2025-08-03 19:36:23“System… deactivate,” Ethan whispered under his breath, gripping the edge of the sink.
No response. The words still flickered inside his vision, glowing faintly like a heads-up display in some sci-fi movie. [Welcome, Ethan .] [Mission 001: Endure humiliation for 24 hours. Reward: System Map + Neural Speed Boost.] His heart raced. This wasn’t normal. Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe the years of stress had finally cracked something loose in his mind. He splashed cold water on his face. Again and Again. “Get a fucking grip,” he muttered, wiping his face on his sleeve. “You’re not in a movie.” But the interface stayed, Crisp, Clean And terrifyingly real. He stepped out of the restroom, still wearing the same coffee-stained uniform. The launch party lights still shimmered. He passed two executives from marketing—they didn’t spare him a glance. “You’re the first human to unlock sentient AI,” the system’s voice echoed in his mind. Ethan paused mid-step. The voice was calm, Male and Slightly modulated. “I didn’t build anything like you,” he murmured under his breath. [Incorrect. Your neural coding laid the foundation. I am its final evolution.] Ethan blinked. “Then why are you inside me?” [Because you are the rightful host. I exist to dominate. You are to ascend.] He laughed bitterly. “Right. Ascend. After I just licked some the shoes of the one fucking my wife and served wine at my own launch.” [Mission 001 in progress. Time remaining: 21 hours, 38 minutes.] He gritted his teeth. “So what? I just keep getting humiliated and hope this isn’t a breakdown?” [Correct. Completion unlocks foundational upgrades.] He walked past a group of guests—some drunk, some gossiping and turned into the hallway near the staff wing. He needed quiet. He needed time to think. Instead, he found Lena . She stood by the glass wall, her arms crossed, scrolling on her phone like nothing had happened. Like she hadn’t watched her husband lick another man’s shoe. Ethan stopped a few feet from her. His voice was quiet. “Why’d you let them do that to me?” She didn’t look up. “Lena .” Her eyes finally lifted. They were cold and Sharp, like he was a stain on her designer heels. “Don’t start,” she muttered. “I’m your husband.” “You were,” she corrected, slipping her phone into her clutch. “But right now? You’re the help.” He stared at her, stunned. “I designed everything. NexusCore, the blueprint, the first algorithm—me. I built the empire your father brags about.” She stepped toward him. “And you gave it away the moment you begged my father to fund you. You signed the contract, Ethan . You handed it over.” “Because I trusted you,” he said, voice raw. Lena snorted. “That was your first mistake.” His face twitched. “How long have you been sleeping with Takashi?” Her palm flew faster than he expected, sharp and loud. The slap rang out across the marble hallway. He didn’t move. His cheek stung. But he didn’t flinch. She stood inches from him now, her eyes blazing. “You think you’re still someone?” she hissed. “You’re a joke, Ethan . A washed-up dreamer with delusions of relevance.” “I was never irrelevant,” he said through clenched teeth. “I just… I just didn’t see the knife coming.” She stepped back, brushing invisible dust off her dress like his presence had soiled it. “Clean yourself up,” she said. “You’ve got more shoes to shine.” She hissed and walked away, her heels clicking like gunshots down the corridor. [Emotional Response Logged. Neural Surge Detected.] [Remaining Time: 19 hours, 12 minutes.] Ethan leaned against the wall, chest heaving. Was this real? Was this a punishment? Or was this the beginning? He didn’t return to the ballroom. Instead, he found an empty corner backstage and sat alone, hands shaking, staring at the faint blue overlay in his eye. *** That night, in his tiny apartment on the edge of the city, Ethan kicked off his shoes and collapsed onto the couch. Some months back Lena had chased him out of the house to this little and delapidated micro apartment but little did he know that she did that because she wanted to have space to be spending time with Nathan in the house. The silence pressed in like a weight. He was halfway into removing his jumpsuit when his old laptop—dusty, rusted at the hinges—lit up on the table across the room. The screen blinked once. Then again. Then… it turned on by itself. Ethan stared at it with his eyes wide open and lips apart. It literally went on with no power cord nor touch. Just the glow of the screen… and the soft click as a folder opened automatically. Inside: dozens of video files, all timestamped. All from the day the patent was submitted. One file played on its own. There—on the screen, was Lena . Standing in Brooks Corp’s legal office. Leaning over a desk. Forging Ethan ’s signature. She looked straight into the security cam as she did it. And smiled. Ethan ’s breath caught in his throat. [Congratulations. Secret Unlocked: Betrayal Protocol Level I.] [Next Mission Loading…]
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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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