The gold-plated elevator chimed—a sharp sound that had always felt like a victory fanfare. I stood there, watching the numbers climb toward the penthouse of the Sterling-Goliath Tower, feeling the weight of the world in my hands. In my left hand, I gripped a leather-bound folder containing the $500M Goliath merger contract. It was the compilation of eighteen months of legal warfare, sleepless nights fueled by caffeine and spite, and the systematic dismantling of our company's competitors.In my right pocket, my fingers traced the velvet texture of a small box. Inside sat a three-carat diamond, flawless and cold. It was supposed to be a "thank you" to my wife, Clara. I’d convinced myself she was the anchor that kept me sane while I built Marcus Sterling’s empire from the dust of his father’s failures. I thought we were a team. I thought I was the sword and she was the shield.The doors came open. I stepped out into the foyer, my shoes clicking rhythmically against the Italian marble

I woke up in a tomb of despair. The air around me was a thick, cloying cocktail of ozone, burnt copper, and the unmistakable rot of a city's waste.Above me, a flickering neon sign from some withered noodle shop hummed with a dying, rhythmic light, casting long, solemn shadows across the room."Don't move, meat-sack," a voice hissed.I turned my head slowly, my neck joints cracking with a sound that was too loud in the silence. A girl, no older than twenty, with grease-stained goggles perched on her forehead and a jacket made of patched Kevlar, was hovering over me. In her hand, she held a surgical laser, its beam humming with a lethal, low-frequency heat."Who are you?" My voice sounded different—not the hesitant, soft-spoken tone of a corporate accountant. It was metallic, resonant, and carried a weight that made the girl flinch."I'm Echo. And you're my retirement fund," she said, her eyes wide with a desperate kind of greed. "I found you floating near the e-waste vents. I thought

The cemetery was a masterpiece of fake, manufactured mourning.Damn, I could even say that it was a sea of black umbrellas and expensive silk, a gathering of the city’s elite who had come to ensure that the man who built their fortunes was truly under six feet of dirt.I stood faraway from the scene, masked by the shadows of a weeping willow tree that had seen a century of lies. My new face was hidden behind a high-collared coat and a surgical mask—standard gear for the "sickly" poor of the lower districts who often wandered near the upper-tier parks.Echo stood beside me, clutching a bouquet of wilted, dead flowers she’d pulled from a nearby bin to blend in. "This is beyond morbid, Julian. Watching your own burial? This is how people end up in the psych ward.""I don't want therapy, Echo. I want to see who smiles when the dirt hits the lid," I whispered. My eyes were locked on the front row.At the center of the gathering stood the two people who had dismantled my life. Clara Vane—so

"Are you sure about this, Julian? Because once I start, there is no 'undo' button," Echo said.Her hand was trembling as she adjusted the focal lens on the surgical laser. We were deep in the bowels of the Sump, in a room shielded by lead plates to hide the massive energy spikes my watch was drawing from the local grid."I’m a scavenger, not a plastic surgeon. If I slip by a millimeter, you’re going to look like a Picasso painting.""You won't slip," I said, lying back on the reclaimed medical table. The metal was cold against my spine, but I barely felt it. My internal temperature was rising as the System prepped my body for the overhaul. "The System is slaved to the laser. It’s guiding your hand via a haptic override. You just have to hold the line. I can't walk into a room with Marcus and Clara looking like the man they killed. Julian Vane has to stay dead so the Architect can live.""But this... Julian, this is going to hurt in a way that words can't describe," she whispered, her

The world came back in a jagged blur of white light and the metallic, copper taste of my own blood. My vision flickered. A glitching HUD trying to stabilize against a massive EMP dampener.[SYSTEM RECOVERY: 14%... 22%...][RESERVE POWER ACTIVE]I was in the back of a moving van, the walls lined with acoustic foam. My hands were bound with high-tensile zip ties that bit into my skin. Marcus stood over me, holding the $100 million Vermeer painting like it was a piece of trash. He looked down at me with the smug satisfaction of a man who thought he had finally won."You really thought a new face and a fancy watch made you a god, didn't you, Julian?" Marcus sneered.He kicked me in the ribs, the reinforced carbon-fiber in my chest taking the brunt of the blow, but the vibration still rattled my lungs."I don't know how you survived the harbor, but I’m a firm believer in the second attempt. This time, we’re going to use an industrial shredder. No DNA soup. Just dust.""The painting, Marcus