Three days later, the coding was finished. Every piece ran clean. No major errors. Everything clicked into place faster than expected.

When testing began, Rylie activated the emergency setup. The system shifted to battlefield mode, and the new AI got straight to work. It scanned every patient, detected injuries in real-time, and generated instant medical plans. When a virtual patient experienced cardiac arrest, the system even anticipated the crisis and prepared an epinephrine injector in advance.

After round after round of trials, not once did the machine overheat or misfire.

It was a huge leap forward — far beyond anything Ronan had delivered.

“That’s incredible!”

The shout came from the back, followed by claps, loud and fast. The whole lab turned toward Rylie, faces lit with admiration.

One of the observers stepped forward with a sealed envelope. “We need people like you at Pine Ridge University. Medical studies. AI research. You’d be perfect.”

The letter hadn’t been written on a whim. She came ready.

The woman offering it stood older by at least a decade, yet she spoke to Rylie with genuine respect. That made Rylie pause. She accepted the envelope. “I’ll think it over.”

Grad school had already been on her mind. Jumping straight to a postdoc, though? That part was still uncertain.

A voice broke through the buzz. “This calls for a celebration! We’ve finally moved beyond Ronan’s outdated tech!”

Someone else, less enthused, chimed in. “Let’s not get carried away. He’s not giving up those patents without a fight. Even if we didn’t break the law, the lawsuits alone could stall everything.”

“It won’t be long,” said Rylie.

Another person nodded. “That’s the mindset we need.”

Right then, her phone buzzed twice. A message flashed across the screen: “Ronan took the bait.”

Back in Marinth, the night she left, Lochlan had kept his word. He posted a job on the dark web. The offer? A heart and kidney from a healthy male, age twenty, blood type RH-null. Both organs had to be taken while the donor was still alive.

The price for that kind of job? Three hundred million dollars.

No one in that world would walk away from a deal like that.

Back when the Wilde family still held power, Ronan worked closely with them. He’d move harvested organs across the sea, charging foreign buyers outrageous prices. Now that the offer sat at 300 million dollars — and a powerful underworld figure had placed the order — he saw it as more than just a deal. It was a retirement plan wrapped in blood.

Ronan’s local sales had been slipping for a while. The military wasn’t impressed either. They were losing patience with his slow-paced equipment upgrades. He needed this score to secure his position.

But things had shifted. The top hospital in the country had cut ties with the Wilde legacy. His influence was slipping fast. He had to think fast.

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