Six weeks later.
Chicago was quieter.
No explosions. No blood in alleys.
Just cold winds and empty headlines.
Aaron vanished.
Leon, last anyone heard, headed west—burned out but breathing.
And Matt?
Gone like a myth.
But Bishop?
He lived.
Not in a tower. Not in a throne.
In a wheelchair, alone, in a state-funded rehab facility on the edge of nothing.
No empire. No leverage. No voice.
Just memory.
And every day, a nurse wheeled him out to the same window.
Same gray sky.
Same silence.
And still—
he smiled.
Because in his lap sat a plain manila envelope. Sealed. Clean.
Delivered the day after the fire.
The nurse never knew who brought it.
Inside:
A single flash drive.
Unlabeled.
Unmarked.
Untouched.
On it—everything.
Every file Matt thought he destroyed.
Every scream. Every image.
Every sin.
Bishop couldn't speak. Couldn't move much.
But he could watch.
He could wait.
Because he knew the truth.
You can kill a man's body. You can burn his throne.
But you can't erase a virus that made its home in others.
And in dark corners of Chicago—
in basements, prisons, cold inboxes—
the files were already spreading.
Slow.
Patient.
Like rot.
Like memory.
Like Bishop.