Caspian sat before the console, the security supervisor hovering nervously behind him for a moment before Caspian dismissed him with a curt nod. Alone, he moved with practiced efficiency, his fingers flying across the keyboard. He isolated the four camera angles covering the main entrance and the adjacent plaza, syncing the timestamps to precisely ten minutes before the attack.
He started with the wide-angle shot from across the street. He fast-forwarded, the daytime bustle of the city a silent, jerky film. He was looking for a ghost. For something out of place.
And then he found it.
He rewound, then played the footage at normal speed. There, tucked into a small, shadowed alcove near a side entrance, stood two figures. Isolde and a man in a dark hoodie. They were out of the main flow of traffic, invisible to anyone not looking for them.
Caspian zoomed in, the image pixelating slightly but remaining clear enough. He watched, his breath catching in his throat, as Isolde spoke to the man. She was calm, authoritative. She reached out and subtly adjusted the collar of his hoodie, a gesture of final preparation. Then, she gave a single, sharp nod.
The man nodded back and melted into the crowd heading for the main entrance. Isolde waited exactly thirty seconds before following, her entire demeanor changing as she stepped into the light. Her shoulders slumped. Her pace slowed. She became the fragile patient.
It was the lynchpin. The proof of conspiracy.
But he needed to see the act itself. He switched to the high-definition camera positioned directly above the hospital doors. He found the timestamp.
He watched the performance from God’s view. He saw the associate position himself perfectly. He saw Isolde time her exit to coincide with the largest cluster of paparazzi. He saw the man lunge, not with real force, but with the exaggerated movement of a stage actor. He saw the shove, the theatrical flail of her arms, the way she crumpled to the ground without any real attempt to break her fall.
It was a pathetic, poorly rehearsed play. And the footage was the script.
A cold, clean fury settled deep in his bones. This wasn’t just a lie to manipulate him. This was a calculated, criminal act that had deliberately and maliciously implicated Lyra. It put a target on her back. It threatened her safety, her career, and the life of their unborn child.
His child.
The savior complex was dead. The guilt was a living thing. But this feeling… this was new. It was the icy resolve of a man who finally understood the depth of the evil he had enabled.
He took the encrypted flash drive from his pocket—the one Marcus Thorne had given him—and plugged it into the system. With a few clicks, he downloaded the footage from all four angles. The damning coordination in the alcove. The pathetic, staged violence at the entrance.
The download bar filled. Complete.
He ejected the drive and pocketed it. It felt heavy, dense with the weight of the truth. He powered down the monitor, and for a brief second, his own face was reflected in the dark screen. Tired. Grim. The face of a fool who had finally woken up.
His mission for the night was over.
His war was just beginning.
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