Chapter 152: Chapter 152
The old man from World Zone sat in a private room.
This was not the hotel suite from before.
The room was larger and colder. Long lights ran across the ceiling, and the walls had no decoration except one dark map screen at the far end. Around the table sat many people, each one carrying the stillness of someone used to giving orders.
The old man was not at the head of the table today.
That alone showed the change.
In this room, he did not look like the person controlling the country branch. He looked like someone being called to answer for it.
Idris stood near one side with a file in his hand.
Sella and Brant were behind him.
Idris lowered his head and spoke carefully.
"Sir, this is everything we have been able to pull out until now."
He placed the file on the table.
The man sitting at the front did not touch it at once.
His name was Kael Duran.
Inside World Zone, Kael was not a street leader and not a field hand. He controlled internal rank and decided which branches were rewarded or punished. Men like him did not come for small losses.
Kael looked at the old man.
"We lost an entire local cell under your watch," he said. "You understand why I am disappointed."
The old man’s face stayed still.
He did not lower his head, but he also did not answer back.
Brant looked like he wanted to speak, then stopped himself.
No one in that room was foolish enough to defend a failure too quickly.
Kael’s words had not been loud, but they had landed harder than shouting. In World Zone, disappointment from someone like him was not just emotion. It usually became orders later.
Kael finally opened the file and looked through the pages.
The file listed what they had gathered so far. It covered the failed movement and the police response. It also covered the trap that had broken their local cell.
The old man watched Kael read.
He could feel the frustration sitting inside his own chest.
They had not lost because they were weak. They had lost because the other side had used too many hands at once. The police had moved. Another force had appeared. Some people had changed sides. Some targets had survived.
The whole thing still tasted wrong.
Kael closed the file.
Then he looked toward the people sitting on the other side of the table.
"Preparation?" he asked.
One of the men answered at once.
"Ready, sir. This time, even if law enforcement comes to protect them, they will not be able to pull out cleanly."
Another man nodded.
"The routes are ready. The outside men are waiting. We also have backup lines if the first movement is blocked."
Kael’s expression did not change.
"Good."
The old man looked up slowly.
Kael turned his eyes back to him.
"Prepare everything," Kael said. "We will begin soon."
His voice became colder.
"This time, the strike will not be small. We will hit until their whole empire breaks."
The old man’s fingers tightened once under the table.
That was what he wanted too.
The previous retreat had not ended the matter. It had only delayed it. World Zone had been forced to step back, and that shame had now reached people above him.
He would not let the next move end the same way.
The scene shifted to Aster Core’s manufacturing unit.
Rian Solace stood near the machine room entrance with Kiri.
He was the man Kiri and Davin had just hired.
Rian had spent the last hour studying the machine. Kiri had asked questions and watched his answers. He had not let Rian touch the sensitive parts yet, but he had allowed him close enough to read the layout.
Now Rian looked at the unit again with a strange expression.
"This is very odd," he said.
Kiri turned toward him.
"What is?"
Rian spoke slowly, as if choosing the safe words first.
"From what I know, machines like this are extremely difficult to manufacture," he said.
He glanced at the unit again.
"Only very high-level engineers can build them properly. Even among countries, only a few can make systems like this."
Kiri’s eyes became sharper.
Rian looked at him.
"How did you get this machine?"
The question was calm.
That was what made it dangerous.
Kiri did not show the change on his face, but his mind became alert at once.
This was not a normal worker’s question. It was too direct. A man with real experience would be curious, yes, but Rian had asked it in a way that touched the exact weak point of Aster Core.
Kiri knew how companies worked.
Businesses sent people into rival companies all the time. Sometimes they sent them as employees. Sometimes they used consultants. Sometimes they found one desperate expert and made him ask the right questions.
Rian had worked abroad.
He had also worked close to a manufacturing unit that Aster Core might one day compete against.
That did not prove he was an asset from another company, but Kiri could not ignore the possibility.
If this was only curiosity, then Kiri could handle it slowly.
If it was not, then the first door had already opened.
The problem was that Rian was useful.
He was the first person they had found who could look at the machine without pretending. If Kiri pushed him away too fast, they would lose the only trained person they had.
’He knows that too,’ Kiri thought.
Rian was smart.
He had probably already understood that Aster Core needed him. If he wanted to take advantage of that, he had room.
Kiri smiled.
"Honestly," he said, "we also don’t know everything."
Rian blinked once.
Kiri continued, "Some high-level engineers on our side worked on it. There were many failures before this machine started running properly."
Rian looked more surprised now.
"High-level engineers?" he asked. "I did not expect engineers like that to be here in this country."
Kiri’s smile stayed polite.
"That part is confidential," he said. "We can’t talk about it."
Rian looked at him for a moment longer.
Kiri did not wait for another question.
He turned and walked away.
