2025-08-03 19:43:06The hum of the co-working space buzzed around Ethan like static.
He barely heard it. Not when the system dashboard blinked with patent claims, algorithmic models, and stolen blueprints now flooding global networks. But it all went still the moment he saw her. Brooks Lili aka Lena She stepped through the glass doors like a scene from a nightmare—too flawless, too poised, too late to pretend innocence. In her hand: a slim, matte-black folder. Divorce papers. Of course she brought them in person. He didn’t even flinch. “Ethan ,” she said, soft as smoke, “do you have a minute?” Ethan leaned back in his chair. The entire room seemed to tilt slightly, voices dimming into white noise. “Didn’t expect to see you here,” he said coolly. “What happened? Courier service too slow for betrayal these days?” She forced a laugh. “It’s not betrayal. Just closure. I thought we should end things with grace.” “Grace,” Ethan repeated. “Right. And poison tastes better in a wine glass, too.” She smiled, sitting down slowly. “We were good once, weren’t we?” The scent of her perfume hit him—sharp, citrus, familiar. Memory clawed at his chest: nights spent working side-by-side, her head on his shoulder, dreams once shared. Then the memory twisted—her signature on the Brooks patent application that used his code. He snapped back. “No theatrics,” he said. “Just hand me the blade.” She slid the folder across the table. “All standards,” she said. “Nothing complicated.” He flipped it open. Three copies. All pre-signed. Asset clause: forfeiture. Alimony: zero. Hidden clause: five-year non-compete, buried in legalese. She wasn’t here for peace. She was here to gut him one last time. Ethan raised his gaze slowly. “You still love me, huh?” Her lashes fluttered. She reached forward, brushing his knuckles. “You know I do.” [System Emotional Scan Active…] [Detected Emotion: 0% Love, 92% Anticipation, 5% Stress, 3% Triumph.] He smiled. Cold. Sharp. “You always were a better actress than CEO.” Her face twitched. He stood. “Then let’s make this separation official,” he said. “Publicly.” Her smile faltered. “What… do you mean by public?” Forty-five minutes later, a press room buzzed with reporters, influencers, and tech correspondents. Ethan stood at the podium in a jet-black suit. No tie. No flash. Just calm precision and lethal clarity. Brooks Lili stood beside him, mask of calm cracking beneath the flashes. The backdrop read: ZERO CORE TECHNOLOGIES – LAUNCH ANNOUNCEMENT. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Ethan began, voice smooth as obsidian, “I’ve invited you here for two reasons.” A wave of murmurs. “First—yes. Brooks Lili and I are divorcing. Irreconcilable visions of the future.” He held up the signed divorce papers. Cameras clicked like gunfire. “But second…” He reached into his coat and pulled out a small black chip. “This is the heart of Paragon Zero. A neural-adaptive engine designed to evolve past traditional AI frameworks.” Lili’s eyes widened. She hadn’t even seen this version yet. Ethan placed the chip on the podium. “In seventy-two hours, Zero Core Technologies will launch the first independent AI performance layer ever built without a single stolen line of Brooks Corp code.” More gasps. And then the kill shot. “I built this from scratch. With no stolen tech. No corporate sabotage. Just a man left for dead who decided to rewrite the rules.” A beat. Then a smirk. “And I don’t need a marriage to do it.” Reporters exploded. Cameras surged. Microphones shoved forward. Brooks Lili stood frozen, trapped in a PR disaster she hadn’t predicted. ** That night, back in his apartment, Ethan finally let the silence in. The war had started. But for the first time in years… he wasn’t the one bleeding. He loosened his tie, dropped onto the couch, and let the exhaustion settle. Maybe now he could breathe. Maybe now— Knock. Knock. He blinked. 2:14 AM? He approached the door, frowning. A delivery man stood outside. “Package for Mr. Ye.” Ethan hesitated. “From who?” “No name. Said it was urgent.” He signed, closed the door, and opened the box. Inside: a sealed white envelope… and a folded piece of fabric. He opened the envelope first. Four words. Block letters. No signature. “LEAVE TECH. OR SHE DIES.” His heart slammed against his ribs. He reached for the cloth and unrolled it. Blood. Dried, dark, unmistakable. A scarf. His mother’s. The one she wore every Sunday morning to the Old Methodist Church. The one with the tiny embroidered lotus at the corner—hand-stitched by his father before he died. It was soaked. And torn. He stared at it. No breath. No words. No time. The system lit up behind him. [ALERT: Biological Signature Detected – Ada Cole – 94% Match.] [Status: Critical.] [Location: Unknown.] Ethan ’s hands shook—but not from fear. From rage. They hadn’t just declared war. They’d made it personal.
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Host 000
The words burned across Ethan’s vision like a curse carved into his skull.HOST 000 — LENA BROOKS.For a moment, he thought the System had glitched, that his overstrained nerves were inventing horrors out of paranoia. But the red pulse of the confirmation mark kept flashing, hammering into him with every heartbeat.His mouth went dry. His fists clenched until his nails dug deep into his palms. When he finally spoke, his voice cracked through the heavy silence like a gunshot.“Tell me this is wrong.” His voice trembled with fury and fear. “Tell me the System is lying. Lena… look at me and say it.”Lena froze, her eyes wide, her breath quick and shallow. “Ethan… I don’t know what that means. I swear, I don’t—”“Don’t,” he snapped, stepping closer, his face shadowed in rage. “Don’t you dare stand there and pretend ignorance. The System doesn’t lie.”Her lips parted, but no words came out. She looked smaller than he remembered her, stripped of the icy confidence that used to coat her ever
Fractured Allegiance
The safehouse was quieter now, though “quiet” was relative. The walls still trembled from distant fires. The blackout painted the city outside in eerie shadow, punctuated by the occasional flash of gunfire. Maya had collapsed onto a cot, pale but alive, her side bandaged hastily.Ethan sat alone in the adjoining room, staring at his hands. His veins still glowed faintly with the remnants of the overload, skin raw where code had burned through flesh. He felt hollow, emptied out, but not clean. The assassin’s final words gnawed at him like rust in bone.It’s inside you.He clenched his fists until blood seeped from reopened wounds. “Am I fighting them… or am I fighting myself?”The System, silent for once, gave no answer.The door creaked open. Ethan’s head snapped up. His pulse froze.Lena Brooks stepped into the room.For a moment, neither spoke. The shadows seemed to deepen, pulling them into a bubble where only their breath existed. She looked thinner than he remembered, her hair pi
The Knife in the Dark
The blackout had reduced the city to something primal. Outside the safehouse walls, the streets groaned with distant sirens, fires crackling where substations had collapsed under Ragnar’s purge. For hours, Ethan’s team had worked in the flickering emergency lights, patching comms, feeding scraps of intel into the fractured Ghost Network. The air smelled of sweat, dust, and burnt plastic.Then the power cut completely.The silence that followed was unnatural—no hum of backup generators, no whisper of cooling fans, no glow from cracked monitors. Just darkness, so complete it pressed against the skin.Maya stiffened instantly, her hand resting on the pistol holstered at her thigh. “That’s not the grid. Someone killed the line from inside.”Ethan’s chest tightened. He could feel it too—a shift, subtle but sharp, in the static of the Network. A presence. An intrusion.The sound came next: a faint scrape, metal against wood, somewhere deeper in the house.“Contact,” Maya hissed, weapon alre
Countdown to Oblivion
The numbers burned into Ethan’s HUD.72:00:00.71:59:59.Each second was a hammerbeat in his skull. Ada’s voice still haunted him: End the cycle, or become its god. And now, her last breath had chained itself to a clock that threatened every Host alive.Maya’s fingers hovered above his trembling hands, her face pale with exhaustion and fear. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”Ethan swallowed hard, his throat dry as ash. “It’s worse. The file isn’t just locked—it’s tethered to Ragnar Core. If it detonates, it’ll collapse every Host in the network. Billions. Gone.”“Host Collapse,” Maya whispered, the words tasting like poison.Around them, the rebel bunker shuddered with distant aftershocks. Survivors limped and stumbled into makeshift rows, some staring at Ethan with awe, others with terror. He didn’t need to look to feel it—half of them wanted him to save them, the other half feared he’d burn them down with a blink.David Sloan stepped forward from the shadows, his armor scorch
Ada’s Last Breath
The world dissolved around Ethan.One moment, he was standing in the ruins of the rebel encampment, Maya’s voice tethering him to reality. The next, the Ghost Network swallowed him whole. The shift was like falling into a well with no bottom—shadows and stormlight spiraling around him, dragging his consciousness deeper and deeper until time itself fractured.And then, she appeared.Ada.Not alive, not whole, but a flicker—an echo caught in the folds of the Network, woven from memory and pain. She stood with her back turned at first, shoulders squared, her dark hair tied tightly in a knot as she scanned a glowing console. Around her, a simulation of steel walls and humming servers pulsed like a heartbeat.Ethan’s chest constricted.“Mom…”The word escaped him before he could stop it.But she didn’t turn. The echo didn’t see him—not really. She was trapped in a loop, caught in the final days of her life.And then Ethan saw it.The betrayal.Through the glass walls of the simulated chamb
The Heir of Nothing
The Ghost Network pulsed around him like a living organism, threads of light stretching into infinity, humming with power that felt older than the city, older than the corporations that fought to control it.Host 001 stood unmoving in the center of it, its presence oppressive, yet calm, like the eye of a storm. Ethan’s breath came ragged, each inhale a battle against the gravity pressing down on him.His voice broke the silence first, sharp, furious.“Who the hell are you really? Why me? Why my mother?”The hooded figure tilted its head, as if amused. The code around its body shifted, forming shapes—faces, fragments, static—before dissolving again.“You think the Paragon was built,” Host 001 intoned, its voice layered, vibrating in tones that didn’t belong in human ears. “You think corporations forged this order, that Ragnar, Brooks, or any empire ever had the power to shape destiny. They are scavengers. Nothing more.”Ethan clenched his fists, his system interface sparking violently.
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