Washington reacted the way it always did when something impossible slipped past its defenses.
It froze.
Senator Scott Pimble had not intended to light a fuse. He had spoken as a father whose world had been torn apart and then miraculously stitched back together, not as a man calculating political consequences. His words were quiet, measured, almost reverent—shared in private offices, behind closed doors, with colleagues who had known him for years.
"She was dying," he said, voice rough. "Now she isn't."
That sentence moved through Congress faster than legislation ever could.
Not because it was emotional—but because it was clinical.
The confirmation scans were undeniable. NIH oncologists reviewed them, then requested independent verification. FDA specialists ran the data through their own models. No trace of malignant cells. No residual markers. No evidence of suppression or dormancy.
Gone.
Not remission.
Eradication.
People who had built careers around incremental progress found themselves staring at a result that invalidated decades of assumptions.
Privately, panic bloomed.
Lobbyists moved first, flooding offices with carefully worded warnings: We must ensure safety. We must slow down. We must protect the system.
But every argument collapsed under the same unanswerable question:
Who wanted to be the first elected official to stand against something that cured cancer?
Not regulated it. Not delayed it.
Opposed it.
That wasn't courage. That was political suicide.
Publicly, smiles were worn. Statements were neutral. Committees requested briefings.
Behind the scenes, phones rang without pause.
Derek Morgan did not wait for Washington to find its footing.
Orders went out that same night.
The Kentucky team was to return immediately.
No delays. No deviations. No unnecessary exposure.
Equipment sealed under biometric lock. Nanobot fabrication units powered down and secured. Data mirrored across redundant servers, encrypted with protocols so dense even Blackfire's own engineers couldn't access them without layered authorization.
Bala went with them.
There had been no discussion about that.
Bala was a man shaped by places where danger was not announced. Years spent in the forests of northern Nigeria hunting terrorists had taught him that real threats didn't arrive loudly. They watched. They studied. They waited for routines to form.
He observed the convoy like a predator observing prey lanes.
Every vehicle that slowed too long.
Every intersection that felt wrong.
Every reflection in tinted glass.
Nothing happened.
That disturbed him more than gunfire ever had.
Back in Los Angeles, Derek activated a division of Blackfire that had until now been ornamental.
Public relations.
Until this moment, the department had existed almost as an afterthought—community outreach in North Compton, redevelopment updates, controlled optimism designed to avoid headlines.
Now it was given precise, uncompromising instructions.
No interviews.
No press conferences.
No personal profiles.
No executive appearances.
One press release.
Nothing more.
It went live at exactly 9:00 a.m. Pacific.
Blackfire Technologies Announces Limited Human Trials for Experimental Oncology Treatment
The language was deliberately cautious.
"Experimental."
"Preliminary."
"Subject to regulatory oversight."
"Limited cohort."
The word cure did not appear anywhere in the release.
It read like a company trying very hard not to provoke attention.
It failed instantly.
Because Washington had already whispered something far louder.
Someone—later blamed on an unnamed intern—had leaked a word that carried biblical weight.
Cure.
By noon, the media had seized it like a starving animal.
The first wave of coverage tried to be responsible.
EXPERIMENTAL CANCER TREATMENT SHOWS UNPRECEDENTED RESULTS
SENATOR CONFIRMS DAUGHTER CANCER-FREE AFTER BLACKFIRE THERAPY
MYSTERIOUS TECH COMPANY AT CENTER OF MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGH
By evening, restraint had evaporated.
HAS CANCER BEEN CURED?
THE DISCOVERY THAT COULD REWRITE HUMAN LIFE EXPECTANCY
BLACKFIRE: THE COMPANY THAT APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE
One thing unified every outlet, every panel, every anchor desk:
No one knew who Derek Morgan was.
There were no interviews.
No conference keynotes.
No public lectures.
No academic papers bearing his name.
No social media presence.
Just a name.
And a company that had somehow jumped years—maybe decades—ahead of modern medicine.
Experts filled the airwaves.
Oncologists spoke carefully, voices tight with disbelief.
"This defies current treatment models," one said.
"We need peer-reviewed trials immediately," another insisted.
But no one said impossible.
That word hovered unspoken, like tempting fate.
Social media, unconcerned with restraint, erupted.
Hope and suspicion collided violently.
@SecondChanceNow:
If this is real, delaying it is murder.
@PharmaTruth:
You don't cure cancer quietly unless someone powerful told you not to.
@StageIVfighter:
I don't care who he is. I just want to live long enough to see my kids grow up.
Videos spread of people crying into their phones, whispering prayers, posting hospital wristbands and diagnosis charts.
Survivors shared scars.
Patients shared countdowns.
Families shared fear.
The name Blackfire trended globally within hours.
The name Derek Morgan followed—empty of detail, heavy with curiosity.
Who was he?
Where had he come from?
Why had no one heard of him before now?
The absence became its own narrative.
Then the moment that changed the tone entirely.
A junior analyst—overworked, ambitious, and convinced history was unfolding—made a decision that could not be reversed.
He uploaded a short video clip.
Grainy. Poorly stabilized. Shot months earlier at a charity dinner.
Soft lighting. Polite applause. The muted hum of money and influence.
At the center of the frame stood a man who was impossible to miss.
Derek Morgan.
Tall—clearly over six feet. Broad-shouldered, athletic, built like someone who trained not for aesthetics but for capability. His suit fit perfectly, not hiding his physique but complementing it. Dark hair neatly styled, sharp jawline, composed posture.
Handsome was an understatement.
He looked like someone accustomed to attention—and entirely uninterested in it.
The analyst added a single caption:
"This is Derek Morgan, CEO of Blackfire Technologies."
That was all.
No speculation.
No analysis.
No mention of classified material.
The analyst knew better than to touch anything related to the Wraith. Even if he hadn't, instinct alone would have stopped him. Some knowledge shortened lifespans.
The post detonated across the internet.
Freeze-frames spread within minutes.
Zoom-ins on Derek's face.
Side-by-side comparisons.
"He looks like a model."
"That's not what I expected at all."
"He looks… dangerous."
"He looks like someone who knows exactly what he's doing."
People had expected a recluse. A lab rat. A pale genius hunched over equations.
Instead, they saw someone who looked like he could walk into a room and dominate it without saying a word.
That unsettled people far more than mystery ever could.
Conspiracy theories multiplied instantly.
He's not the real decision-maker.
He's a front.
That physique isn't accidental—military?
He's protected.
He doesn't look like a scientist because he isn't one.
Others went the opposite direction.
"That's what evolution looks like," one viral post claimed. "The future cures cancer and looks like that."
Threads speculated about his background.
His age.
His training.
Why there was exactly one public video of him.
"Notice how there's ONE confirmed appearance? No speeches. No interviews. No history.
That's not privacy. That's deliberate erasure."
The video crossed ten million views in twenty-four hours.
And still, Derek Morgan said nothing.
Inside pharmaceutical boardrooms, the reaction was colder—and infinitely more dangerous.
Emergency meetings were called without titles or agendas.
Stock prices dipped—not crashed, dipped—just enough to signal awareness.
Executives stared at projections that rewrote entire balance sheets.
"If this reaches Phase II," one said quietly, "oncology collapses."
No one argued.
Lobbyists flooded Washington harder than ever, pushing caution, oversight, delay.
But for the first time in decades, their leverage felt thin.
Cancer wasn't abstract.
Cancer voted.
Derek did not watch the broadcasts.
He read summaries.
Heat maps.
Narrative velocity curves.
He noted the junior analyst's post.
Filed it away.
Adjusted timelines.
Outside his residence, unmarked vehicles lingered longer than before.
Inside Blackfire, systems continued operating exactly as designed.
The world now had a name.
And a face.
Tall. Powerful. Impossible to ignore.
That made the danger sharper.
Because once people stopped seeing Derek Morgan as an abstraction and started seeing him as a man—
A man who could be admired.
A man who could be resented.
A man who could be removed.
—then the game changed.
Derek understood that perfectly.
He was no longer just unveiling a technology.
He was becoming a target.
And in a world where curing cancer threatened trillions of dollars, targets did not live long unless they planned several moves ahead.
Derek Morgan had already planned them.