The cold, the cold was the first thing he encountered, stinging, hard, bleeding into his bones like icy fingers digging through flesh. His eyes opened, and his eyelids were heavy as lead, and the world changed into focus in bits. It was black, with faint, intermittent glimpses of light flashing about discontinuous walls. Its air was heavy, stifling, impregnanted with the smell of damp soil and something metallic, rust or blood. He attempted to give a movement, but his body resisted--a sore, aching pain that spread through all his muscles, all his joints."Where...?" His voice was croaked and almost inaudible, scratching at a throat on which he thought he felt the end of a long disused canal. He drew himself up on his shaky, trembling elbows, and peered into the darkness. The soil on which he stood was dry and rough and sprinkled with loose pebbles and grit. The stalactites were suspended at the ceiling like daggers in free fall and the sides turned inwards and he was walled up in what

There was a roar beneath--a deep, savage, vibrating roar, rattling the walls. Elias took his improvised weapon, a sharp rock, and had retreated into the alcove. It was not assisting the system, it was trying, wearing him out. But why? Rehabilitation, it said. For what? The monster was born: huge, hairy, coal-like eyes. It charged. Elias twisted, and made a cut with the rock. It was agony when nails tore his arm. He struggled and the adrenaline ran. The machine struck him with electric shocks whenever he did not do it properly. But he changed--and took advantage of the topography of the cave, to set it in snares. At last he punched the rock into its eye. It howled, collapsing. Boss Defeated. Reward: Exit Unlocked. Final Analysis: Slightly Below average. It was a wall of the cave that glowed and a door appeared. Elias stumbled through-- Int

Elias got out of the way, cutting with the rock. He felt pain erupting with the scratches of claws on his arm. He struggled with a wild fight. The machine used to give him shocks every time he failed to make a good posture during a fight. But he acclimatized himself--in the land of the cave, in traps. She struck it lastly with a rock in its eye. It howled, collapsing. Boss Defeated. Reward: Exit Unlocked. Final Assessment: Slightly Underwhelming. The cave wall was glamorous, and a door was visible. Elias stumbled through-- Into light. Blinding white. Voices: "He's waking! Vitals stabilizing!" The cave melted away, and he blinking. Hospital room. Monitors beeping. Doctors rushing. Elias Thorne, Trillionaire, seven months in coma. But fussing, fussing on the part of the nurses, a vague panel seemed

"Mr. Thorne? Can you hear me? You are in St. Agnes Medical Center. You have been seven months in a coma. Seven months. It matched the system's taunt. He attempted to get on his back but he was held by straps and weakness. "What... happened?" The middle-aged man with a clipboard came forward and was the doctor. I heard that you fainted at a board meeting. Cardiac arrest caused by unknown poison. We notice foul play--we have an investigation that was made by your security team. You're lucky to be alive." Lucky? Elias half laughed, but it was a cough. It was a system that had made him alive in that cave simulated hell. Did it get implanted in the coma? By whom? The panel jammed before his eyes: Health Scan Vital Signs Nominal. Penalty Suspended (Temporarily). New Objective: Find Your Poisoner. Award: Corporate Intel Boost. Failure: Public Humiliating Leak. He suppress

Elias Thorne was standing on the windows between the floor and ceiling of his penthouse looking out the windows upon the sparkling expanse of New York City at the height of the night. His strength was reflected in the skyline: towers that he could sell at a price and billboards that were topped with advertisements about Thorne Networks applications and drones that reappeared like a swarm of obedient insects in his cybernetic nest. Seven months of coma had lost him momentum but the merger with Lang Industries had already given him an additional fifty billion net worth. Markets adored a recovery tale, particularly one in which there was a miraculous recovery of poisoning.He stirred his scotch in his glass, the neat amberous fluid glittering in the pale room light. The Adversary System had been silent during the last hour, but he was not to confide in the silence. It could never cease its watching, never its calculating. The half-a-half alliance he had fixed was like a ceasef