Page 170 of BounBound By Scars

“Within weeks, truth becomes fiction. And fiction becomes law.”

I stared at him. Calm on the outside.

Fucking screaming on the inside.

But I nodded. Slowly. With something like admiration—or so I hoped.

“This is… beyond anything I imagined,” I murmured.

“It should be,” he said, sipping his whiskey. “Because that’s the point. No one’s ready for it. No one’s built to fight it.”

He smiled and raised his glass. “To rewriting reality.”

I raised mine, barely touching it to his.

And in my head, a single word echoed like a war drum.

Rubicon.

They weren’t just rewriting truth.

They were controlling it.

They were crossing a line that could never be uncrossed.

And the worst part?

No one would even know it happened.

I let out a soft scoff, then chuckled. Just enough to break the tension. Just enough to bait the next step.

“They thought the Doom Switch—the Rubicon Network—was here. In your house.” I gestured lazily toward the floor like I was waving off their idiocy. “You should’ve seen their faces. Dead serious. Like they expected to find a glowing red button in your basement.”

Romano barked a laugh, that same smug twist in his mouth.

Gotcha.

He found it funny.

Which meant it wasn’t here.

Which meant I was right.

I leaned back in my chair, schooling my face into amusement while my mind sharpened like a scalpel.

Romano shook his head. “Come on, Cipher. You think something that massive could be housed in a single underground vault beneath this estate?”

I gave a small shrug. “I figured as much. Something like that… you’d need decentralization. Layered distribution. Failsafes. Redundancy points in case any node gets burned.”

Romano pointed at me, grinning. “Shit. Exactly.”

He stood again, pacing with the kind of energy men like him only had when they thought no one could stop them.

“I mean… Ling’s the one handling the main infrastructure,” he added offhandedly, more to himself now. “Freaking genius, that motherfucker. Said he’d take care of everything. Said I didn’t need to worry.”

Come on, Romano. Ramble away and give it away.

He continued, mumbling now. “Everything’s in Texas. For now. But he’s talking about scaling. Failovers. Quantum-encrypted partitions. Blah blah. I don’t understand half of it.”