The body was not dead by any forensic definition. Arthur Blackmane's biological systems were functioning perfectly—heart rate sixty-two beats per minute, blood oxygen at ninety-eight percent, neural activity within normal parameters. But Arthur Blackmane was gone.

"His cortex is intact," the medical examiner said, pulling off his gloves with a snap. "Every neuron, every synapse, every memory engram is present and accounted for. But the man himself—the person, the consciousness, the ghost in the machine—is simply not there. It's like opening a house and finding the furniture intact but everyone gone."

Jade Chen stood in the corner of the forensic lab, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the man in the bed. Arthur Blackmane, founder and CEO of Abyss Corporation, stared at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. He was seventy-eight years old, the most powerful man in Neo-Kowloon, and whatever had killed him had left his body perfectly intact.

"Time of death?" Jade asked.

"We don't know. His body is alive. But his mind—the part that makes him Arthur Blackmane—that died approximately fourteen hours ago. Give or take."

Jade nodded and turned to leave. The lab smelled of antiseptic and ozone, the standard combination for a Class-A cybernetics facility. Outside, the perpetual rain of Neo-Kowloon hammered against the reinforced glass windows, turning the city's neon lights into watercolor smears.

"Chen," the medical examiner said as Jade reached the door. "You should know—there was something in his neural implant when we ran the diagnostic. A message, buried deep in the cache. We couldn't decrypt it."

Jade paused. "What did it look like?"

"Binary code, but not standard format. It was encrypted with Abyss Corp's founder-level protocol. The kind of encryption that only exists in three places in the world."

"Blackmane's personal server," Jade said. "The central mainframe. And—"

"And one other place. But that place has been offline for three years."

Jade's jaw tightened. He knew what that meant.