The board's secret meeting was held in their fortress-like headquarters beneath Manhattan. Alice Howard adjusted the nanocamera around her neck; Sarah's hacking program had disguised her as a cleaner. Ryan Black murmured behind her, "Remember, if exposed, the security system will vaporize us in 30 seconds." His fingertips brushed her waist, and the eagle tattoo glowed coldly under infrared scans—a "bastard" mark Sarah had faked with a temporary skin patch, enough to get them into the core area.
When the copper meeting room doors opened, a stench of blood hit her. Twelve board members sat around a scarlet round table, the central screen displaying real-time data of the merger's collapse, yet none looked anxious. The chairman's voice hissed like a snake: "Initiate Phase Two of Operation Blood Eagle—eliminate all,including Stanton." Alice's heartbeat roared in her ears. Mark's name was listed as a "traitor," while Ryan was replacing the merger victims' list with fake data to cover the board's true crime: maintaining their financial empire via a drug money-laundering network.
She quietly stuck a wiretap to the wall. The recording captured the chairman's plot: "Black, your tech firm will seize key assets post-collapse, but remember—bastards exist to stay hidden." Ryan's reply was encrypted, but Alice glimpsed the crack in his wrist tattoo suddenly light up—a signal to activate some lethal device. She realized she stood in a double trap: the board wanted her dead, and Ryan might have long planned to sacrifice her.
At the meeting's end, the chairman suddenly turned to the cleaner's area: "Ms. Howard, you seem quite interested in data sanitization?" Alice's disguise was blown; a laser net her instantly. Ryan activated his tattoo device at the last second, and the meeting room's power crashed. The three sprinted for the escape tunnel. Sarah's EMP gun blew open the iron door, but they ran into Mark's sniper team around the corner.
Gunfire merged with rain in a hellish symphony. A stray bullet grazed Alice's shoulder. Ryan dragged her into a hidden pod. The cramped space ignited desperate passion; their kisses reeked of near-death frenzy. Ryan tore off her bloodied clothes, his fingers hovering over her wound: "You should've known—revenge costs a sacrifice." As climax hit, Alice bit his throat, the recorder capturing his unhinged confession: "The board's bastards… are just disposable pawns they bred." Later, she fished his encrypted chip from a gap in the pod wall—deadlier evidence than the meeting tapes.
When the escape pod ejected into the river, Sarah's hacking drone had erased their pursuers' signals. On the shore, Ryan suddenly grabbed Alice's neck, a gun to her temple: "The chip shouldn't be in your hands." But Alice held up a blood sample report from the tattoo's crack: "Bastard DNA matches the core of the drug ring… Black, you're the eagle that needs culling." Sarah then revealed the smoking gun: emails proving Ryan colluded with Mark to frame her three years ago.
A standoff froze them. Rain thundered as Mark's helicopter roared overhead. He stepped out, bloodstained suit and a sneer, showing surveillance footage from Alice's apartment—her and Ryan's hotel tryst, edited into "treason evidence." "Darlings," Mark's gun aimed at Ryan, "the board gave me one last chance. Hand over the chip, or we all die." Alice swallowed the chip whole. Sarah remotely wiped the cloud backup. Gunshots exploded in the downpour. She fell into a pool of blood, her vision fading as Ryan's scream tore through the storm.