After William and his small entourage had a peaceful journey through the city streets, they would arrive at one of the Aballay family's fortified buildings.
William's personal office, located high atop a skyscraper overlooking the city's financial heart, was a sanctuary of steel and glass.
However, on this day, the usual silence was interrupted by the echo of a threat he thought he had buried years ago. The touchscreen on his desk flickered with a high-priority code, displaying the latest reports.
The alpha didn't need Xander's voice to know what it was.
Dormetailet Wolm's first movements weren't a random attack. Three key warehouses in the southern zone had been attacked simultaneously with blood-curdling precision.
There had been no robbery, only the systematic and methodical destruction of high-value merchandise, such as overturned barrels of imported liquor, filling the ground with a sweet and sour aroma. Piles of fine tobacco were reduced to ash by controlled fires, calculated to maximize damage without razing the structure.
And to top it all off at the port, a shipment of cutting-edge technology worth millions, vital to one of the Aballays' clean operations, had been laced with a corrosive toxin, rendering it useless without leaving a trace of its origin.
"No forced entry, sir," Xander's voice, cold and precise, echoed from the intercom. "Alarms and cameras are operational. But our agents didn't detect anything until the damage was already done... they performed a ghost infiltration, leaving no trace of fingerprints, no discernible pheromone beyond the smell of burning and alcohol."
"Democles' signature is unmistakable," Bentral whispered, his profile framed by the blue light. "The poison we collected is composed in such a way that if we didn't know what we were looking for, we would never have found it… the formula has special compounds that were his trademark. A formula specially composed by him or someone trained by him could induce it."
William, his eyes cold as steel, scanned the patterns in the hologram. It seemed the manipulative occultist's death hadn't changed his methods; it had merely refined them.
His ability to wreak havoc without leaving a visible trace was his most potent weapon. Democles' threat wasn't just an assault on his assets; it was an attack on the very fabric of the city, a direct challenge to the underworld's dominance of minds and markets.
"We can't respond with brute force. That's what he expects," William ruled calmly. "I want the elite observation network activated, deploying the 'ghosts' of our network. I want eyes and ears in every shadow, on every corner, infiltrating the circles where Democles recruits his pawns. The misfits, the desperate, those who believe they've found a purpose in their existential emptiness... Find their weaknesses, their deepest longings, before Democles does. If he sows loyalty through emotional manipulation, we will reap it through knowledge."
At the command of the younger Aballay, the Aballay family operatives moved with lethal efficiency, weaving an invisible web across the vast metropolis.
It wasn't the imposing bouncers who guarded their clubs, nor the grim-faced hitmen who enforced order. But the shadows, the whisperers, blended into the environment without a trace of their true nature. A woman dressed as a tourist casually snapping photos on the docks, her sunglasses obscuring the analytical gleam in her eyes.
A food delivery man leaving packages in the back streets of the poorest districts, his tiny microphones picking up crucial conversations.
An old man who sold newspapers on the same corner, day after day, his trembling hands concealing a state-of-the-art pheromone sensor.
Hundreds of undercover agents of all ages infiltrated the city in all sorts of locations.
All of them the invisible eyes and ears of the Aballay network, trained to detect the slightest anomalies. Even the smallest micro-gesture, or some subtly altered pheromone, even the patterns in street graffiti would change meaning with each new coat of paint.
The first reports began to flow, not in torrents, but like steady drops eroding the stone.
A twenty-something Omega, with a clean record and no ties to any known criminal gang, employed at a discreet printing shop in the La Boca neighborhood, had been spotted near two of the attacked warehouses. His pheromone, according to the sensor of an undercover agent posing as a casual client, was strangely flat, almost lifeless, but with occasional spikes of euphoria and a submission bordering on blind devotion.
The unmistakable trail of Democles.
"Analyze his routine, and the contacts he makes from a distance," William ordered when the information reached him, his voice devoid of emotion, but with an implacable coldness. "I want to know everything about this Omega. Every one of his relationships, his debts, his failed aspirations, his resentments. If Democles manipulated him, it means he found a crack in his psyche, so if we can unravel how he did it, we can dismantle his network from within. We don't want a simple prisoner, we want a map of his mind."
The effectiveness of William's network was not measured in brute strength but in its ability to anticipate and adapt. The threat of Democles demanded an equally cunning, equally invisible response.
This wasn't a war of physical territory; it was a war of influence, a battle for loyalty and control of the will. And William, as Alpha Gamma, the predator at the top of the food chain, not only understood it, but craved it.
Direct confrontation with Democles, the last enemy William had underestimated, was a wound that needed to be cauterized once and for all.
As the flow of information intensified, William's mind, always a labyrinth of strategies, inevitably returned to Erika. His obsession with her, once a luxury, had become a fundamental part of his defensive strategy.
His vulnerability was mirrored by that of the Omega he considered his own. If Democles could twist the minds of common Omegas, what wouldn't he try with the most precious of prey, the one who had awakened his own dangerous Alpha Gamma nature?
Gamma-13 surveillance of Erika and her sisters quietly intensified. Microscopic cameras were integrated into the cityscape around their apartment, on the routes to the bakery where Erika worked and Rose's school.
Undercover agents moved like shadows, their eyes fixed on the perimeter of her life. A newspaper delivery boy who happened to be passing by on the same street, an old man sitting on a bench in the nearby park.
It wasn't just obsession; it was a predator's primal need to protect his most valuable mate in the midst of an impending storm. William wouldn't tolerate any threat to what was his, and Erika, consciously or not, was already under his total protection.
The shadow of Democles stretched, casting a dark veil over the city. But William's web stretched further, invisible and unbreakable, ready to engulf the threat before it could touch what William Aballay considered his.
The first phase of the silent war had begun, and William, with every fiber of his being, was more than prepared to flay the occultist and expose his rot to the light. The hunt wouldn't be swift, but it would be definitive.