The days before the gala passed in a blur of preparation, each hour consumed by the meticulous work of building a case that would withstand the inevitable counterattack. Ethan slept in the evidence room, waking to the hum of fluorescent lights and the shuffle of analysts cataloguing documents, his dreams populated by stadium crowds and tearing ligaments and the cold eyes of men who measured human worth in spreadsheets.
On Saturday morning, five days before the takedown, Anya appeared in the doorway of the evidence room with an expression that Ethan had learned to recognise as the precursor to bad news.
"We have a problem," she said. "Dreyer has gone dark."
Vasquez looked up from her laptop, her face tightening. "Define 'gone dark.'"
"He didn't show up for his shift at the Sanctuary's headquarters this morning. His apartment in the financial district is empty—no signs of a struggle, but his personal effects are gone. His phone is off, his credit cards haven't been used in eighteen hours, and his passport is no longer in the drawer where our surveillance team photographed it three days ago."
"He's running," Marchetti said. "He knows something."
"The question is what." Anya crossed to the whiteboard and tapped Dreyer's photograph, which was connected by a web of red string to the faces of Voss, Halder, and the Swiss delegation. "We've been monitoring his communications since the night of the preliminary gala. He made three calls in the past forty-eight hours that concern me. One to a number in the Cayvino Islands that we've linked to Meridian Development Partners. One to an unregistered mobile in Geneva. And one to a number right here in Karst—a number belonging to a man named Lars Corrigan."
The name hit Ethan like a physical blow. "Corrigan? Martin Corrigan's son?"
"His nephew. Lars Corrigan, age thirty-four, employed at the Valdorian Financial Oversight Authority as a mid-level data analyst. He's been with the Authority for six years. His uncle is your former supervisor."
Ethan remembered Corrigan—the man who had warned him to be careful, who had told him the Sanctuary had friends in the building, who had seemed so tired and so cautious. Martin Corrigan had known about the investigation from the beginning. Had he passed that information to his nephew? Had the nephew passed it to Dreyer?
"Bring Lars Corrigan in for questioning," Marchetti said, her voice cold. "Now. If there's a leak in this building, I want it plugged before it can do any more damage."
Anya nodded and disappeared into the corridor. Ethan stood motionless, his mind churning through the implications. If Dreyer had known about the investigation—if he had been feeding information to the Sanctuary's inner circle—then Voss and Kessler might already be preparing their escape. The Swiss delegation might already be destroying evidence. The entire takedown might already be compromised.
"We need to accelerate the timeline again," Ethan said. "If Dreyer has warned them—"
"We can't accelerate further," Marchetti cut him off. "The AG's office needs time to coordinate the arrests. We have international warrants that require liaison with law enforcement in six countries. Moving too fast is as dangerous as moving too slow."
"More dangerous," Vasquez added. "If we execute the warrants before all the pieces are in place, the prosecution collapses and everyone we've arrested walks free. Voss, Halder, Kessler—they'll disappear and rebuild somewhere else. We'll have sacrificed Aldrich and Dahl and everyone else for nothing."
Ethan forced himself to breathe, to think, to push down the panic that was clawing at his chest. "What about the Swiss delegation? If they're spooked, they'll be on the first flight out of Karst."
"Anya's team has them under constant surveillance," Vasquez said. "So far, they've shown no signs of preparing to leave. They're still scheduled to meet with Voss tomorrow morning and with the Sanctuary's legal team on Monday. If they were running, they'd have moved by now."
"Unless they're waiting for something. Or someone."
The room fell silent. Outside the window, the grey Karst sky was beginning to spit snow again, the flakes swirling against the glass like the ghosts of everything that had already been lost.
Martin Corrigan was brought to the Authority building at two o'clock that afternoon, escorted by two of Anya's operatives who treated him with the careful neutrality of professionals who were not yet sure if he was a suspect or a witness. He looked older than Ethan remembered, the lines on his face deeper, the weariness in his eyes more pronounced. He sat in the interrogation room with his hands folded on the table before him, staring at the metal surface as though it might contain the answers to questions he had not yet been asked.
Ethan and Marchetti entered the room and took seats across from him. The recording equipment was already running, a red light blinking in the corner of the ceiling.
"Martin," Marchetti began, her voice surprisingly gentle, "you've been with the Authority for twenty-three years. In all that time, you've never been the subject of an internal investigation. I'd like to keep it that way. But we need to understand your relationship with Lars Corrigan and what you may have told him about the Sanctuary investigation."
Corrigan looked up, his eyes meeting Ethan's for a brief moment before dropping back to the table. "Lars is my sister's boy. I got him the job here six years ago—nothing senior, just data entry. He's a good kid. Quiet. Hardworking. What's he done?"
"We don't know yet. What we do know is that he's been in contact with Marcus Dreyer, a senior operative in the Sanctuary of Divine Grace, at least once in the past forty-eight hours. We know that Dreyer has now fled. And we know that you were aware of the Sanctuary investigation before it became public knowledge within the department."
Corrigan's face went pale, the colour draining from his cheeks like water from a sink. "I never told Lars anything about the investigation. I swear. I never told anyone. The only person I talked to was you, Ethan, when I warned you to be careful. That was it."
"Did Lars know you were working on the Sanctuary audit?"
A long pause. Corrigan's hands began to tremble slightly. "He might have. I don't know. He came over for dinner a few weeks ago—my wife's birthday—and I might have mentioned something about a big case at work. I don't remember exactly what I said. I'd had a few drinks. I wasn't thinking."
"What did you tell him?"
"I don't remember. Something about a charity audit. Something about it being bigger than it looked. I didn't give him details. I wouldn't have given him details."
Marchetti leaned forward, her voice dropping. "Martin, Dreyer is a Tier Two asset in a criminal organisation that has killed at least three people we know of—probably many more. If your nephew has been feeding him information, your nephew is in very serious danger. The only way to help him now is to tell us everything you know."
Corrigan stared at her, his eyes wide, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps. "Lars wouldn't... he's not... he's a good kid. He wouldn't get mixed up in something like that."
"What about his gambling?" Ethan asked quietly. "I remember you mentioned it once. Two years ago, when we were working on the Mercia fraud case. You said your nephew had debts. You said you'd helped him pay them off."
The silence in the room was absolute. Corrigan's face crumpled, and for a moment Ethan thought the man might break down entirely. Then he straightened in his chair, his jaw tightening, some reserve of strength rising to the surface.
"There was a man," Corrigan said, his voice barely above a whisper. "About eighteen months ago. Lars owed money—a lot of money—to some people in the Thornwood district. Loan sharks, I thought. I gave him what I could, but it wasn't enough. Then suddenly the debts were gone. Paid off. Lars said a friend had helped him. A man named Dreyer. I didn't ask questions. I should have asked questions."
"Dreyer recruited him," Vasquez said from the doorway, where she had been listening in silence. "He identified Lars as a vulnerable asset—someone with access to the Authority who could be controlled through debt. He paid off the gambling obligations and put Lars on retainer. Information in exchange for protection."
"My nephew is a spy," Corrigan said, the words hollow. "He's been spying on this department for eighteen months."
"We need to find him," Marchetti said. "Before Dreyer's people do. If he's no longer useful to them—and he won't be, now that Dreyer has fled—they'll eliminate him."
Corrigan nodded, his face ashen but determined. "I'll help you. Whatever you need. Just... please. Find my nephew before they do."
Anya's team located Lars Corrigan three hours later, holed up in a cheap motel on the outskirts of Karst, a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the nightstand and a packed suitcase by the door. He was twenty-seven years old, thin and nervous, with the hunted look of a man who had realised too late that the people he had been working for were not the kind of people who let their employees resign.
He talked for six hours.
The picture he painted was one of systematic infiltration. Dreyer had not just recruited Lars Corrigan—he had recruited at least four other low-level employees at various government agencies, all of them compromised through gambling debts, affairs, or financial desperation. The Sanctuary's network did not just launder money; it laundered information, collecting intelligence on investigations, regulatory actions, and political developments that might threaten its operations.
"They knew about the audit before it was even assigned," Lars said, his voice trembling. "Dreyer told me the Sanctuary had been expecting it. They had a plan. They were going to discredit the investigation before it could go anywhere. They had files on everyone in the department—Marchetti, Crowe, all of you. They knew about Crowe's background, his injury, his connection to the athletic programme. Dreyer said it was all part of the plan."
"What plan?" Ethan demanded.
"I don't know. Dreyer didn't tell me everything. But he said something a few weeks ago—he said the Sanctuary was going to use Crowe's history against him. That they were going to make him look like a disgruntled former athlete with a grudge. That the whole investigation would be discredited as a personal vendetta."
Ethan felt the room tilt around him. The Sanctuary had not just been defending against the investigation—they had been preparing to weaponise his past against him. The injury. The scholarship withdrawal. The twelve years of quiet obsession. All of it would be twisted into a narrative of bitterness and revenge, and the evidence he had spent months gathering would be dismissed as the work of a man who could not let go of the past.
"They're going to try to destroy my credibility," he said.
"They're going to try to destroy all of us," Marchetti replied. "That's why we need to make sure the evidence is unassailable. Every document verified. Every witness corroborated. Every piece of testimony supported by physical proof. If the narrative comes down to your word against Voss's, Voss wins. If it comes down to a mountain of documentary evidence against Voss's denials, we have a chance."
The interrogation continued through the night. By dawn, Lars Corrigan had provided enough information to identify the other compromised employees, and Anya's team was dispatched to bring them in. Marcus Dreyer remained at large, his trail going cold somewhere in the labyrinth of the Thornwood district. The Swiss delegation remained in their hotel, apparently unaware that their local handler had fled.
And Ethan sat alone in the evidence room, staring at the file that contained his own recruitment records—the psychological assessments, the loyalty evaluations, the notation from Viktor Kessler that had marked him for liquidation. The Sanctuary had been planning to use his past against him from the moment the investigation began. They had known who he was before Marchetti ever assigned him the audit. They had been waiting for him to walk into their trap.
But the trap, he realised, could work both ways. If the Sanctuary wanted to make the investigation about his personal vendetta, he could give them a personal vendetta. He could stand before the cameras and the prosecutors and the world and tell the story of how a seventeen-year-old boy from Ashwick had been recruited, exploited, and discarded by a criminal enterprise masquerading as a charity. He could make the jury feel what it was like to hear a crowd roaring your name one moment and silence the next. He could make them understand that this was not about revenge—it was about justice.
And somewhere in the city, Viktor Kessler—if it was Kessler—was sleeping in a luxury hotel, unaware that Asset 47 was about to become the most dangerous variable in his carefully constructed equation.
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