Chapter 7 - THE AUDITOR
"An auditor?" I stared at Harrison, my hand hovering in the air between them. "He’s ten years old! He's a child!"
"Age is merely a biological metric of deployment," the boy replied coldly. He looked up at me, his small face illuminated by the harsh, rhythmic red glare of the emergency lights. "My name is Unit Seven. Designation: Financial Recovery and Compliance, Westbridge Division."
The words hit me like a physical blow.
Ten years ago, right around the time this boy would have been born, the federal government tore through Westbridge Armored Solutions like a hurricane. They uncovered an illegal black-budget operation that trained orphaned children and prodigies in economic warfare, forensic accounting, and high-stakes asset retrieval. The corporate leadership was imprisoned, the facilities bulldozed, and the survivors scattered to the wind. Or so the Justice Department claimed in their heavily redacted press releases.
I looked back at Harrison, sweat beading heavily on the manager's forehead. "You embezzled from them, didn't you? You thought because Westbridge fell a decade ago, their accounts were up for grabs."
Harrison swallowed hard, unable to meet my eyes. He collapsed onto the corner of a mahogany desk, burying his face in his trembling hands.
May you like
"It was supposed to be dead money," Harrison choked out, his voice muffled. "Dormant offshore routing numbers from the 2018 liquidation. Millions sitting in escrow, untouched. I moved three hundred thousand last month to cover my debts. I thought nobody was watching the ledger anymore."
"Nobody human was," Unit Seven said smoothly. His small hand rested lightly against his jacket pocket, feeling the contour of the device. "The core servers at Site-4 never went offline, Mr. Harrison. They simply awaited a manual system ping. Your branch was flagged forty-eight hours ago. I was dispatched to evaluate, seize, and liquidate."
