Chapter 14 - THE FEDERAL BRIEFING
Twenty minutes later, I found myself sitting in the back of the federal SUV, the doors sealed shut against the noise of the street.
The man in the charcoal suit introduced himself as Special Agent Sterling of the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Assets. Captain Vance was sitting up front, staring silently out the window, looking like a man who knew he was entirely out of his depth.
"You stumbled onto something you shouldn't have seen today, Detective," Sterling said, opening his briefcase and pulling out a manila folder stamped with a bright red CLASSIFIED banner.
"A kid was used as a financial executioner," I fired back, my anger boiling over. "You're sitting here talking about national security while a literal child is being raised inside a black-site machine?"
Sterling didn't flinch. He calmly slid the folder across the leather seat toward me.
I opened it. Inside were photographs—not of a bank robber, but of a sprawling, self-sustaining underground facility located three hundred feet beneath the city's abandoned industrial district. And there, standing in the center of a glowing server room, was Unit Seven.
"Westbridge wasn't just dissolved ten years ago, Detective," Sterling said quietly. "The leadership was imprisoned, yes. But the core network—the predictive financial algorithms and the autonomous asset recovery units—were deemed too valuable to destroy. The government inherited them. We use them to hunt down the international cartels, corrupt offshore banks, and hidden syndicates that regular law enforcement can't touch."
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"By deploying children?" I demanded, my voice shaking as I pointed at the photograph of the boy.
"By deploying assets who were saved from the wreckage and given a purpose," Sterling corrected coldly. "Unit Seven is the pinnacle of our financial containment division. He doesn't know cruelty; he knows data. When Harrison stole from the dormant Westbridge escrow, he didn't just commit a crime—he pinged the beast."
