This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

The fluorescent lights in the basement archive hummed with an electric persistence that had driven away countless researchers over the decades. Sarah Chen adjusted her reading glasses and squinted at the yellowed document before her, the musty smell of old paper filling her nostrils. As a senior investigative journalist for the Washington Herald, she had spent the better part of three months buried in these forgotten files, chasing a story that seemed to dissolve like smoke every time she thought she had grasped it.

The Freedom of Information Act request had taken eight months to process, and when the boxes finally arrived, most of the documents were so heavily redacted they looked like abstract art. Black rectangles dominated every page, leaving only scattered words and phrases that seemed meaningless in isolation. But Sarah had learned long ago that patience was a journalist's greatest weapon. Patterns emerged from chaos if you stared long enough.

She picked up her coffee cup, now cold for the third time that morning, and took a sip of the bitter liquid. The document in her hands was different from the others. Where most files contained communications between known government officials, this one referenced something called "The Council" in multiple contexts. Not the National Security Council or any other official body she recognized, but simply "The Council" with a capital C, as if it were a proper noun that needed no further explanation.