CHAPTER 274: A RIVAL AND A PARASITE

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. All those cases, every single one of them had been handled by Caldridge. And all those cases had vital evidence, assets and networks missing, disappearing into the ethos.

Of course this was not irrefutable proof that Caldridge had done this, but it was more than enough for eyebrows to be raised. No one else had the kind of power to sign off on the transfer of those assets.

So what was Caldridge doing with them? What would a man like him want with the illegal channels and assets that helped steal and launder billions of dollars.

Lilian sighed with pure exasperation and disbelief, seating back to recollect herself and gather all she’d just learnt.

Her heart was beating. Her mind grew heavy with memories of her working with Caldridge, seeing things now that she hadn’t seen then.

Could this be why he was going after Darren Steele? Did the Bitcoin Billionaire’s rise interest him so much that he wanted to take all that was his by branding it as illegal in some way.

If that was the case, then why was he stopping her from using TALON to its full extent to take Steele down?!

Then it snapped in her mind immediately. He knew that TALON gave access to all former records and that was what he was trying to stop her from reaching.

The very same thing she had now discovered.

Lilian facepalmed. ’I’ve been a fool.’

She thought for a moment before her fingers hovered over the keyboard again. Rather than typing, she paused. Her gaze on the chain of case closures that had nothing to do with Darren Steele. Cases stamped "CLOSED," "ASSETS CONFISCATED," "SYSTEMS DESTROYED." Cases overseen by Deputy Director Caldridge.

’Why would you do this, Caldridge? How could you do this?’

The silence pressed in. The faint buzz of the lights, the hum of the computers – they were the only sounds, amplifying the chaotic noise inside her head: Caldridge’s cold indictment, Steele’s insidious questions about the rot within the DFI, the hollow victory of Nevarro. The doubts weren’t whispers anymore; they were a cacophony.

Her hand moved almost of its own volition. It didn’t reach for the keyboard. It picked up her personal phone, sleek and black, lying beside a cold mug of forgotten coffee.

Her thumb found Darren Steele’s encrypted contact – a number she’d programmed in during the fevered early days of the hunt, never expecting to use it like this. She stared at the screen, the glow reflecting in her tired eyes.

Calling him was madness. But she couldn’t help it, she needed to speak to him.

She pressed call.

It rang. Once. Twice. Three times. She almost disconnected on the fourth ring when it signaled that he’d picked it.

First, she could hear his silent breathing and then his voice, smooth, alert despite the hour, and not as mocking as it usually sounded. "Agent Greaves. To what do I owe the... pleasure? Should I be recording this for my legal team?"

Lilian swallowed, her throat dry. She kept her voice low, controlled, but the strain was audible. "You implied things. About the Department. About Caldridge."

A pause. She could almost hear him shifting, perhaps leaning back in a leather chair somewhere far more comfortable than her ops cave. "I implied many things, Agent. You’ll need to be more specific. Or is this a fishing expedition with government resources?"

"Stop playing with me, Steele." The words came out sharper than intended, a crack in her composure.

"Why?" She almost felt him smile. "I love playing with you."

First, her eyes widened, then she narrowed them, composing herself. "You knew about my father. You mentioned him to get under my skin. And then in the bar, you talked about the sinners hiding in plain sight. Why?"

Darren paused again. She pictured him swirling a drink, that infuriating half-smile playing on his lips. "Why indeed? Maybe I just enjoy watching a sharp mind grapple with inconvenient truths. Or maybe," his voice dropped, losing some of its playful edge, "maybe I’m just trying to help you out. But why do you ask? Is the water getting murky in your pristine DFI pond, Agent Greaves?"

She didn’t answer immediately, only scoffed. "You want me to believe you’re some kind of whistleblower? After everything you’ve been doing? Everything you’re hiding?"

"Believe what you want," he countered, his tone shifting again, becoming almost conversational. "I never claimed sainthood. But I’ve done anything illegal. The only thing I’m guilty of is knowing the difference between a rival and a parasite. So tell me, did you see something or not?"

Lilian’s eyes were narrowed, teeth were clenched. "It’s none of your business."

"Oh come on! Don’t be a bore! In all your digging with that impressive TALON system... have you started to see a pattern yet? Could we say that there are things that are ’missing’?"

Lilian’s breath hitched. He knew. This bastard knew about this, and he must have known that she would go searching. How? The chill that had been creeping up her spine turned to ice. "This conversation is over," she stated, her voice tight.

"Of course," he replied, the faint amusement returning. "Sweet dreams, Agent. Watch your b—."

The line went dead. Lilian lowered the phone slowly, her knuckles white. Why does this guy get under her skin so easily?! He hadn’t even denied anything, and only ended up nudging her deeper into the maze.

Now she was curious.

Now she wanted to know what Caldridge was up to.

She spent days working because of this. Night after night, long after the DFI Headquarters emptied, Lilian remained, a ghost haunting her own office. The blue glow of her terminal became her sun and moon.

She wasn’t chasing Steele’s phantom trails anymore. She was tunneling into the DFI’s own archives, using TALON’s illicit root access like a crowbar on rusted vaults.

She went through case after case. Over and over. And all of them had the same problem. She made sure to compile them as evidence.

Case: Project ArkOne (2007). A sprawling money-laundering syndicate dismantled by Caldridge’s task force. Assets seized: proprietary ledger servers, cold storage accounts holding millions, a network of offshore payment nodes.

Officially, it wrote: DESTROYED. Incineration certificates filed. Video logs archived. The standard procedure that she was used to.

But Lilian drilled deeper.

She pulled the raw server logs from the DFI evidence locker network. Searched for the unique digital fingerprints of the ArkOne servers after their supposed destruction date. Nothing. She cross-referenced the account IDs against the Black Vault’s monitoring feeds.

There was nothing. It was all a magician’s trick made to look like the assets and networks were destroyed when they were actually moved to a secret location.

And the routing paths of all these transfers kept brushing against a digital entity tagged in internal security logs only as EXILE_REF.

EXILE.

The name surfaced like oil on water. There were no case files. No organization chart. No mention in any official DFI bulletin or budget report. Yet, it was a specter haunting the backend of seized criminal enterprises. A ghost in the DFI’s own machine.

What was EXILE actually?

Lilian couldn’t wait to find out.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she typed, pulling data from another case, then another. Valkyrie Trading. Cerberus Consortium. The pattern solidified. Seized assets – servers, software, network infrastructure, wallets – marked destroyed or vaulted, yet showing faint, illicit signs of life.

And the phantom fingerprints, the digital breadcrumbs, consistently led back to EXILE.

Clearly this was a more powerful association. They weren’t even hunted by the DFI. Not in any file Lilian checked. EXILE was a parasite feeding on the DFI’s victories, using the carcasses of dismantled empires to build its own.

Suddenly, Lilian was snapped from her thoughts by someone clearing their throat.

Her hand flew to the keyboard, slamming a command to blacken the secondary monitor.

Cho stood silhouetted in her office doorway, his face etched with concern and fatigue. "Lilian? It’s almost two AM. Again. What are you doing?"