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The Million-Dollar Engine Screamed, But What It Revealed Left the Billionaire Dead Silent! / Chapter 5 / 6

Chapter 5 - THE COUNTDOWN TO ZERO

The Ultimate Plot Twist! The Secret Identity of the 'Grease Boy' Revealed!Three hours later, the luxury garage was an active crime scene, swarming with federal forensic investigators, police cruisers, and news vans. Marcus Hale was being wheeled out on a stretcher in handcuffs, an oxygen mask over his face, his career and freedom permanently ended.

Victor Vance was shoved into the back of an armored transport vehicle, screaming profanities at the cameras flashing in his face.

Inside the cordoned-off garage, the Lead FBI Investigator, Agent Sarah Vance—no relation to the family—stood by the black supercar. She was examining the engine bay, completely baffled. The digital dashboard was dark. The countdown had stopped at exactly ****. One single second remaining.

"Agent Vance," a technician called out, holding a tablet. "We just finished analyzing the biometric data from the live stream and matching it with the missing person databases from ten years ago."

"And?" Sarah asked, crossing her arms. "Did we find Toby Vance’s legal guardian? Where did the kid run off to?"

The technician swallowed hard, his face pale. "That's the thing, ma'am. Toby Vance didn't run off. Because Toby Vance doesn't exist."

Sarah frowned. "What are you talking about? We all saw him on camera. Millions of people watched him fix a hypercar and bring down a multi-billion dollar syndicate."

"Look at the birth records, Agent," the technician said, handing her the tablet. "Arthur Vance never had a son. He had a daughter. But she died in infancy. The boy we saw on that screen... his facial symmetry, his voice frequency modulation, his entire physical build... it doesn't match any living child on Earth."

Sarah’s heart skipped a beat. "Then who—or what—was standing in this room?"

Suddenly, the supercar's digital dashboard flickered back to life, completely independent of any power source. The silver phoenix logo appeared on the screen one last time.

A text message began typing itself across the monitor, visible only to Sarah and her team.

“Thank you for cleaning up my father's enemies, Agent. The Chronos Engine was never meant to be a car. It was meant to be a heart.”

Sarah stared at the open engine bay. Now that the foam had cleared and the lighting was stable, she noticed something she hadn't seen before. The wires Toby had shifted weren't connected to a fuel line or a traditional computer terminal. They were plugged directly into a highly sophisticated, experimental, organic-silicon neural core hidden deep beneath the engine block.

The car didn't have an artificial intelligence installed inside it.

The car was the intelligence.

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The ink on the emergency audit report was barely dry when the secure terminal on my desk flashed a violent crimson. I hadn't slept in thirty-six hours, my eyes burning from staring at columns of ghost figures, duplicate invoices, and shell corporations linked to Dominic Rossi. But the red alert wasn’t from Rossi’s faction. It was an internal security flag originating from the estate’s main vault deep beneath the west wing.

The ink on the emergency audit report was barely dry when the secure ter...

The glass shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds on the marble, scattering the light from the chandeliers. The muffled laughter died instantly, replaced by a suffocating, heavy silence that crept outward from the grand staircase.

The glass shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds on the marble, scatter...

The heavy oak doors of my private study clicked shut behind us, locking out the clinical, terrifying silence of the kitchen. Evelyn Crane stood stiffly in front of my mahogany desk, her hands folded over her apron with the rigid precision of someone who had spent decades micromanaging every square inch of my estate. Behind her, Norah hovered near the doorway, clutching her clipboard like a shield.

The heavy oak doors of my private study clicked shut behind us, locking...

And the "boy" they had all seen?

Sarah slowly looked down at the floor beside the vehicle. There were no small footprints leading out of the garage. There were only two small, empty, grease-covered synthetic shoes, a torn shirt, and a pile of discarded, lifelike silicone skin resting on the stool.

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