Chapter 791: Jack’s Last Message "Someone with the kind of budget that makes DARPA jealous and the kind of tradecraft that makes wetwork look amateur," she confirmed. "This wasn’t a drunk guard looking the other way. This was choreographed. Surgical. Someone wanted Trent breathing civilian air and was willing to black out half a city block to ensure the encore went flawlessly. "Either that, or Trent’s been reading too much sci-fi and actually cracked teleportation Or whoever helped him can teleport. Portals are suddenly on the table, and I hate how much sense they’re starting to make... if that is the case, then, we’re all about to start wearing tinfoil hats ironically." Charlotte had gone the approximate colour of month-old yoghurt. "Why on earth would anyone bother springing him? He’s a mid-tier campus predator. A nobody with a grudge and a bad haircut. He hurt Emma. That’s it. He’s not exactly Pablo Escobar’s secret protégé." I schooled my face into something neutral and dropped my voice to the private channel. "Can you back-trace the conductor of this little symphony?" "Negative. They pirouetted through every trap I laid without so much as scuffing their shoes. I’m very good, Master. They were better—at least today. Miracles are pending firmware update." So this wasn’t some lucky inmate exploiting a glitch in the matrix. This was premeditated theatre—lighting rig, sound design, getaway driver with an engineering degree. The only remaining questions worth a damn were who had written the cheque and why they’d cashed it on Trent of all people. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮 Normally ARIA treats the digital exhaust of modern life like a blood trail in snow. Phone in a pocket? Geofenced. ATM lens catching half a cheekbone? Facial match in under ninety seconds. Corner-store CCTV of a man buying gum? Movement prediction hits 99.8% confidence inside six hours. Trent Holloway had left less trace than a rumour in a monastery. No footprint. No flicker. No quantum breadcrumb for even a god-tier AI to sniff. That level of erasure isn’t luck. That’s homework. Someone had studied ARIA’s playbook and brought red ink. Then the universe decided one body blow wasn’t enough foreplay. "There’s more," ARIA said, because naturally there fucking was. "Of course there is. Define ’more.’" The hologram pivoted. A face appeared—smug in that way only generational wealth and zero accountability can achieve. Harold. Amanda’s former walking merger document. The controlling prick her family had tried to auction her off to like a particularly expensive piece of corporate real estate. After she walked, his empire didn’t collapse so much as experience a very public, very humiliating controlled demolition—Wells Family money vanished, investors fled like rats from a five-star yacht on fire, assets were fire-saled. Last week he’d been a rich phantom drifting between numbered accounts. Last week he stopped existing on any ledger. "Complete digital flatline logged Tuesday last week, 23:47," ARIA continued. "Miami apartment found showroom-clean this morning—no struggle, no packed suitcase screaming ’I’m out,’ no goodbye whiskey ring on the glass table. Bank accounts untouched. Phone died in the living room. Passport and documents missing but never scanned at any checkpoint, airport, or border. No credit-card hits. No ATM pings. No flight manifests. He didn’t leave. He simply... ceased to be observable." Madison’s eyes found mine across the table. She didn’t need audio; she could read homicide in the tension of my jaw from across the room. "What is it, honey?" she asked, voice quiet but braced. No point playing coy. Not with my women. "Two men linked to us just pulled the world’s most expensive disappearing act," I said, loud enough for everyone. "Trent escaped prison last night as you know. Now Amanda’s ex-fiancé evaporated from Miami in the same goddamn window." The silence that followed had weight—like the moment before a guillotine blade decides it’s had enough of waiting. "That’s not coincidence," Luna said softly. "That’s someone moving pieces." "Exactly." My watch buzzed like it personally hated me. Tommy’s name lit the screen with timing so perfect it felt like narrative sabotage. I answered. "Talk to me, brother." "Dude." Tommy—my best friend, the man who’d stared down worse than this without flinching—sounded like someone had just told him the sun wasn’t coming up tomorrow. "Jack’s gone. Word’s spreading fast. Connor just called me with the details—his dad already rang the cops. Left some kind of note. Vanished last night. Peter, there’s a fucking video. You need to see this. Right now." Cold spread through my chest like spilled liquid nitrogen. "Send it." "Already did. Check your messages." I flicked the watch face. Located the file. "ARIA, living-room TV. Play it." The screen woke. Jack Morrison filled it—sitting in what looked like his bedroom, eyes red and swollen, cheeks streaked with tears that had clearly been rehearsed in front of a mirror until they looked authentic. He was giving the performance of a lifetime, the kind that wins awards if the judges are drunk or easily moved. "To everyone watching this," he began, voice thick and trembling in exactly the right places, "I want to start by saying I’m sorry. For everything. For every person I’ve hurt, every woman I’ve degraded, every moment of pain I caused because I was too broken and too angry to see what I was turning into." He wiped his eyes with perfect cinematic timing—right on the emotional beat. "My past crimes were exposed recently. Everything I did. Everything I am. And I lost... everything. My college prospects. My football career. My future. My friends. My family’s respect." A practiced sob caught in his throat, perfectly placed. "I can’t stay here anymore. I can’t face the people I’ve hurt. I can’t walk through Lincoln Heights knowing every single person who looks at me sees a monster wearing my old number." The words were too clean. Too structured. Someone had written them, fed them to him line by line, and made him drill until the delivery sounded almost human. "So I’m leaving," Jack continued, voice cracking on cue. "I’m taking time to atone. To try to become better. To figure out how the hell to live with what I’ve done." Then—just for a heartbeat—his face changed. The remorseful mask slipped, and something cold, furious, and still very much in control looked straight through the lens. "Peter Carter."