AGENT CASTING

The City San Antonio. The sixth largest city in the United States, growing at three times the national rate. All eyes are turning toward SA — and so are the wrong ones.

The Order The Order of Distinguished Gentlemen has opened a chapter in the city — continuing its global mission of brotherhood, philanthropy, and civic leadership. A force for SA's future.

The Threat But ARGUS Corporation sees the same city — and wants to control it. ARGUS markets itself as peacekeeping infrastructure. What it's building is a surveillance empire. And it has found a willing puppetmaster: a man who believes the fastest path to power runs through manufactured tragedy.

The Incident A covert agent discovers the plan — buried in ARGUS servers on an ordinary Thursday night. He's found by a woman who took a wrong turn: an ex–Air Force flight medic working late, who stumbles into a restricted server room and a pistol leveled at her face.

Evidence on the screen: comms intercepts with a terror cell. A contract for civil unrest. A gala seating chart — with one seat circled in red.

He pockets the drive and leaves. She stands alone in the dark — the puppetmaster's framed portrait smiling down from the wall behind her.

She picks up the seating chart.

The Operation Together, they have three weeks. A bespoke tuxedo from Limatus. A couture gown from Gauthier. A Porsche from the showroom floor. Intel pinned to a war room wall at Hotel Emma. And one chance to get to the gala and expose the puppetmaster before he manufactures a martyr and rides a surveillance bill to total control of the city.

They neutralize the villain. Pull his phone. Find encrypted messages: the riot and the assassination will happen with or without him. The ARGUS cells are redundant.

The agent walks. He says the threat is neutralized. His mission is done.

She's left alone on the Hotel Emma rooftop — the SA skyline behind her, the gala three weeks away, and a city that doesn't know what's coming.

The villain is dead. The threat is not.