Chapter 111
Chapter 111:
Elias accepted.
He played a pawn move. A quiet, waiting move.
Aurora, in her library, gasped. She had not expected patience.
She countered.
They played for an hour. Move. Counter-move. Feint. Parry.
The game entered a stalemate loop. Neither could win without exposing their King to immediate death.
Draw, the AI announced.
Aurora typed: Boring. A draw means nothing.
Elias stood on the balcony, looking at the moon.
He typed: A draw means we are equals. It means I cannot conquer you, and you cannot destroy me.
Aurora read the message. A shiver ran down her spine.
Equals.
She looked at the ancient book on her desk.
Okay, S, she typed. Equals. For now.
She closed the laptop.
She realized something. She wasn’t playing against a stranger anymore. She was playing against a partner.
The engines of the Gulfstream G650 roared as the jet climbed to forty thousand feet.
Elias sat in a leather recliner, a glass of water on the table. He ignored the flight attendant offering him champagne. He opened his laptop. He had bought developer access to the Apex engine through a shell company.
gⲁ𝗅𝓝𝗈ν𝖊𝗅𝘀.𝗰0𝗺. 𝒶𝒸𝒸𝑒𝓈𝓈 𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒
He began to code.
He wasn’t fixing bugs. He was designing a level. A private level. He created a skybox full of stars. He arranged them to form a constellation. Virgo. Aurora’s sign.
He hesitated. Was this too much? Was it too… romantic?
He saved it as a hidden file. Project Starless.
Meanwhile, in a high-end spa in Manhattan, Brenda Thorne—Sterling’s mother and Elias’s sister-in-law—and Serena Joy were getting facials.
“Did you hear?” Serena whispered, her face covered in green mud. “About the fight outside the cinema p>
Brenda stiffened. “What fight p>
“They say Elias hit Sterling,” Serena giggled. “Knocked him flat. Over a woman p>
“Impossible,” Brenda scoffed. “Elias hates violence. And he hates women. He’s practically a monk p>
“That’s what I said! But the photos p>
“Photos can be faked,” Brenda insisted. “It was probably a bodyguard. Or an actor. That girl… Aurora… she’s desperate. She probably staged the whole thing to make Sterling jealous p>
“But Brenda, there were tweets. Videos p>
“Were,” Brenda corrected sharply. “Have you tried to find them today? They’re gone. The photos are disappearing from the internet as fast as they’re uploaded, Sterling tells me. Elias is scrubbing the net. That proves he’s ashamed of the incident. It was probably a bodyguard who overreacted, and Elias is spending a fortune to clean up the mess so his reputation isn’t tarnished by that trashy girl p>