The room was so quiet that Julian Sterling could clearly hear the sound of his own beating heart. The blunt thud of the wooden piece falling onto the floor still echoed in his ears, intertwining with the desperate screams from a blood-soaked memory that had just been violently torn open.

Cedric Harrington stood there, a half-smile full of pity still lingering on his lips, looking exactly like a deity standing high above and peering down at a mere ant struggling in the mud of the past. He waited for a breakdown, waited for panicked tears or a terrified scream of escape from Julian.

But Julian did not shy away.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a fleeting second, his chest heaving as he drew in a deep breath. The freezing air, carrying a faint metallic scent, flooded his lungs, forcing his erratically racing heart to stabilize once more. When his long eyelashes gently fluttered open, the hazy mist and the sheer panic within his pitch-black pupils had completely evaporated, leaving behind nothing but a bone-chilling tranquility.

His gaze locked firmly onto Cedric, far more tranquil now, without a single trace of panic left.

"I do not need to be certain." Julian spoke up, his usually clear voice now hardening, carrying a terrifyingly cold edge: "But I refuse to live like a deleted file. My past, no matter how shattered or blood-soaked it might be, belongs to me. If you people steal it away, then I will snatch it back with my own hands."

The atmosphere within the expansive office abruptly shifted its course. The invisible oppression that Cedric had woven since the very beginning of their conversation seemed to be severed by an unseen blade.

Julian was tearing away his own protective shell, choosing to embrace the agonizing pain that tore at both his physical body and his mental state, all merely to exchange for a transparent truth.

Cedric paused for a moment, the fingers that were spinning the wooden piece coming to a halt. Then he narrowed his eyes and looked straight at the young man standing before him, the corners of his lips twitching upward in an incredibly imperceptible arc: "I am beginning to understand why they did not dare to erase you, A-01."

"Did you not just want to see whether I am worth keeping or not?" Julian coldly interrupted. "Wasting so much effort to lure me here, using memories to inflict a psychological strike. You possess absolutely no intention of killing me. I assume there must have been some internal shifts among your ranks, perhaps a fierce dispute between the older and the younger generations, correct?" 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Gabriel Cole and Cedric Harrington both belonged to the very young demographic. They naturally could not have been the ones following CORE’s brainwave experiments right from the very start. Yet, at this present moment, they were capable of grasping so much confidential information, which meant that this group of individuals had already advanced into the central core of CORE’s authority.

"You are trying to use me as a stepping stone, aiming to gather far more supporters for yourself, aren’t you?"

Julian deduced that if Cedric had genuinely wanted to kill him, regardless of how comprehensively Ethan Caldwell managed to protect Julian, it would be impossible for Julian to stand here entirely intact and unharmed. The reality of Cedric circling around, feeding information drop by drop, was ultimately just an evaluation test to measure the capability of a tool.

A flash of admiration flickered through Cedric’s eyes. He did not utter a single word of denial. On the contrary, he turned around and strode toward the black marble mini-bar, leisurely pouring a little more filtered water into his glass.

"You are far smarter than what the documented files suggest." Cedric leaned his back against the counter, his profound gaze sweeping past the floor-to-ceiling glass windows to look down at the bustling, prosperous city: "CORE is not a unified entity. I suppose any organization is like that. Once it develops to a certain extent, it will inevitably encounter severe problems. Just like a colossal carcass, when it grows to a point where it can no longer be controlled, the cells within it will naturally breed tumors and fiercely tear at one another."

He took a sip of water, dropping a ticking time bomb right in the middle of the room: "There are people within the organization who want you dead, wanting to entirely obliterate all traces of the mistakes made in the past. But there are also those... who want to keep you alive, because you are a variable capable of bringing forth values that lie far beyond measurable limits. As for me..."

Cedric placed the water glass down onto the table. "I... am still considering."

"So, which side do you belong to?" Julian pressed on without a single moment of hesitation.

Cedric let out a soft chuckle, wearing the smile of a cunning old fox walking on a tightrope: "The winning side."

At that exact same moment, down in the waiting lounge area on the first floor of the HJ Capital building.

Ethan Caldwell had already made his way over to the guest waiting area of this establishment, sitting there and waiting at his own leisurely pace.

Standing diagonally half a step behind Ethan, Colin Grant raised a hand to lightly press against the micro-earpiece hidden inside his ear, his complexion gradually turning incredibly unsightly. Colin stepped forward, lowering his voice to deliver a report at a volume strictly reserved for the two of them to hear: "President Caldwell, the situation is not looking good. Our technical team just reported back that the security system of this building is not an ordinary corporate network. Lucas Hill on the other end has already assisted by deploying the backdoor algorithm exclusively written by Vincent Vaughn, but they have only managed to breach the three outermost layers of the firewall."

Colin swallowed hard, his tone heavily laced with undeniable tension: "They installed a honeycomb-style defensive anti-intrusion protocol, and its counterattacks are exceptionally aggressive. This protocol is entirely independent and is not connected to any public servers whatsoever. The camera systems and the administrative control access on the top floor have been completely deadlocked using military-grade encryption. The technical team can no longer interfere remotely."

Ethan Caldwell’s profound eyes narrowed, a freezing and dangerous glint flashing through them.

A financial company, no matter how massive its scale might be, would never utilize an extreme data self-destruction and defense system capable of repelling even the most top-tier experts. Unless... this place contained things that absolutely could not be allowed to see the light of day.