The cyber-defense room of the Federal Data Operations Unit was nothing like Cassie imagined from documentaries or loud Hollywood spy films.
No elegant glass walls with city views. No neon-blue displays or holographic grids pulsing in midair.
Just a long rectangular chamber hidden beneath reinforced concrete, lined with humming server towers and industrial ceiling lights that buzzed like angry insects trapped in metal cages.
The air was cold, the kind of cold that didn't come from air-conditioning but from machines working overtime to hold the country together.
She had seen clean code and sleek workspaces. She had seen war rooms built by seven-figure start-ups. But this place? This was the spine of a nation—no glamour, only grit.
Cassie and Evan had amassed ten billion in t
