The ruins of the Masked Court are still smoldering. Police, mercenaries, and scavengers comb the wreckage, but Maya has vanished without a trace - leaving only whispers that she orchestrated the blast not to kill, but to cover her real theft.
It wasn't just a meeting. She stole something that night. Something priceless.
Buried under the debris, Avi discovers fragments of a data crystal, a black shard etched with shifting codes. When decrypted, it reveals pieces of a program codenamed The Glass Empire - an AI capable of infiltrating any global system, rewriting not just data, but identity.
If finished, Maya wouldn't just control secrets. She'd control truth itself.