Sleep refused to come after Thomas’s final words because every time I closed my eyes I found myself hearing them again.
Atlas is still alive.
For years I had believed I was chasing ghosts buried beneath decades of lies and then I believed the Architect had been the final answer waiting at the end of the investigation. We had exposed his crimes, dismantled his network, rescued survivors and watched his empire collapse beneath the weight of overwhelming evidence.
I had convinced myself the nightmare was finally over.
Now I understood something far more unsettling and the Architect had never been the nightmare.
He had simply inherited it and the real architect of everything had been someone else entirely.
Morning sunlight filtered through the motel curtains, although the pale winter
