Zara stared at her laptop, the glow of the screen painting her face in pale blue.
The password worked.
Inside the cloud drive, Theo had left a goldmine folders filled with documents, spreadsheets, scanned letters, and even surveillance footage. Names. Codes. Transfers. Payments.
And one folder labeled simply: "Foundry Core."
She clicked it.
Jaxon moved beside her, holding his breath.
Inside were seven names. Powerful ones.
Politicians. CEOs. A former principal. And at the very bottom…
Victor Blackthorne.
Zara's hands clenched into fists. "He's not just a piece of the puzzle. He built the whole board."
Jaxon didn't speak. He looked like someone had carved a hole into his chest. "I always knew he was ruthless. But this…"
Zara opened a video file next. Hidden camera footage grainy, but clear.
It showed a group of men in suits, seated around a long table in a dark room. Victor at the head.
"…we cannot allow her to continue digging," one of them said. "This girl, Zara, she's worse than Isla. She has fire. Loyalty. People believe her."
Victor's response was cold: "Then we extinguish her. Quietly."
Zara slammed the laptop shut.
She was done hiding.
The next morning, she and Jaxon met with one person they knew could help: Zara's tech-savvy journalism professor, Ms. Elara Quinn.
Ms. Quinn wasn't just a teacher. She was an ex-reporter, one who had been blacklisted for chasing a scandal involving elite education rings.
She listened in silence as Zara laid it all out Theo's disappearance, the vault, the footage.
Then she smiled grimly.
"You're about to start a war."
Zara nodded. "Good. It's one they've been winning for too long."
Ms. Quinn tapped her chin. "We need a plan. If you drop this the wrong way, they'll bury it. And you."
Jaxon stepped in. "What if we go live? Expose everything in real time. They won't have time to react or spin it."
Ms. Quinn considered it. "Dangerous. But effective. We'll need backup files. Mirrors. An audience already watching."
Zara straightened. "Then we make them watch."
Later that day, an anonymous social media account went live:
@UnmaskTheFoundry
First post: a grainy still of Victor Blackthorne from the surveillance tape. Captioned:
"He calls it legacy. We call it a crime. #TheFoundryExposed"
Within minutes, it began to spread.
By midnight, it was viral.
And somewhere in the shadows, Victor Blackthorne watched it all unfold on his screen silent and still, until he finally whispered:
"They've declared war."