2025-02-02 18:54:56Carrick, now called V5, pretended to be brainwashed. He stared blankly at Doctor Ambrose. The doctor smiled, happy with Carrick's condition.
"You're doing well, V5," Doctor Ambrose said. "You'll be a great asset for Rambosia." He nodded to the guards.
One guard, a tall man with a scar, stepped forward. "Sir, may I talk to you?" he asked quietly.
Doctor Ambrose frowned. "What is it, Victor?"
Victor looked at Carrick before speaking. "I think we should be careful. He's not as brainwashed as we think."
Doctor Ambrose laughed. "That's impossible. The treatment always works. V5 will do what we say."
Carrick's mind raced, remembering the system's warning to level up quickly. He knew he had to play along, but he also needed to find a way to escape and start his journey to become a Mafia Lord. He knew if he remained here, he would be nothing but an experimental subject, a guinea pig for this mysterious organization.
As the guards closed in, Carrick noticed a small, almost unnoticeable nod from Victor. It was a signal, but from whom? Carrick could not help but wonder. He had spent enough time with his family to know when a conspiracy was going on.
Suddenly, alarms blared, and the room shook. "What's happening?" Doctor Ambrose shouted in confusion. The Rambosia hideout was unknown to Major Mafia families, so who would dare attack them?
Victor reacted immediately and drew his gun. "We're under attack. Get V5 to safety!"
Carrick saw his chance. What just happened made him understand that this Victor wasn't loyal to Rambosia, perhaps Victor could be his way out of this sick place. He pretended to stumble, falling to the ground. As the guards rushed to help him, Carrick whispered to Victor, "Who are you working for?"
Victor's eyes locked onto Carrick's. "Meet me in the east wing tonight. Come alone."
With that, Victor dragged Carrick away, into the chaos. Carrick saw a new group of people dressed in a different uniform shooting at the guards.
*
Disguised as a Rambosia guard, Victor pulled Carrick through the winding corridors of Rambosia's secret facility. They dodged bullets and leaping flames, the sound of shattering glass and screams filling the air.
"What's happening?" Carrick shouted above the din.
"Rebellion," Victor replied, his gun firing at unseen targets. "We have to get out, now!"
They burst through a door, slamming it shut behind them. Carrick found himself in a cramped, dimly lit room filled with computer screens and wires. The room seemed like a tech storage room.
"Who are you?" Carrick demanded, his eyes locked on Victor. Before he could decide on anything, he needed to know who Victor was.. what if he was working for his father and was here to finish the job those men couldn't.
Victor ripped off his mask, revealing a scarred face and piercing blue eyes. "I'm Victor Alistair, former helmsman of the Alistair Family. My family was almost wiped out by the joint forces of the Gale family and Giovanni family. And you, V5, might just be the key to our survival."
"What do you mean I'm the key to your survival?" Carrick questioned, but suddenly a ding sounded in his head.
«Ding!
<<System suggests Host should make use of the individual 'Victor' and escape Rambosia.>>
"I will tell you all you want to know, but for now. I have infiltrated Rambosia's mainframe," Victor said as he lifted his face from the computer screen, his voice urgent. "We must escape now. The facility will self-destruct in five minutes."
Carrick's heart raced. "How do we get out?"
Victor handed Carrick a small device. "This is a neural disruptor. It will disrupt any brainwash action that may have been taken against you, and it will also disrupt the aim of those guards, in other words, they won't be able to land a single bullet on us as their aims will be way off. Press the red button to also neutralize their weapons as they are making use of electrical powered laser guns."
Carrick took the device, his mind racing. "What about you?"
Victor smiled grimly. "I'll draw off Rambosia's forces so as to lessen the attention on you. You don't have to worry, I'll be right behind you."
The countdown began, echoing through the room. Carrick and Victor shared a nod before bursting into action.
Carrick charged into the corridor, neural disruptor in hand. The Rambosia guards closed in, aiming their guns at him, they didn't hesitate to pull the trigger. Carrick dodged and weaved, the disruptor emitting a high-pitched whine as it neutralized the guards' mental sense as well as their weapons. The guards pulled the triggers but only the clicking sound was heard.
"You're a dead man, V5!" a guard snarled, charging at him with a knife. The guard was quick to realize something was wrong with his gun, but instead of panicking, he decided to first take out Carrick
Carrick sidestepped, using the guard's momentum against him. The guard crashed into the wall, unconscious.
<<Ding! Congratulations to host for neutralizing a level 3 hostile individual. 200 XP awarded to Host. System suggests the host to kill hostile forces in order to reap maximum XP and level up quickly>> the mechanical voice sounded in his head.
Carrick stared at the unconscious guard, he had never killed a fellow human before. He was about to refuse when he felt his emotion calming down, he realized it was the Ever-Calm passive skill taking effect. He slowly walked over to the guard, picked up the knife that was on the ground and calmly slit the guard's throat. The guard twitched a few moments before becoming still.
«Ding! Congratulations to Host for killing a level 3 hostile individual. 500 XP and 250 gold coins awarded to Host.»
Carrick stared at the small blood puddle in front of him. For someone who just killed a fellow human for the first time, he was awfully calm as if nothing happened.
"Well, it's either them or me, and besides, a weak hearted person can't become a Mafia Lord." He said to himself and smiled. At the moment, he was seeing the guards as XP points and a stepping stone. A smile played on his lips.
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CHAPTER 208: BENEATH THE SILENCE
The hum of servers had stopped.In the Foundation’s abandoned substation bunker beneath the East Rail terminal, silence settled like dust. Screens still glowed with half-decoded strings, flickering algorithms trying to make sense of fractured systems. Vesper stood amid the wreckage, arms folded, her pale eyes tracking the final lines of code shutting down. Luka sat on the edge of the long steel table, staring at the fragments of Mirelle’s old world.“No more ghosts,” he muttered. “She can’t pull strings from this far down anymore.”“She’s dead,” Arden said quietly, seated nearby with a dataslate balanced on his knees. “But ghosts don’t need to be alive. They just need echoes. And O.S.A. has plenty.”Footsteps echoed in the hallway. Alessia appeared, gun still holstered, coat open, eyes narrowed.“I just got word. Westbridge burned,” she said. “Not a fire. A virus. Digital. Thousands of hospital records purged. Transit hubs collapsed. They hit the civilian systems—again.”“Collateral c
CHAPTER 207: THE FALSE MIRROR
Rain battered the broken skyline like a warning. In the depths of the fortified O.S.A. ruin, Luka stood over the flickering interface where Carrick's Eidolon—the ghost construct—waited in digital silence. Around him, a new war room had been cobbled together from salvaged terminals and blackout generators. The room hummed with tension and circuits."Status?" Luka asked without looking away from the screen.Arden tapped rapidly on a keyboard. "We’ve isolated the construct inside a recursive virtual environment. Vesper’s mirror design is in place. Think of it like a hall of infinite reflections—the ghost sees only what we want it to see."Vesper stood nearby, eyes dark, voice sharp. "It believes it's still interfacing with a live version of the Foundation's central command. All systems are simulated. Every command it gives is absorbed and rerouted. It thinks it’s winning."Marco leaned against the wall, arms folded. "You’re sure it’s fooled?""As long as we don’t give it anything new to
CHAPTER 206: THE GHOST CODE
The storm outside had not ceased. Rain hammered the bulletproof windows of the O.S.A. ruins, now lit only by emergency lights flickering like distant stars. In the war room, Luka Gale stood at the center of the table, his coat soaked and fingers stained with blood and ink from torn documents.Around him: Marco, pale and furious; Vesper, silent but alert; Alessia, her arms crossed, jaw clenched tight; and Arden, dragging a data cable from a black steel box marked with the words PROJECT EIDOLON – RESTRICTED.“Tell me that’s not what I think it is,” Luka said, voice low.Arden didn’t look up. “It’s worse. This isn’t a program or an archive. It’s a seed.”Alessia stepped forward, her heels echoing on the concrete. “Define ‘seed,’ Arden. Use short, non-apocalyptic words.”Arden sighed and connected the cable to a manual port on his terminal. “Project Eidolon was a fail-safe. A backup personality framework. Designed to mimic high-value operatives… down to memory, speech patterns, tactical r
CHAPTER 205: BLACK ECHO
The air inside the abandoned rail station tasted like dust and iron. Graffiti stretched like scars along cracked concrete walls, the floor littered with cigarette butts and shattered glass. A distant sound of dripping water echoed, sharp and rhythmic like a clock counting down.Luka stood still at the platform’s edge, eyes narrowed beneath the brim of his coat. Arden knelt beside a torn duffel bag near the tracks, unzipping it slowly. He glanced back at Luka, tension etched into his features.“They left in a hurry,” Arden muttered, rifling through the contents—moldy rations, bloodied gauze, and a datapad sealed in a cracked case. “This was one of Salvi’s temporary caches. My guess? A decoy.”Luka’s boots scraped gravel as he approached. “You sure this is even his?”“Positive. Same encrypted tag Vesper’s people tracked last month. He’s on the move, Luka—and fast. He’s not rebuilding an army. He’s assembling something smaller. Smarter.”Luka looked up at the rusted ceiling, eyes scannin
CHAPTER 204: THE TIPPING POINT
The night hung heavy in the air, thick with the stench of smoke and the faint remnants of the battle that had raged just hours before. The city felt different now. It wasn't the same place Luka had fought to control—no, this city was wounded, its veins exposed. The war wasn’t just an echo in the streets anymore. It was a pulse, quickening with every new secret revealed, every power shifted.Luka stood at the center of the safehouse, his fingers brushing across the edge of a steel desk. His eyes flicked between the array of monitors that flickered in front of him. Vesper’s information, the encrypted data from the Foundation, and what they had learned from the fallen O.S.A. operatives—it was all starting to connect, but the pieces weren’t fitting neatly. Each new development only tangled the threads further.Alessia leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. Her gaze was piercing, watchful, but with something else—a flicker of doubt that hadn’t been there before. The silence between th
CHAPTER 203: THE BLACK ARCHIVE
The warehouse at Pier 19 was quiet, but it was the kind of quiet that screamed. Luka stood by the dock doors, his coat heavy with rain and static. Behind him, the team filtered in—Alessia, Vesper, Arden, and Viktor. The air smelled of salt and rot and rusted iron, the scent of dead cargo and forgotten truths."We’re sure this is it?" Alessia asked, stepping over a coil of barbed wire.Arden nodded, pulling back the sleeve of his weatherproof coat to check a device blinking faint blue. "Encrypted ping came from here. Whatever the Foundation doesn’t want public... it’s under our boots."Viktor sniffed the air. "Or we’re walking into a trap."Luka turned. "Probably. Doesn’t change what we’re here to do."They made their way into the depths of the building. The entrance looked like a normal storage unit from the outside. Inside, it dropped into steel stairwells that twisted downward like a screw boring into the earth. Everything was humming with hidden power. Shielded, warded. And below i
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