Chapter 311

“Is Philip doing well?”

Eric Sinclair pressed his Phone tight to his ear and sank back into the car seat as if burying himself in it. Outside the window, the cozy lights of the Psychological Health Center lobby brushed across the interior as they spilled and spread.

“My wife is wondering how our son is.”

The man’s voice coming through the Phone was excessively flat. It was the dry voice of someone trying not to load emotion into a sentence. Between the man’s slow breaths, Sinclair sharply read the despair, hatred, and guilt from the moment the man had left as if dumping his son into Sinclair’s hands.

The man was the chief aide who oversaw personnel for the New York governor’s office, a senior administrator with direct influence over judicial appointments. He had lived a life far removed from the word failure, yet he was also a pitiful human being who had suffered the most humiliating ordeal because of one broken child.

Sinclair realized the moment the man asked that he didn’t actually want an answer. Which reply would sting his pain? Sinclair opened his mouth gently.

“Of course. Philip is doing well. It’s not just you—Philip clearly hasn’t been able to shake those memories easily, either. In his previous session with Jackson, he said he desperately hopes the father-and-son relationship will recover smoothly.”

Ignoring the groan that leaked from the other end of the Phone, Sinclair continued briskly.

“There should be a counseling assessment Jackson wrote about Philip. If you’d like, I can have it sent over...”

“No, it’s fine. ...Please keep taking good care of Philip. Well, it’s late. Let’s end the call here.”

The man sounded desperate to hang up in a hurry, as if the more he spoke, the more filth would stick inside his ears. Sinclair slowly rubbed his forehead with his palm and rolled his eyes. Even after being caught in Sinclair’s grip and wrung dry down to his soul, the man still clung to his pride.

Tilting his head slightly, Sinclair spoke in a smiling voice.

“How far along is the appointment coordination I asked for, so the private prison establishment doesn’t become an issue?”

“I haven’t forgotten. What you asked for has already been delivered to the judiciary committee through a lobbyist.”

“When will I hear the result. Hah... waiting is unbearably difficult.”

Reading the ominous irritation threaded through Sinclair’s voice, the man hurriedly swallowed.

“The day after tomorrow. ...At the latest, I’ll deliver the result by the day after tomorrow.”

“Good. I’ll be waiting for your call.”

After ending the call, Sinclair let the smile fall away. A conversation with a man trembling in terror that the world might learn he had been violated by his own son left Sinclair with nothing but disgust.

Half a year ago, the man’s son had come to Jackson and confessed frankly how he had violated his biological father and been thrown out of the house. Every detail of his counseling session had been recorded and delivered to [N O V E L I G H T] Sinclair. The day Sinclair was invited to the man’s home, he watched the counseling video in the man’s study together with him—a son confessing he had raped his father. From the moment Sinclair asked permission to call the man’s wife into the study while the man wailed like a beaten animal, everything proceeded swiftly.

It was unfortunate. The Sinclair of the past had used far more refined speech rather than relying on something as cheap as blackmail. People’s pasts and futures had shone brilliantly before his eyes like beautiful auroras, so people revered and worshiped him, following his words with blind faith and no doubt. But that beautiful light had vanished when he became an Alpha. Leaving only a few sacred revelations behind.

Sinclair buried his face in his palm and breathed in the stench clinging to him—burnt residue and oil. It was the smell of chemical remnants left on his hand from when he fired a gun.

Philip, the man’s son, had died a few hours ago. First from Sinclair’s gunfire, and second from Jackson’s pill. The body would be rotting slowly right now, abandoned with the Omega.

With an unfocused gaze, Sinclair stared at the headrest area of the front seat. Light leaking in from the building lobby passed through the glass and faintly outlined the contours of his face, swallowed by darkness. His profile, as if rimmed in gold, remained motionless for a long time.

Jackson had tried to kill the Omega. The one person who knew more clearly than anyone the holy ideal Sinclair intended to achieve through the Omega had dared to defy Sinclair’s will. Worse, he had siphoned off the assets they had built together and tried to vanish from the world without a trace.

Their ultimate goal required enormous funding. Money to distribute drugs across society, to create Alphas, and to provide the environment and convenience for them to live. Lobbying to move institutions and public opinion devoured costs as well. But Jackson had tried to cut off Hybris’s lifeline solely for his own greed. He was trying, without a shred of guilt, to abandon again the son he had cast away before that son was even born.

Jackson needed punishment befitting him. Sinclair recalled the line he had held to until now. A relationship bound by blood meant nothing in front of that line. In the dark, Sinclair thought about how far he could go.

From far away, the sign that had been a blurry smear beyond the car window—“Baggers City Integrated Psychological Health Center”—grew sharper and sharper. The closer the massive, crude three-story building came, the more Jackson’s anxiety swelled.

“Switch to the sedan.”

When the van carrying him stopped in front of the lobby, Dylan urged Jackson from the seat beside him. Jackson got out reluctantly, casting a worried look at the Alphas waiting for him at the lobby entrance. Forcing composure and wiping fear from his face, Jackson climbed into the backseat of the sedan with practiced pride. His son was waiting inside.

Without polite greetings, Sinclair looked at Jackson as he sat beside him. Jackson met his son’s eyes with the feeling of staring into a black well at midnight, afraid of what might leap out from within. With a calm face, Jackson asked.

“Security’s quite tight. Is this because of Isaac Bazelli?”

A smile bordering on contempt rose and vanished from Sinclair’s face. He had read Jackson’s shallow intent—to drag out a common enemy and somehow coax a friendly mood.

Sinclair answered only by slowly nodding.

“Because a tracking device was found on the Omega’s back, you think Isaac will show up here?”

Sinclair nodded slowly again.

“Isn’t it wasted effort. He doesn’t need the Omega anymore. By now he’ll know there’s no way for him to Imprint with the Omega, so he won’t take the risk.”

“That’s a fair point. But it doesn’t hurt to stay vigilant. More importantly—you were planning something interesting.”

“Something interesting? Don’t tell me you think getting caught at the New York airport is interesting.”

Sinclair pressed his lips thin, smiling as he nodded.

Jackson deliberately spoke in a disgruntled voice.

“I told your secretary. My meeting with the congressman is today—the 18th.”

“You seem to have forgotten—you were scheduled to give a lecture here today.”

Jackson didn’t bother hiding his annoyance.

“Yeah. I know. I was going to come back after finishing my morning schedule and give the lecture...”

“Your blond subordinate who followed you around. Was his name Austin?”

At the unexpected name, Jackson’s expression hardened.

“I saw the CCTV of him entering the air-gapped server room. He tore out the storage device and took it wholesale. You’re telling me he took all the DeepCoin.”

The air-gapped server room was a server room that blocked the internet and all wired and wireless communications—down to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signals—to fundamentally prevent hacking. There was no way to access it remotely by any means; to move data, a person had no choice but to go in directly.

To store cryptocurrency in a state completely separated from the internet, Sinclair and Jackson had built an air-gapped server room inside the Psychological Health Center. And yet evidence had been captured of Jackson’s man going in and out of a facility where airtight security was maintained.

Jackson’s lips parted and closed as if startled. He spoke as if he’d been struck.

“That bastard did that? Why?”

Sinclair burst into laughter.

“He regretted it. He begged me in repentance. Said if I spared him, he’d tell me everything he knew.”

A smile—impossible to tell whether it was ridicule or pleasure—hung over Sinclair’s lips.

“Austin Walker. His real name was Gail Lander. He looks like he’s in his late twenties, but his actual age was thirty-seven. He was in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), just like you... and it seems he had a past where he barely escaped death thanks to your help on the battlefield.”

Sinclair leaned his entire upper body toward Jackson.

“Like the weak Beta he was, he couldn’t endure even that brief torture and died of a heart attack.”

A hard shock sat on Jackson’s face, then scattered into fragments.

“...Died?”

“Yes. Pathetic, isn’t it?”

Sinclair let out a short, humorless laugh.

“He testified that you manipulated both the pheromone test and the blood test. Over two meters tall, and everyone fell for it perfectly all this time.”

Jackson swallowed hard as he met Sinclair’s eyes, shining unnaturally.

Hearing his long-time subordinate was dead, Jackson was on the verge of losing his reason. But he was at the cliff edge. Even so, he still believed there was a way out for him. Barely pulling himself together, Jackson spoke with an earnest expression.

“Fine. I deceived you. In a Hybris full of Alphas, I needed at least one sane person on my side. You can’t keep an Alpha subordinate when you never know when Rut will hit. But I didn’t know Austin took the cryptocurrency from the server room.”

“Your subordinate said otherwise. He said it was on your orders—he moved the DeepCoin onto a laptop and sent it to New York. Downtown Manhattan. A post office box service in Greenwich Village. Box number 14821.”

Jackson’s eyelids trembled faintly. A fear he couldn’t show churned violently inside him. Post office box 14821. It was the box he had opened for sending mail to Angela.