The lights of the city stretched before him, a network of glowing arteries pulsing with life, indifferent to the weight of his thoughts. Lionel Steenberg stood at the window of his penthouse office, a glass of whiskey resting untouched on the polished desk behind him. His eyes traced the skyline, but his mind was elsewhere—circling, dissecting, questioning.

Alias.

The name had become an obsession, an itch he couldn’t quite scratch, a presence that lingered in every briefing, every intercepted message, every whisper in the darker corners of the financial world. Alias and his team were out there, weaving their intricate, defiant scheme, challenging the very foundations of institutional order.

Steenberg had spent decades refining his craft, ensuring that the world never veered too far from stability. He had seen threats before—radicals, technocrats, rogue economists—but Alias was different. He wasn’t reckless, nor was he merely ambitious. He was measured, methodical, a man who understood the system as well as Steenberg himself. Perhaps better.

And therein lay the problem.

Steenberg exhaled, rubbing his temple. If he caught them—if he dismantled Pegged, shut down their networks, froze their assets, neutralized their allies—what then? Would the battle be won? Would the world return to its carefully structured equilibrium? Or would another Alias rise, another mind, another movement, taking up the torch where this one had fallen?

That was the nature of this war. It wasn’t a battle against a man, nor against a single project. It was a battle against an idea. And ideas had a habit of slipping through cracks, of waiting in the shadows, of re-emerging when the time was right.

Steenberg’s fingers tightened around the glass, but he did not drink. He had fought this war for so long, and he had won so many times before. He had buried movements, redirected energy, assimilated threats into the very machinery they had tried to dismantle. But every time, a new iteration surfaced. The phoenix always rose again.

He turned away from the window, walking back to his desk with slow, deliberate steps. He glanced at the report in front of him—the latest intelligence on Alias’s movements, speculation on Ava’s next steps, a profile on Raj’s financial maneuvers. Pieces on a board.

What if he caught them? What if he crushed Pegged entirely? Would that be victory? Or would it simply buy time until the next Alias emerged, learning from this failure, refining the flaws, evading capture for a little longer?