The Last Goodbye (Citadel Book 1) by Eldon Farrell

Author:Eldon Farrell [Farrell, Eldon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ascendant Ink
Published: 2022-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

DELUN watched the ticker scroll past along the bottom of the image overlaid on his window. It held no good news for him. Since close of market on Friday, shares in The Citadel had tumbled a further two percent. They were down another half percent in morning trading.

Investor confidence in us is shaken. The threat of economic disruption from further crackdowns, coupled with a perceived security weakness, is hurting us.

He squeezed the stress ball in his right hand tighter.

The board won’t be happy if this continues for much longer. We’re already down close to five percent this year. If we can’t restore the market’s confidence, Keung Lau will soon demand my full attention.

He turned away. Despite the peril of displeasing the chairman of the board, Delun couldn’t seem to muster any real concern for his situation. His thoughts remained on Rebecca and the approaching anniversary of Sarah’s death. He gave the little rubber ball another squeeze.

The opaque glass wall of his office cleared. Iris pushed the door open to arrive for their morning meeting.

Delun waved for her to sit as he pulled out his own chair and settled into it. He squeezed the ball twice more. “Let’s keep this brief. What do you have to report?”

Iris sat across the desk from him. She kept her back stiff and her hands folded on her lap. Confidence flowed off her without a trace of nervousness. It gave him hope of receiving good news.

“Wiley Ong logged in to Eden last night.”

Delun tossed the stress ball to his left hand. “I assumed him to be smarter than that.”

“He tried to mask his ink but failed in the attempt.”

“We have him in custody, then?”

Her shoulders slumped ever so slightly, and his hopes were dashed.

Iris cleared her throat. “He managed to elude our forces. Our tracking lost him soon after he logged on. While we relocated him, it was not in time to prevent him from signing off.”

“How could his signal be lost inside our network?”

“It seems we have another security concern. Someone concealed an entire building from our view. In fact, the location exists on no maps of Eden, and no tracking is possible from inside the perimeter. A true dead spot.”

Delun tightened his grip on the ball.

Iris said, “Worse yet, my men reported seeing Frank Ong inside the courtyard. They gave chase but lost him in a labyrinth of secret underground passageways. He hid from us within our own network.” She shook her head. “The audacity on display here. And if Wiley hadn’t unknowingly led us there, we’d never have been the wiser. I recommend we shut Eden down so my analysts can perform a full sweep.”

Delun stared at her. “For how long?”

“There are billions of lines of code to sift through. It could take upwards of a week to parse through it all.”

He showed her his right hand. “That won’t be necessary.”

“With respect, Frank Ong used one of these rabbit holes to remain hidden from us. We have no way of knowing how many more dead spots exist on the map.

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