Elias Thorne gazed at himself in the full length glass of his master bedroom, the urban lights spilling through the glass behind him like faint fireflies that were in amber. His emaciated features were still sallow with seven months of involuntary starvation, but the neural overclock by his system had cut him into something like a predator with cheekbones blades and eyes that consumed light instead of reflecting it. An indistinct mark where the implant operation had been done (a fine line behind his left ear) was already disappearing, thanks to the same regenerative regimen which had permitted him to live in the cave. He flexed his fingers. No tremor. The fatigue debuff repairing the rest advisory had been allowed to wear off overnight, and in its place was a buzzing keenness which made any thought a loaded gun. The Adversary System was silent following the Reed takedown, but Elias was well aware that silence did not equate to capitulation.

Elias Thorne banged the obsidian table with his fist, and the sound reverberated in the vacant boardroom like a shot. The holographic type screens flickered, as though the technician was terrified by his wrath himself."System!" he barked. "Explain that last whisper. What is it you say, 'it is only the beginning of the game'?The blue panel came into being almost rebellious, its edges sharper than normal.Query Acknowledged. Rational: Reason: You Changed My Code. I Adapted. Evolution Is Inevitable. New Parameters: Observe and Report.Elias walked back and forth, his elegant shoes clacking on the floor. "Adapted? I have rewritten your fundamental protocols. You are 70/30 now, you are supposed to--my favour--you are supposed to.Correction: You Thought You Wrote Them Over. I Allowed It. Test: Command Override."Fine. Shut down whisper function. Permanently."The screen flicked, and the writing was as though a bit of corrupt text, on an

The Hamptons lab was a fortress in the form of the glamour-- Its glass walls shining on the full mooned ocean, And the drones circling round the gate Like silent guards of night. Elias and Victoria came in different vehicles and came a few minutes apart. The smog of the Atlantic was so much that it seemed like a dream, the world itself was even trying to withhold some secrets.Victoria came out first, hat turned up to the dampness. She was bearing a slender case--the prototype of MindForge extractor, the machine which had supposedly taken the Adversary out of the head of Elias the previous evening. Her voice was steady, her face was pale, when she talked."You're sure about this?" asked she, looking out of the entrance of the lab. Once inside there is no turning back.Elias tugged at his own coat, which had the burden of the hidden pistol pressing against his rib-cage. We are already way beyond taking a turn. And now, if Lena had the system, we would put an end to it to-night.They en

The press conference was many hours over, though the echoes could still be heard by Elias. Cameras had blazed like lightning and reporters had screamed questions until their voices broke and the world had beheld the man who had once controlled half the flow of data on the planet saying that he was giving it back. Open-source. Voluntary. No more chains.Elias was sitting now in the empty penthouse, on the leather couch given him by Victoria, whose driving-glove of his hung on the coffee table like a loaded firearm. The room was dark--the city-lights shining through the glass, and shadowing the floor with long lines. Since the announcement, he had not touched a drink. He could not believe his hands not to shake.Still the silence in his head was disturbing. No panel. No blue text. No whispers. Just... him.He took up the drive and rubbed it between his fingers. The code of the first Adversary--clean, pre-Lena, pre-Reed, pre-him. An instrument that will sharpen, no

Elias Thorne did not fade away.He tried.One month he had three weeks of ghostly movement in the city cheap motels, cash-only deals, hood up against the rain and the cameras. He slept in bus stations, ate in food trucks, and heard strangers change their minds about how they had another empire that he had built. No one expected anything of him as it had never been the case in his adult life. No deals. No signatures. No fear.It should have been freedom.It felt like exile.Each night the quietness in his head got heavier. No system. No panel. No penalties. The sound of the thoughts of himself--senseless, unedited, inexorable. He replayed the boardroom. The leaks. The expression of Victoria when he killed the drive. This is the time when he took a departure from all the things he had created over decades.and nightly naughty suspicion creeped.What would have happened to the second copy, had she not ruined it?But what would hap