Inherited Secrets | The Investment
The shock of cold water struck Fitzgerald’s face like a slap. It hit harder than coffee, cutting straight through his fractured thoughts. He gripped the edge of the shower wall, knuckles white. Three months. That’s how long it had been since Mrs. Fitzgerald disappeared.
Her absence was a missing tooth—raw, exposed, impossible not to probe with the curious tongue of memory.
Of course, “Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald” were aliases—chess pieces handed out by The Institute. Nothing more. They weren’t a couple. They weren’t even friends, not officially. The Institute didn't need relationships. It needed loyalty and silence.
Fitzgerald had seen it collected. A colleague asks the wrong question, and the next day? No record, no name, no forwarding address. Just empty office chairs and rewritten clearance logs. Clean-ups. Memory sweeps. Vanishing acts dressed as protocol.
Mrs. Fitzgerald had known how to play the game. Better than him. Smarter, subtler. She spoke in riddles during debriefs, offered just enough context to stay functional—but never enough to see the full board. Sometimes she looked like she wanted to say more. Sometimes her eyes held a secret she almost wanted to share. Almost. But never.
She’d mastered the art of controlled omission.
Fitzgerald had learned to live in the gaps. But he’d never stopped wondering what filled them.
He shut off the water, steam curling around his shoulders like smoke from a burnt-out fire. The mirror across from him had fogged into a dull silver smear. His reflection was a ghost, barely outlined. Tired eyes. Creased brow. Scar just below the collarbone from a job gone wrong. He stared into that blur until the condensation started to drip.
The Institute didn’t train you to care. But sometimes, against all odds, you did anyway.
A sharp beep cut through the quiet. One of the mirror tiles pulsed with light—an incoming directive.
Continue to monitor Julian Cesear Dyfell and Lilith Eve Dyfell. Report all new findings.
His stomach tightened. Again?
Four weeks of surveillance. Every move tracked. Every biometric logged. Fitzgerald knew the twins’ habits better than he knew his own. Meal preferences, sleep cycles, stress patterns. He even knew which snacks they hoarded in their lab coats.
They were bioengineers. Brilliant? Yes. Eccentric? Definitely. But dangerous? Not yet.
So why was the board still obsessed?
He dressed quickly, snapping on his tie in the mirror with a magnetic, humming tick. Slid his service phaser into the holster at the base of his spine. Strapped on his wrist unit. Stepped into self-tightening polished shoes. The routine was so ingrained he could do it half-asleep. Most days, he did.
The apartment was barely lived in—just clean enough not to draw suspicion. A narrow kitchen with a defunct coffee maker he hadn’t bothered to replace. Walls the color of concrete. The only personal item in view: a pressed flower, flattened between the layers of a clear acrylic cube on the end table. He didn’t know what kind of flower it was. Mrs. Fitzgerald had left it on his desk the day after their first mission together.
He grabbed a vending machine croissant from the wall unit on the way out. It was dry. He chewed it anyway.
At 8:00 a.m. sharp, Fitzgerald leaned on a railing overlooking the food court. Beacon City's central hub stretched below him—an artificial atrium filled with layered walkways and noise. Slurps, laughter, conversations folded over each other like static. The scent of garlic, synthetic meats, and recycled fryer oil wafted up from the stalls below.
He adjusted his AR glasses, cycling to biometric overlay.
Julian Ceasar and Lilith Eve Dyfell, walking into Charlie’s Noodle House like they owned the place.
Julian’s heart rate spiked. Fitzgerald logged it—just in case.
Lilith led the way: green bob cut like neon algae, oversized AR lenses, and a cyberpunk aesthetic that dared anyone to call her subtle. She chewed on the tip of a fidget toy as she walked, looking like she’d stepped out of a curated glitchwave feed. Julian followed—quieter, calculated, hands in his pockets, eyes scanning everything. They didn’t just know they were the smartest people in the room.
They walked like it was obvious.
Fitzgerald watched from behind the glass, HUD syncing stress levels, microexpressions, and real-time conversation tags. Two dozen phrases appeared in his field of vision—slang, casual banter, technical terms. The glasses tried to contextualize it all in real time. He tuned out most of it.
Slurp. Slurp. Then Lilith’s voice, casual but alert:
“So, when are you meeting the investors?”
Julian swallowed. “Couple hours.”
Fitzgerald’s ears perked up.
Lilith’s chopsticks hovered. “Why would Lucian Crowe want to invest in Creature Creation Inc.?”
That name alone was a red flag wrapped in corporate privilege. CEO of Black Mark Technologies. The man who funded half the Institute’s black-budget tech. The man currently behind the company backing the breach generator—the closest humanity had come to breaking time itself.
Even the board whispered when they mentioned him.
Fitzgerald’s HUD lit up as he flagged the conversation for encryption and priority relay. Vocal cues. Tension markers. Lilith’s raised brow. Julian’s hesitation.
They had no idea what they were walking into.
The noodles steamed. Slurps resumed. People bustled by, unaware that in the middle of this space-station food court, something significant had just shifted. Fitzgerald took a slow breath.
And for the first time in weeks, he felt something other than frustration.
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