The sheet opened. It was empty, except for a single cell, A1. It contained a live-updating timestamp and a name.

Milan didn’t find the file in the company’s main cloud. He found it on an old, dust-caked external drive labeled Property of Viktor S. —the founder who had vanished from the board of directors three years ago, leaving only a cryptic resignation letter and a thriving empire. The file was titled simply: .

The first sheet, "Phase 1," wasn't filled with revenue. It was a list of names—hundreds of them. Next to each name were dates and coordinates. Milan realized with a chill that these were the first employees of the company. But there was a hidden column, Column Z, formatted in white text so it was invisible against the background.