Chapter Four: Fifty Million Dollars

By morning, New York had turned the explosion into a story it could tolerate. The networks called it a gas accident. The police said there was no evidence of terrorism. The mayor's office promised everything was under control. Ethan stood on the second floor of an abandoned print shop in Brooklyn and watched the old television without changing expression. Real news never lived on television. The darknet bounty channels were already burning. Fifty million dollars for confirmed identification of Ghost. Capture preferred. Body acceptable. The post carried no signature, only the shadow account Aegis used when it wanted deniability without subtlety. Within three minutes, killer accounts in Tokyo, Rio, Belgrade, and Cape Town came online.