Aura-Link, The Office Boy’s Rise to Global Supremacy

Chapter 2

The world seemed to spin on the wrong axis as Rian blinked his eyes. The first thing he felt was the damp, signature scent of his moldy apartment walls, followed by a pain that hit the bridge of his nose like a sledgehammer strike. He groaned, trying to move his arms that felt as heavy as lead, only to realize he was sprawled on the cold floorboards, right beneath a small window that let the gray London light sneak in.

Rian tried to remember. A dark alley in Shoreditch. Blood. A man named Marcus. A weapon that evaporated into grains of light. And... something forced into his eye.

"Damn it," he whispered in a raspy voice he barely recognized.

He tried to open his eyes, but his right eye felt sticky, as if a thick fluid had dried there. Trembling, he touched his eyelid. There was no blood, but a creeping heat, a rhythmic throb that pulsed in sync with his heartbeat. When he finally managed to open both eyes fully, Rian nearly fell backward in horror.

His left eye’s vision was normal; he saw the cracks in the bedroom ceiling and the pile of dirty clothes on the chair. However, his right eye presented something from a computer technician’s nightmare. There, floating in mid-air, were thin neon blue lines mapping every corner of the room.

Every object he looked at suddenly had a label.

[Cheap Wooden Desk - Structural Integrity: 32% - Status: Termites Detected]

[Rusty Electric Kettle - Voltage: 220V - Status: High Short-Circuit Risk]

"What the hell is this?" Rian rubbed his eyes roughly, hoping this was just a hallucination from shock or lack of sleep. But the labels didn't disappear. Instead, they moved with his eyes, recalibrating at a dizzying speed.

He crawled toward his tiny bathroom, separated only by a thin sheet of plastic curtain. His trembling hands gripped the edge of the sink while he stared at the cracked mirror in front of him. His face, pale and covered in cold sweat, looked miserable, but his attention was immediately drawn to his right eye.

His pupil was no longer its usual brownish-black. There, within the circle of his iris, was a geometric pattern that kept spinning, emitting a deep black light that occasionally flashed silver like a star in the middle of a black hole. The light didn't illuminate the room but seemed to absorb the light around it.

"What did you put in my eye, Marcus?" he hissed, his breath coming in gasps.

Suddenly, a sharp pain like an electric shock stabbed directly into the center of his brain. Rian screamed, clutching his head and kneeling on the cold bathroom floor. Behind the darkness of his closed eyes, he heard a voice. Not a human voice, but a cold, emotionless synthetic voice, yet crystal clear.

[Initializing Aura-Link... Success.]

[Synchronizing Optic Nerve with Collector Unit... 4% Complete.]

[Good Morning, User Rian. Tutorial Protocol Active.]

"Get out of my head!" Rian hammered the sides of his head, but the voice continued to echo inside, as if the vibrations originated from his own skull.

[Warning: Increased Blood Pressure Detected. Please Remain Calm. Excessive Stress Will Impede the Integration Process.]

Rian tried to steady his breathing. He was a survivor; years of living on the streets of London before finally landing a job as a janitor had taught him one thing: panic was the fastest ticket to the grave. He slowly stood up, looking back into the mirror. The pattern in his eye began to fade, merging perfectly with his pupil until it looked normal at a glance, though if seen from up close, there was a strange distortion there.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The loud pounding on his front door made Rian jump in surprise. His heart started racing again.

"Rian! Open the door, damn it! I know you’re in there!"

The voice was shrill, sharp, and very familiar. Mrs. Hudson. The middle-aged landlady who had a hobby of collecting rent in a manner harsher than the most ruthless debt collectors in the East End.

As Rian turned toward the rotting wooden door, his right eye throbbed again. Suddenly, the apartment wall seemed to become transparent—no, not transparent, but rather transformed into a stack of thermal data. He could see a human figure standing behind the door in the form of a reddish-orange shadow.

Above the shadow's head, a red flashing information box appeared.

[Target Detected: Martha Hudson]

[Stress Level: 85% - Very High]

[Physical Condition: Arthritis in Right Knee, High Blood Pressure]

[Mental Status: Angry, Impatient, Greedy]

[Psychological Weakness: Terrified of Tax Authorities, Has a Secret Stash Under Kitchen Tile Number 4]

Rian’s eyes widened. The information flooded his brain like a deluge. He could feel Mrs. Hudson’s pulse; he could hear the rasp of her short breaths through the wall. This was crazy. This couldn’t be real.

"Rian! If you don’t come out in ten seconds, I’m using the spare key and throwing all your junk into the street! You’re two weeks behind, you lazy boy!" Mrs. Hudson shouted again, followed by a hard kick to the door.

[System Suggestion: Use 'Secret Stash' Data to Conduct Defensive Negotiation.]

[Success Probability: 98.4%]

"You want me to blackmail her?" Rian whispered, as if talking to the voice in his head.

[Negotiation is an efficient form of data exchange, User. Use it or you will lose your residence in five minutes. The Collector Unit requires a stable environment for synchronization.]

Rian clenched his fists. He was sick of being looked down upon. He was sick of always being the one to bow down whenever people like Mrs. Hudson or Julian at the office trampled on his dignity. If the thing in his eye was a curse, then he would at least use it to fight back.

He walked toward the door, turned the key, and pulled it open with a quick jerk.

Mrs. Hudson was ready with her mouth open to curse him out, but she suddenly went silent when she saw Rian’s appearance. The young man looked a mess—disheveled hair, eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, and a cold aura she had never seen before radiating from the way Rian stood.

"Oh, finally you’re awake, you lazy brat!" Mrs. Hudson stood with her hands on her hips, trying to reclaim her dominance. "Where’s the rent? Don’t you dare try making excuses about your late paycheck again. I don’t care if you have to sell a kidney, I want my money now!"

Rian looked into the woman’s eyes. Through his right eye, he saw a small blue line connecting his pupil to Mrs. Hudson’s. It was as if a data cable had been plugged in between them.

[Analysis Expression: Micro-tremors in the lower lip indicate a bluff. Target urgently needs money to pay her son's gambling debts.]

"I don’t have the money yet, Mrs. Hudson," Rian said calmly. His voice was flat, much calmer than he actually felt.

"What?! You dare say that after two weeks—"

"But," Rian interrupted, making Mrs. Hudson choke on her own words. "I think the London tax authorities would be very interested to hear about tile number four in your kitchen. You know, the tile that’s a bit looser than the others? Where you keep the stacks of cash from rent you never report?"

Mrs. Hudson’s face suddenly changed color. From an angry red to deathly pale in a matter of seconds. She took a step back, her hand reflexively clutching her chest. "What... what are you talking about? What rubbish are you spewing, huh?"

Rian stepped forward, crossing the threshold.

He felt as though he were reading a script already written in the air. "And about your son, Gary. His gambling debts at that illegal casino near the docks... how much was it? Five thousand pounds? Ten thousand? You're quite desperate, aren't you? That's why you're being so hostile today."

Mrs. Hudson trembled violently. "How... how do you know that? Were you spying on me?"

"Let's just say I have eyes that see more than you can imagine," Rian whispered, his dark eyes glinting in the gloom of the apartment hallway. "Now, here's my offer. You give me two more weeks, interest-free, and I'll forget everything I know about your kitchen. If you're still pounding on my door tomorrow morning... then an anonymous letter will reach the tax office by that afternoon. What do you say?"

The old woman swallowed hard. She stared at Rian as if the young man had just transformed into a demon. The power and authority she usually used to oppress the poor tenants in her building suddenly evaporated without a trace.

"Two... two weeks," Mrs. Hudson muttered in a thin, shaky voice. "One day more than that, and I'm calling the police."

"Deal," Rian replied curtly before shutting the door right in the woman's face.

Once the door was locked, Rian leaned his back against the wood. His body shook uncontrollably, and a cold sweat drenched his forehead. The adrenaline that had peaked earlier was now slowly receding, leaving behind a wave of crushing exhaustion. He had just done something he never could have imagined. He had won a battle against Mrs. Hudson, that rent-collecting monster, using nothing more than a few lines of data.

"This is insane," he whispered. "I really can see everything."

Suddenly, his vision began to vibrate. Thousands of notification windows appeared simultaneously, overlapping in his field of sight. A deafening sound of static buzzed in his head.

[Neural Synchronization Increasing: 10% Complete.]

[Host Brain Memory Capacity Adjusting...]

[Downloading Basic Modules: Social Prediction and Physical Weakness Analysis...]

[Warning: Host Energy Levels Critical. High-Carbohydrate Nutrition Recommended.]

Rian tried to walk toward his small kitchen, but his legs felt like rubber. His vision began to fade into a dull gray. He could see one final message floating in the center of his sight, glowing in bright gold.

[Congratulations, User. Your first target was at the door; use this data or be evicted in five minutes. First Mission Complete. Reward: Full Access to Basic-Level Banking Systems.]

"Banking... access?"

Before he could process the meaning of those words, his world went dark. Rian collapsed onto his kitchen floor, while behind his closed eyelids, the Aura-Link system continued to pulse, taking root deeper into every nerve and memory, transforming an ordinary office boy into something the world had never seen before.

Outside the apartment, the gray London sky began to pour heavy rain, washing away the traces of the previous night's events, but for Rian, the true storm had only just begun behind his own eyelids. He no longer saw the world as a place to live, but as a massive system riddled with security loopholes—and now, he held the key to hacking it all.

The system whispered again softly, a voice that now felt more like a melody than an intrusion.

[Sleep well, Rian. Tomorrow, we begin the takeover of Sterling Tech.]