protocol.

CELESTE: What kind of protocol?

SOURCE: Psychological. Auditory triggers. They used a piece of music. Something from a ballet. They called it the 'Phoenix's Waltz'. It was designed to induce a state of extreme suggestibility. Something went wrong. She fought it.

CELESTE: Can you prove this?

SOURCE: The research data was on a private server. Codenamed 'Icarus'. It's probably been wiped. But the lead researcher... a Dr. Valeria Wu... she was obsessed. She kept her own backups.

"Dr. Valeria Wu," Julian breathed, the name hitting him like a physical blow. It was the first concrete link they had between the old case and the new. "And 'Icarus'... a server."

"Aptly named," Celeste said dryly. "A project that flew too close to the sun. My source vanished after this chat. I could never find him again."

Julian's mind was racing. Dr. Wu. She was the key. If she kept records, those records would be the smoking gun they needed. But a high-level researcher in a black-ops project wouldn't be easy to find, let alone persuade.

"Kian Huo's sister, Seraphina, is the one running the project now," Julian said, sharing the intel he'd gathered. "She's more ruthless than he is. And the big event, the foundation launch gala, is on November 12th. It's their coming-out party. They'll have their guard down."

"No, they won't," Celeste countered, her gaze sharp. "They'll have their guard at its highest. A fortress. But every fortress has a back door. We don't go after Dr. Wu. She's a ghost, buried deep in their R&D labs. We go after the infrastructure that supports her."

She started typing, her fingers flying across the keyboard. She pulled up corporate registration documents, shareholder reports, and personnel charts she'd acquired over the years.

"Every corporation has an underbelly, Detective. The people who keep the lights on. IT, HR, accounting... the ones nobody pays attention to. We need to find someone who worked on the 'Icarus' server. A disgruntled employee. A technician who was fired. Someone who saw something they weren't supposed to see and is still angry about it."

"That's a needle in a haystack," Julian said.

"Well, I'm the best damn needle-finder in this city," Celeste retorted. She pointed to a name on a personnel list from five years ago. "Look here. Elias Qian. Chief Financial Officer of Huo Enterprises. He's been with the family for twenty years. A loyal soldier."

"But look at his recent stock sales. He's been divesting small amounts of Huo stock, quietly, over the past six months. That's not the move of a happy employee. That's the move of a man building an escape hatch."

"He's too high-level. He'll never talk."

"Maybe not to you," Celeste said, a predatory glint in her eyes. "But maybe he'll talk to an anonymous journalist who just happens to have evidence of his offshore bank accounts. Everyone has a weakness, Detective. You just have to find the right lever to press."

She closed the laptop. "You keep digging into the security layout for the gala. Find me a floor plan. I'm going to find a way to talk to Mr. Qian."

The hunt had begun. They were no longer just looking at the past. They were actively building a weapon to shatter the present.