Kieran Voss's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Kieran carried the stranger's machine down to a sublevel parking deck, where a single bulb buzzed over raw concrete. He set the sleek black desk against a pillar, plugged in the flat monitor, and watched the screen wake. The build was too clean. Custom boards. Quiet fans. Someone with money and grudge had assembled this. His fingers hovered over the keys. He pulled up the forged deed scans on his phone — the legal angle, the slow road. He thought of the old chained library across town, its doors locked on dead case files. That was where his lawsuit would have lived. Filed, argued, won in years. Then he thought of the workers waiting now. He understood what the hack meant. His corporate badge, his insider trail — the moment he pinged the network from this machine, forensics would chew backward and find him. No clean lawsuit could survive a hand caught in the server. Kieran typed the credentials. He hit return. The progress bar crawled, then filled. Files poured into the stranger's drive. He shut the laptop, sat back against cold concrete, and let the legal road die. He had bought speed with his only shield. Now he had to outrun what came next.