Chapter One: The Fifty-Million-Euro Scar

Vega walked away. Two security guards followed. One of them looked back at Lin. Examination Room One looked as though it had hosted a small operation. Disposable sheets, blood-tube wrappers, and cut electrode wires filled the waste bags. Lin locked the door and slipped the stained tissue into the inner pocket of his uniform. He did not know why. Perhaps because a leg worth fifty million euros should not have been missing a scar. While mopping beneath the examination bed, he found a thin black card. It was not medical equipment. It was an old memory wafer, its edge printed with a faded Étoile crest. A handwritten label on the back read TAC-11.