Nole Alset's Lie
As Gravitrek's grand unveiling goes out live to eight billion people, a hidden Umbrax device rides the broadcast toward detonation — and backstage, Salugi's one true word to Elsa Jones costs him the one piece of her he can't get back.
Nole Alset stages the public birth of Gravitrek as glittering space tourism, and the heroes — who know exactly why the lie has to hold — can only help him sell it. Under the platform, an Umbrax device rigged with stolen Black Card tech ticks toward the live feed's climax, meaning to turn the whole world's cameras into a location-finder for the hidden cats. Backstage, Salugi grabs the device's remote from Elsa Jones and, to stop her overreaching, tells her the truth he's kept for two thousand years — that she is Cleopatra. She breaks from him and vanishes into the crowd, the device still armed. The heroes claw the broadcast back from disaster with seconds to spare, but the signal fires anyway, in fragments, and Elsa Jones walks into the world alone, aligned to no one, credentials wiped, destination Heliopoly.