The lab was still. Too still.Ethan ’s fingers hovered above the glass console, trembling slightly as the screen pulsed with a sickly green light. Smoke from the city’s collapse still lingered on his coat. His knuckles were raw from breaking through fallen server racks, dragging himself here like a soldier crawling through the rubble of a war he didn’t understand.He didn’t even remember sitting down.But something… called him.Not with words.With code.Unfamiliar glyphs now danced across the console—patterns moving in nonlinear logic, bending and coiling as if alive. They weren’t random. They had structure. Symmetry.They had intention.And for the first time in days, Ethan felt fear crawl back into his bones.“Anomaly detected,” Paragon’s voice said, filtered through digital static.“Residual echo traceable to orbital subnet. Classification: Ghost Network.”Ethan narrowed his eyes. “What subnet?”“MIMIR-7. Unknown satellite cluster. Hidden transmission protocol. Legacy clearance

The glass-walled conference room of Brooks Corp’s 42nd floor was a battlefield disguised as a meeting space. The long mahogany table gleamed under the recessed lighting, but it wasn’t the furniture anyone cared about, it was the dozen sets of eyes, each belonging to a power player, all watching Ethan Cole as if he had no right to be here. The Janitor!He didn’t take the empty seat offered at the far end. No, Ethan slid into the chair directly opposite Mr. Brooks, his wee movements slow and deliberate and that too while staring Mr Brooks straight in the eyes. A subtle rebellion. He was done doing what they wanted, now he created his path.Nathan Cross leaned forward with that lazy smirk of his. “You’re in the wrong room, Cole. This meeting’s for stakeholders, not… Janitor or whatever you are now.”Ethan’s lips curved faintly. “I’m exactly where I need to be.” He tapped his tablet, and the massive screen behind him lit up with a series of red-highlighted numbers. “And judging by these f

The applause from Lena’s televised apology hadn’t faded from the city’s ears before the next act of the game began.For Ethan, it was supposed to be a day of progress. His team at the small tech firm Gridline Systems had just landed a high-profile contract to integrate adaptive AI security into a rising logistics startup. It wasn’t as big as the Brooks Corp projects he’d crushed before, but every win now was a step toward eroding their influence.Maya slid a printed report across his desk. “Signed, sealed, and wired. We’re officially in.”Ethan gave a small nod, still scanning the data feed. “Good. Make sure their system runs with our cloaked Paragon patch. I want eyes on every shipment.”“That’s the thing…” Maya hesitated, and that alone made Ethan look up. “Two of the minor contracts we got last quarter… they’re not ours anymore.”Ethan frowned. “Not ours?”“Brooks Corp reclaimed them. Quietly. They didn’t announce it, no PR, no gloating.” She tapped a tablet screen. “One by one, th

The next evening, the city felt different. Maybe it was just him, but Ethan could swear the air carried a faint hum, like static before a storm.Paragon’s voice had been unusually quiet since the gala, almost as if it was… thinking. Or hiding something. And Ethan couldn’t get Lena’s face out of his head, the way her eyes had softened, the way her voice trembled just enough to feel real. He hated that he remembered every detail.He should have dismissed it as another of her tricks. He should have shut the door in his own mind before she even stepped through it. But instead, here he was, following a thread from the Ghost Network into one of the city’s most dangerous shadows — a black-market tech auction whispered about only in the deepest corners of the dark web.{Paragon: This address is flagged as high-risk. Proceed with extreme caution.}“Since when do you care about caution?” Ethan muttered under his breath.{Paragon: Since you started making irrational decisions.}He pulled the hoo

The rain came down in sheets over New Dawn City, streaking the glass towers with a sheen that turned their reflections into warped shadows. Ethan stood at the window of his rented high-rise loft, his jaw tight, the lights of the skyline flickering across his eyes like a thousand unblinking witnesses.Paragon’s overlay glimmered faintly across his vision, but tonight it wasn’t clean streams of code or ordered alerts. It was noise. Static. Like something or someone was clawing at the edges of the system itself.“Paragon,” he muttered, voice hoarse, “give me a read. Who’s out there?”The reply was clipped, colder than usual:[Host Signature Detected: 003 — Codename: Specter]Behavioral Pattern: Hostile. Objective: Terminate weaker Hosts.]Ethan’s stomach dropped. “Terminate?”He paced, fingers raking his hair. “Weaker Hosts? You mean… there are more out there? And this thing is hunting them down?”Paragon didn’t answer immediately. Instead, a faint digital hum filled the silence.That s