Page 120 of Fatality

I need to do something that will make him shut his mouth.

It needs preparation, it needs someone who can give me information the Central Authority doesn’t have.

Evren has a gang, I should hit it. Find out how it works and where it’s vulnerable.

My fingers fly across the Glass Panel, searching for a convicted hacker who’s already served their sentence and is back on the outside.

I need someone like that. Someone who knows how to break things, who knows how to make people regret crossing the wrong person.

Someone who can hack into his gang’s systems.

Because there has to be something else.

Racing alone isn’t enough to fund the kind of operation Evren runs.

The cars, the garages, the people on payroll, the protection, the bribes—it all costs money.

A lot of money.

Every organization has multiple streams of income.

Every single one.

Businesses do it, as politicians.

Nobody survives by relying on a single source of revenue.

Even members of the Central Authority don’t live solely off their political careers.

Maybe they’re invested in hologram technology. Maybe pharmaceuticals or even logistics. Something completely legitimate and highly profitable.

So, Evren’s gang must have something else on the side.

Either way, the money has to come from somewhere.

And if I can find where it comes from, I can find where they’re vulnerable.

Because if I don’t do something—if I don’t make him understand that he can’t fuck with me and walk away from it—then I might as well throw myself into the Lower Layers and be done with it.

After another hour, my brain feels like it’s pumping every drop of blood in my body.

I can feel it pulsing inside my skull. My headache is unbearable.

I push away from my desk and head to the kitchen.

Grabbing a bottle from the fridge, I drink deeply before opening the freezer and pulling out a syringe.

Without hesitation, I press it against my thigh and inject the medication.

Relief washes through me almost immediately.

I let out a long sigh and toss the syringe into the medical waste bin beside the counter.

I’d stocked up on the medication months ago. It has to be kept frozen to remain effective.

The injection is a powerful painkiller prescribed for migraines—one of the few things capable of cutting through headaches like this.

In the Upper Layers, every medication is designed for a specific purpose.