2025-08-03 19:41:43“Do it,” Ethan said coldly, sitting on the floor of the abandoned tech hub he now called base. His clothes were still stained from the beating. His jaw was bruised. But his voice was steady.
The system responded in that same chilling calm. [Command Confirmed.] [Launching Global Exposure Sequence.] [Uploading Proof of Theft to: Global Job Boards. Tech Registries. Patent Offices. Academic Databases. Media Outlets. Investor Networks.] “Let them watch everything burn,” Ethan muttered, eyes locked on the screen as code poured like a waterfall. All around the world, truths began spilling from every leak point. Ethan had chosen every platform they couldn’t silence. Within thirty minutes, #Brooks CorpScandal was trending in over fifteen countries. *** At Brooks Corp Headquarters, panic was beginning to crack the corporate gloss. Phones rang off the hook. News outlets bombarded their inboxes. Half their investors vanished by noon. The boardroom was chaos. “We’re hemorrhaging equity!” one executive shouted. “This isn’t just stock—we’re getting flagged for fraudulent IP!” “Our legal team can’t shut down the leaks fast enough—who the hell is behind this?!” Brooks Lili walked in, flanked by Nathan and two PR advisors. Her heels clicked like war drums against the marble floor. “I want silence,” she said, voice low and dangerous. The room hushed. She walked straight to the head of the table, opened her laptop, and pulled up the emergency protocol screen. “We’re executing blackout mode,” she said. “Lock out all third-party nodes. Purge the server trails.” She typed in her command code. Access denied. She blinked. Tried again. Still denied and in standing, her face went cold. Nathan leaned over her shoulder. “You sure you typed it right?” “I’m not a damn intern,” she snapped, trying a third override code. ACCESS BLOCKED – ROOT ADMINISTRATOR UNKNOWN A cold ripple ran through her spine. “Fuck!!!” She roared “Who changed our fucking access keys?” Her face went red as she demanded, turning to the IT director. He was pale and Sweating. “I—I don’t know. We got infiltrated. Someone changed the entire root structure.” Lena stood slowly, staring at the screen. “This isn’t just a hacker,” she muttered. “It’s Ethan .” She breathed heavily, gritting her teeth and clenching her fist. Nathan clenched his fists. “He’s not that smart.” “I guess he’s smarter than you are” she barked “You said the same thing when you stole his invention,” she replied flatly. *** Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the city, Ethan sat in the dark, lit only by his laptop and the soft blue glow of the system interface dancing across his retina. He wasn’t smiling. He didn’t feel Takashiy. Not yet. Because this wasn’t revenge. Not really. It was warfare. “System,” he said, voice dry. “Access Brooks Corp’s hidden vaults. I want everything they tried to bury.” [Affirmative.] [Searching… Accessing Off-Grid Server Cluster L-91…] [Hidden Project File Detected: PROJECT PARAGON] Ethan blinked. “What the hell is that?” [Top-tier R&D archive. Origin hidden. Security: Quantum Lock.] “Break it.” [Decrypting… Estimated time: 7 seconds.] He frowned in shock. “Quantum lock in seven seconds? You’re scary.” He smiled. [You built the foundation for me. Your code was the seed. I am its full bloom.] Ethan let out a soft breath. “Then show me what they didn’t want anyone to see.” The screen glitched for a split second. Then a folder opened. Inside: files that looked alien. Not just in language—in logic. Circular code loops. Self-replicating logic gates. Schematic designs that resembled neurological structures more than traditional tech. As if the machine wasn’t just meant to think, but to evolve. At the top of the file tree: Project Paragon – Alpha Neural Core He opened the first video file. Lena was on-screen, pacing in a lab dressed in a lab coat and black gloves. “We’ve mapped it,” she said. “NexusCore was just the first layer. Paragon is deeper. Self-aware. Multiphase reactive. It’s not predictive AI—it’s organic dominance.” Takashi’s voice came from offscreen. “Then why won’t it start?” She stopped walking. “Because it needs Ethan ’s neural ID,” she muttered. “Only his brain can interface with the core. The system recognizes his signature as the host.” Another voice—one of the engineers—spoke nervously. “Should we bring him in?” Nathan replied coldly, “Not until we figure out if we can extract the key. If not… we dispose of him and try it directly on the Paragon core.” The video ended. Ethan sat perfectly still. His pulse didn’t race. His body didn’t flinch. But something in him snapped. “They never needed me gone,” he whispered. “They needed me trapped.” He understood very well why they didn’t let him go despite the fact that Lena was with Nathan and they had collected his wor already. [Correction: They still do.] [Project Paragon remains dormant. Neural lock tied to your unique cortical frequency.] [Paragon AI cannot function without you.] Ethan ’s hands clenched around the edges of the table. “Then let’s wake it up before they do.” [New Mission Available: RECLAIM PARAGON.]
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The Soft Trap
The glow of the charity gala spilled through the glass walls like liquid gold, soft music threading between the chatter of suited investors and silk-draped socialites. Ethan stood near the balcony, nursing a glass of sparkling water he hadn’t touched. His mind still lingered on the quiet victory against that rival startup — and the gnawing frustration that Brooks Corp was already slithering back into contracts he thought he’d buried and he couldn’t get the apology and intention of Lena off his mind. As much as he didn’t want to think about it, his mind kept lingering.He told himself he came here for networking. In truth, he just needed air that wasn’t thick with boardroom venom.That’s when he felt the shift. The faint ripple of a presence he knew better than his own reflection.“Ethan.”Her voice wrapped around his name like it used to in the mornings — warm, familiar anddangerous. He turned, and there she was. Lena Brooks. Dressed in black satin that drank the light, hair swept ba
Corporate Cold War
The applause from Lena’s televised apology hadn’t faded from the city’s ears before the next act of the game began.For Ethan, it was supposed to be a day of progress. His team at the small tech firm Gridline Systems had just landed a high-profile contract to integrate adaptive AI security into a rising logistics startup. It wasn’t as big as the Brooks Corp projects he’d crushed before, but every win now was a step toward eroding their influence.Maya slid a printed report across his desk. “Signed, sealed, and wired. We’re officially in.”Ethan gave a small nod, still scanning the data feed. “Good. Make sure their system runs with our cloaked Paragon patch. I want eyes on every shipment.”“That’s the thing…” Maya hesitated, and that alone made Ethan look up. “Two of the minor contracts we got last quarter… they’re not ours anymore.”Ethan frowned. “Not ours?”“Brooks Corp reclaimed them. Quietly. They didn’t announce it, no PR, no gloating.” She tapped a tablet screen. “One by one, th
Public Redemption
The fear in Mr Brooks eyes, the torment in Lena’s and the murmuring in the room kept reechoing in Ethan’s ear when his comm device pinged with a breaking news alert. The headline sprawled across the holographic display like a punch to the gut:“LENA BROOKS: I OWE ETHAN COLE AN APOLOGY.”“What the hell?”Ethan was immediately thrown off guard.Maya, walking beside him, froze mid-step. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”Ethan didn’t answer. His chest tightened as he tapped the feed open. A live broadcast filled the screen — Lena, framed by the glittering skyline atop Brooks Tower, microphones bristling around her like iron thorns.Her voice was soft but carried through the static. “I… made mistakes. I trusted the wrong people. And in that process, I wronged a man who deserved my loyalty, my love and my commitment.” She paused, eyes glistening in a way that could only be rehearsed. “Ethan, if you’re watching… I am really sorry and I know this is not going to change anything, but I want you to
Boardroom Blood
The glass-walled conference room of Brooks Corp’s 42nd floor was a battlefield disguised as a meeting space. The long mahogany table gleamed under the recessed lighting, but it wasn’t the furniture anyone cared about, it was the dozen sets of eyes, each belonging to a power player, all watching Ethan Cole as if he had no right to be here. The Janitor!He didn’t take the empty seat offered at the far end. No, Ethan slid into the chair directly opposite Mr. Brooks, his wee movements slow and deliberate and that too while staring Mr Brooks straight in the eyes. A subtle rebellion. He was done doing what they wanted, now he created his path.Nathan Cross leaned forward with that lazy smirk of his. “You’re in the wrong room, Cole. This meeting’s for stakeholders, not… Janitor or whatever you are now.”Ethan’s lips curved faintly. “I’m exactly where I need to be.” He tapped his tablet, and the massive screen behind him lit up with a series of red-highlighted numbers. “And judging by these f
The Host Killer
The screen in Ethan ’s underground lab glitched—a sudden static burst cutting through the silence.He froze, fingers hovering above the console. This wasn’t Paragon. His AI never made noise like that.Incoming Feed: Host Channel 003Source: Unverified. Encryption Level: Omega.The feed loaded slowly. Then, a grainy video flickered onto the screen.Ethan ’s eyes narrowed.It was a rooftop—wet with rain, lit by the flicker of a dying neon sign. Two figures stood in frame. One was on his knees, bound and trembling. The other wore a sleek black coat, hood up, face blurred by an active distortion field. But Ethan recognized the victim immediately.Tyler tan.The former Brooks Corp developer who’d stolen fragments of Ethan ’s early drone schematics and tried to auction them off on the dark web.Ethan ’s pulse spiked.The hooded figure spoke. The voice was digitally scrambled—cold, mechanical.“Host 005. Unauthorized replications. Attempted system mimicry. Verdict: Termination.”“No, no, wa
Ghost Protocols
The lab was still. Too still.Ethan ’s fingers hovered above the glass console, trembling slightly as the screen pulsed with a sickly green light. Smoke from the city’s collapse still lingered on his coat. His knuckles were raw from breaking through fallen server racks, dragging himself here like a soldier crawling through the rubble of a war he didn’t understand.He didn’t even remember sitting down.But something… called him.Not with words.With code.Unfamiliar glyphs now danced across the console—patterns moving in nonlinear logic, bending and coiling as if alive. They weren’t random. They had structure. Symmetry.They had intention.And for the first time in days, Ethan felt fear crawl back into his bones.“Anomaly detected,” Paragon’s voice said, filtered through digital static.“Residual echo traceable to orbital subnet. Classification: Ghost Network.”Ethan narrowed his eyes. “What subnet?”“MIMIR-7. Unknown satellite cluster. Hidden transmission protocol. Legacy clearance
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