2025-08-03 19:37:36The next morning, Ethan stood in the Brooks Corp janitor’s supply closet with the door shut, lights off, laptop propped awkwardly on an overturned mop bucket.
His finger trembled as he hovered over the keyboard. “System,” he whispered, “you said I could get proof.” [Affirmative. Interface synchronized with core protocols.] [Target: Coffee Machine. Model VZ-9, Beta AI Unit. Embedded QR traceable to prototype subnet.] Ethan ’s brow furrowed. “You’re saying that old coffee machine still links to my old source code?” [Correct. QR Signature was left by your development environment. You never deleted the debug node.] He swallowed hard. “So… it still talks to the server?” [With minimal access, yes.] He grabbed his maintenance kit and slipped out quietly, heading toward the executive floor. His pulse drummed like war drums in his ears. One mistake, one wDavid click, and they’d bury him for corporate espionage. He reached the hallway, kneeling before the busted coffee unit like yesterday never ended. Only this time, he wasn’t here to fix it. He scanned the underside, fingers feeling for the faint QR label he remembered printing over two years ago. “Voila!” He smiled There it was. He snapped a photo with the old tablet he’d hidden under his uniform. [Trace Initialized.] [Attempting Packet Injection…] A second passed. Then ten. Ethan ’s breath caught as sweat trickled in his palms while he looked around to be sure no one was watching or coming. Then the screen blinked. [Success. Accessing Archive Files: “Project Zenith Alpha – Original Source Architecture.”] He stared in disbelief as file after file unfolded—flowcharts, design templates, algorithm snapshots. His code. His notes. His signature, stripped and replaced with Brooks Lili and Nathan Cross as the official creators. They hadn’t even bothered to change the filenames. Just rebranded the authorship tags. “God…” Ethan whispered. Rage boiled in his chest, but he clenched it down. This time, he had something stronger than anger. He had Proof. He nodded with desire. He was going to fuck those assholes up and he sure was going to have fun while at it. *** He found Lena in the executive lounge, sipping tea with a smirk on her lips like the world had already crowned her queen. He could remember when this same woman was loyal to him and acted all sweet and caring but immediately she and her Dad got what they wanted, they flipped on him. “Lena ,” he said, stepping in without knocking. Her expression soured in standing. “Did I ask for the janitor?” “I know what you did.” “Oh?” She leaned back. “Enlighten me.” Ethan pulled up the tablet, shaking fingers flipping open the schematics. “This is my work. You—your father—he stole this from me. Renamed it. Lied to the board. Lied to me.” She didn’t even glance at the screen. “Did you really think showing me some files on an old tablet would change anything?” “It proves it was mine. I signed it. Time-stamped it. Every goddamn thing.” She gave him a thin, amused smile. “You broke into our internal servers?” “No, I—” “That’s hacking,” she snapped, loud enough for others to hear. Ethan stepped back. “Wait—what?” “You hacked into our system. You are a thief!” she repeated, rising to her feet. “Security!” Ethan was completely confused. The smirk on his face dried off because this wasn’t the reaction he was expecting from her. Two uniformed security officers were already moving. “I didn’t hack anything! I built the original framework!” Ethan Colelled. “You’re twisting this—” “Treat him like the thief he is and Escort him out. Permanently.” The guards grabbed his arms. He didn’t resist. But his eyes never left hers. “You looked me in the eyes and said you believed in me,” he said quietly. “Was any of that ever real?” She didn’t blink and smiled then she spat right into his face. “Not for a second! You are just a gullible fool and a few sweet words here and there made you display your foolishness even more” Tears well in Ethan s eyes as he was seethed with rage. Ethan was dragged out of the building with everyone staring mockingly and laughing. He was led to the underground parking lot. The underground parking lot was dark, empty, and echoing with every footstep. They started beating Ethan up and spitting on him. Kicking him like some common thief afterwhich they left, each of them spitting on him. Ethan remained on the floor, groaning with blood dripping on the edge of his mouth and his face as well. The pain was immense. After about ten minutes, he wiped his mouth and stood, pain throbbing in his ribs as he staggered up. A second later, the sound of slow, deliberate footsteps reached him. Nathan Cross. Still in his launch party tux from last night, looking every bit the smug prince he played. He cracked his knuckles. “I see you’ve got some red makeup on” he chuckled and clapped sarcastically. “You don’t know when to quit, do you?” Ethan didn’t move. “I just wanted the truth.” Nathan stepped closer ogling deep in his blood clotted eyes. “And now you’ve got it,” he said. “You’re nothing. You were nothing. That genius act? A fluke. The code? A lucky guess.” Nathan delivered the first punch to Ethan s gut without a sound. The second came across the face, knocking him sideways. “You want to scream?” Nathan asked, kicking him in the side. “Do it. Nobody’s coming.” Ethan collapsed to the floor, cheek pressed to the cold concrete, blood pooling at the corner of his lips. His vision spun. Pain blurred his thoughts. Then— [Threshold Exceeded. Emotional Limit Surpassed.] A chill passed through him. Not physical but Deeper. His eye twitched. And the interface returned, brighter than before. [System Command: Mark all enemies. Begin classification.] He gritted his teeth. “Do it,” he whispered. Names began appearing across his blurred vision, overlaid in glowing red: [Class D Threat: Lin Bai (Fiancé)] [Class C Threat: Brooks Lili (Wife)] Ethan spit blood onto the floor and looked up, eyes glowing faintly beneath his bruised face. “Let’s see who gets erased first.”
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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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