Immediately after the announcement, Derek opened the concealed safe embedded behind the false panel in his study.
Inside was a single laptop.
It was old by modern standards—matte black casing, no branding, no visible serial numbers. Anyone else would have dismissed it as obsolete. Derek did not. This machine was Pandora.
No backups.
No network trace.
No cloud dependencies.
Pandora was the first thing Derek had ever built that scared him a little.
Originally, it had been nothing more than a pseudo–artificial intelligence focused on trading—pattern recognition, arbitrage timing, market psychology translated into code. It had made him rich quietly, efficiently, invisibly.
Tonight, he altered it.
Not fundamentally. Not recklessly. Just enough.
He redirected its attention outward.
Public records. Procurement logs. Financial anomalies. Human inconsistencies.
Nothing illegal. Nothing invasive. Just correlation at a scale humans never bothered to attempt.
Within thirty minutes, Pandora stopped being a trading engine and became something else entirely.
A mirror.
Derek closed the laptop and returned it to the safe, his expression unreadable. He did not feel triumphant. If anything, his stomach felt tight. This was not escalation for power. This was escalation for survival.
The next morning, Derek Morgan drove himself to the Los Angeles FBI Field Office.
No entourage.
No lawyers.
No advance notice.
The moment he stepped through the glass doors, facial recognition flagged him. Security cameras tracked his movement automatically. Within seconds, agents were quietly instructed to escort him—not detain him, not question him—to a conference room on the third floor.
No cuffs.
No raised voices.
Just urgency disguised as professionalism.
He was asked to wait.
Twenty minutes later, the room filled.
Not many people. Too few, if anything. The kind of group that only existed when official channels weren't enough. FBI. CIA. Homeland Security. No nameplates. No introductions. They all knew who he was.
One of them finally spoke.
"Why are you here, Mr. Morgan?"
Derek folded his hands on the table. He looked younger in person than on any file photo. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Calm. Almost out of place.
"I'm afraid," he said simply.
That caught them off guard.
"Afraid of what?" the FBI representative asked, his tone sharp, suspicious.
Derek exhaled slowly. "That I've done something terribly wrong. That perhaps I've unknowingly crossed a line. That I've somehow become… dangerous."
The word hung there.
"I've noticed surveillance," Derek continued. "People replaced. Patterns changed. Mr. Fernandez no longer mows my lawn. Sarah at the coffee shop disappeared overnight. I assumed at first it was coincidence, but…" He shrugged mildly. "I'm not naive."
No one interrupted him.
"I'm not a criminal," Derek said. "I'm not a spy. I don't work for any foreign government. I don't belong to any cartel or organization. I build things. That's all I've ever done."
The FBI agent leaned forward. "You neutralized armed suspects at a private event."
Derek nodded. "Yes."
"How did you know how to do that?"
"Adrenaline," Derek replied without hesitation. "People underestimate what the human body can do when it believes lives are about to end."
"That explanation doesn't—"
"I'm not claiming it's common," Derek said gently. "I'm saying it's human."
The questions continued.
Training.
Background.
Weapons familiarity.
Derek answered everything politely, consistently, without defensiveness. He never raised his voice. Never postured. Never challenged authority.
Then the CIA spoke.
Not accusing. Curious.
They didn't name the suit. They didn't reference the incident directly. They circled it instead.
Derek listened. And denied everything.
"I don't know what you're referring to," he said evenly. "I've never worn advanced armor. I've never tested military-grade materials. I wouldn't even know where to begin."
They watched him closely. He did not flinch.
Finally, Derek reached into his bag.
He placed several hard drives on the table.
The sound they made against polished wood was soft. Final.
"These contain information," Derek said. "Verified. Corroborated. Financial trails, communications, patterns. Law enforcement officers involved with organized crime. Extremist groups with federal leaks. Intelligence personnel compromised by foreign states."
Silence swallowed the room.
"I didn't bring these as leverage," Derek continued. "I brought them as proof."
"Proof of what?" someone asked quietly.
"That I care about this country," Derek replied. "That I'm not hiding behind ideology or profit. That I believe institutions matter—even when they fail."
No one touched the drives.
"You can validate everything," Derek said. "Independently. I encourage you to."
He stood.
"I'm uncomfortable being watched like a criminal," he said calmly. "I'd like that to stop. I'd like to continue my work without obstruction. That's all."
He paused at the door.
"And for what it's worth," he added, almost as an afterthought, "I would never betray this country. Even if it didn't deserve my loyalty."
Then he left.
The door closed softly behind him.
For ten full minutes, no one spoke.
Finally, the FBI agent slammed his hand on the table.
"This is bullshit," he snapped. "He interfered in an active robbery. He assaulted suspects. He—"
"He handed us internal rot," someone else said quietly.
"You don't know where that data came from," the FBI agent shot back. "That's the problem. If he can see this—"
"What else can he see?" the DHS representative finished grimly.
The CIA station chief leaned back slowly.
"This isn't blackmail," he said. "It's worse."
"How?" the FBI demanded.
"Blackmail requires leverage," the CIA replied. "This is a demonstration."
"So what?" the FBI scoffed. "We let him walk?"
"No," the CIA said calmly. "We don't move on him yet."
The room stilled.
"If this man is hostile," the CIA continued, "we don't survive first contact. And if he isn't…" He exhaled. "Then he's the most strategically valuable civilian asset we've seen in decades."
"That doesn't put him above the law," the FBI said tightly.
"No," the CIA agreed. "But it changes how the law approaches him."
"What are you suggesting?" DHS asked.
The CIA station chief's eyes were cold.
"Containment. Observation. No provocation. No arrests. No heroics."
"And if he leaks?" the FBI pressed.
"Then we'll know," the CIA replied. "And if he doesn't… then we learn."
The FBI agent stood abruptly.
"This isn't over."
"No," the CIA said quietly. "It's just begun."
Far from the building, Derek Morgan drove home in silence.
He did not smile.
He did not relax.
He had crossed a line.
And now the system knew it.