CHAPTER 275: EXILE

"Work, Cho," she replied, forcing her voice level, turning slightly in her chair to face him. The blue light from her primary Steele-focused screen was the only illumination. "Just catching up. Steele’s networks are... complex."

Cho didn’t move. His gaze flickered towards the darkened secondary monitor, then back to her face. He stepped fully into the office, closing the door softly behind him. The click was unnervingly loud.

"Don’t insult my intelligence," he said quietly, his usual easy going demeanor replaced by grim seriousness. "I saw the logs. The access patterns. The queries. You weren’t working on Steele. You’re tunneling into Caldridge’s old cases. Into Level Nine flagged material. Lilian..." He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the back of a visitor chair. "This isn’t investigation. This is professional suicide. What are you doing messing with the boss’s special jobs?"

Lilian’s pretense vanished and she narrowed her eyes. "Someone has to look, Cho," she said, her voice low and fierce. "My investigation led me here so I’m following the trail. Something is going on and Caldridge is..." She paused.

She couldn’t say the word stealing. It felt too monumental, too terrifying. And she couldn’t tell Cho about what she had seen yet. She couldn’t trust him. "I’m just making sure I have all corners checked."

Cho’s expression was pained. "Heck are you talking about? TALON is used to fight corruption, Lilian. Not to wage war against the Department itself! You’re throwing away everything – your career, your reputation, maybe your freedom – on a hunch?"

"It’s not a hunch!" The words burst out, sharper than she intended. She took a shaky breath, lowering her voice. "It’s a pattern. A trail. And I know I’ve been out of my depth for the past few days but I’m certain about this! And if I turn away from it... if I just keep playing the good soldier chasing the designated villain..."

She looked down at her hands, clenched in her lap. "Then what was it all for, Cho? The reason I do this is because of my father. And because I believe in the idea of it. If the idea is rotten..." She trailed off, the unspoken question hanging: ’Then who have I been all these years?’

Cho stared at her, the conflict clear on his face – loyalty to his friend warring with the instinct for self-preservation and institutional loyalty. "Just be careful, Lilian. But don’t say I didn’t warn you." He didn’t wait for a reply, turning and slipping back out the door, leaving her alone with the accusing blue glow and the suffocating weight of her crusade.

Lilian returned to the work and let out a sigh.

Days bled together, a blur of tense meetings maintaining the facade of the Steele investigation, stolen hours in the dead of night chasing phantoms. The strain was etching itself onto Lilian’s face. Sleep was a memory. Trust was a luxury she couldn’t afford, not even with Cho’s lingering, worried glances.

She was deep in the labyrinth again, tracing the convoluted path of a shell corporation linked to the network. She used TALON to parse layers of obfuscation, cross-referencing encrypted ownership logs against known EXILE_REF markers.

At the same time, she made sure to avoid Caldridge. She didn’t know how she would act if he spoke to her or asked her questions. All she did was work; Her eyes burned, her neck ached, the stale office air felt thick enough to choke on.

But one day, out of nowhere, a notification chimed softly on her computer. Someone had sent her something. Her breath caught. It was an access confirmation. For a file. A specific, highly restricted file she had requested weeks ago through official channels regarding ArkOne asset disposition. Request denied. Appeal denied. Flagged as unnecessary.

And now, inexplicably, it was open. Access granted. Sitting in her secure inbox like a coiled serpent.

That had to be a trap. That was what screamed in her mind. It had Caldridge’s fingerprints all over it. A test? A provocation? A way to finally nail her for unauthorized access? Her hand hovered over the mouse, trembling slightly. Every instinct told her to delete it, to purge the logs, to run.

But the need to know, to see the rot laid bare, was stronger. She clicked.

The file unfolded. It wasn’t just ArkOne. It was a consolidated audit trail – unofficial, buried deep – cross-referencing over a dozen major cases Caldridge had closed over the past seven years. Valkyrie. Madrigal. Cerberus. ArkOne. Others she hadn’t even unearthed yet.

The pattern wasn’t just hinted at; it was meticulously documented. Dates of asset seizures. Dates of official "destruction" or "vaulting." Dates, mere days or weeks later, of corporate registrations for new shell entities in obscure jurisdictions. The board members were names plucked from obscurity, fronts. The funding sources were labyrinths.

But the digital signatures... the cryptographic fingerprints embedded in the operating systems of the seized servers, the unique protocols of the laundered payment channels... they were all there.

Reactivated. Repurposed. And they all traced back, through layers of encryption and proxy networks, to a central, decentralized hub identified only by a chillingly simple tag: ’EXILE_CORE’.

The report included network diagrams. It showed how the supposedly destroyed infrastructure had been quietly rerouted, integrated into a vast, shadow financial network operating parallel to the legitimate world.

A network designed for high-volume, untraceable movement of capital. For sanctions evasion. For funding black operations. For pure, unadulterated profit beyond the reach of any law.

And the access logs... IP addresses. Timestamps. Geolocation pings placing the administrative commands squarely within the DFI’s own secure internal network during Caldridge’s working hours. Digital signatures, masked but bearing the structural hallmarks of Level Nine encryption keys. Keys held by one man.

Deputy Director Warren Caldridge.

Lilian stared at the screen. The words blurred. The diagrams swam. The air vanished from the room. A cold, sickening wave washed over her, starting at her scalp and flooding down to her numb fingertips. Disbelief warred with a horrifying, dawning certainty.

She had been working for the enemy all this time. Her entire world was completely dismantled.

Caldridge wasn’t just dirty. He was EXILE. He had built his shadow empire using the plundered remains of the criminals he was paid to stop. The DFI wasn’t more than compromised at this point; it was the weapon and the shield for the monster it pretended to hunt.

Lilian choked. She wanted to throw up. Almost wanted to even cry. Everything she believed in, everything she fought for, her father’s legacy... it all crumbled to ash at that moment.

Then, she heard a sharp ding.

It came from her personal phone, lying face-up beside the keyboard. Reflexively, her tear-blurred eyes flicked down.

The screen lit up with a notification from CryptoTracker, the innocuous app she used to monitor market fluctuations out of professional habit.

’FuglyDuckling has purchased Bitcoin worth $2 million dollars.’

The numbers glared up at her. Two million dollars. In Bitcoin. Right now.

She just stared at it, not even caring anymore about this enemy she once hated.

’Whatever you’re up to, Darren Steele, that would have to wait.’ She turned to the monitor. ’There’s a worse sinner who I have to stop first.’