2025-08-03 19:38:25“Brooks Corp is proud to present the future of neural-AI integration—NexusCore 2.0!”
Thunderous applause erupted inside the silicon Valley Summit auditorium. Bright lights beamed down on the main stage. Mr. Brooks stood there like a king basking in praise, arms stretched out wide, smiling as if he had created fire. Behind him, the Brooks Corp logo flashed proudly across the stadium-sized screen. A sleek promo reel kicked off—hovering blue interfaces, sleek devices, global testimonials. All fake and all stolen. Front-row seats were lined with foreign investors, tech magnates, influencers, and even two federal ministers. But in the dim back corner of the venue, pushing a mop bucket and wearing a fake event badge, someone else was present. Ethan . Clad in a janitor’s jumpsuit again. But this time, he wasn’t here to clean floors. He adjusted his cap low, eyes locked on the stage. He whispered, almost without moving his lips. “System. Ready?” [Stealth Mode: Engaged.] [Connected to main AV system via Expo subnet. Override primed. Just give the command.] Ethan exhaled. His heartbeat was steady, but his hands under the gloves were sweating. Not from fear but from anticipation. This was the day they fall. He remembered the insults and ridicule he got from them. Watching his own wife in bed with another man while Mr Brooks slapped him to go do the dishes. Those were really crazy moments. He slipped past the security line, his move so fluid and unnoticed. He’d walked these setups a thousand times. Brooks Corp hadn’t updated their Expo infrastructure in over a year. Sloppy and predictable as expected. He ducked behind a service curtain, found the central AV router, and slid in a drive. “System,” he murmured. “Inject file: truthprotocol_v4. Set override for T-minus fifteen seconds.” [Confirmed.] [Uploading footage: Authenticated lab recordings. Development schematics. Voice memos. Signed evidence. All timestamped.] He stood up just as a tech near the booth called out, “Thirty seconds to roll!” Onstage, Mr. Brooks beamed brighter. “Before we begin the demo,” he said into the mic, “allow me to introduce the brilliant mind behind our AI breakthrough—my daughter and lead developer, Lena Brooks !” The applause doubled. Lena stepped into the spotlight with perfect poise, her lips curling into a camera-ready smile. Ethan ’s hands clenched. He didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe. Fifteen seconds. This woman once held his heart in her hand—and crushed it for a shot at a title. At a brand, at a stolen glory. The screen began its countdown. [Override in 3… 2… 1…] Glitch. The screen flickered. The logo disappeared. Static. A black background replaced it. One line of bold white text appeared in silence: “STOLEN GENIUS.” A ripple of confusion moved through the crowd as they murmured and looked at each other. Phones came up. There were Camera flashes. “What the hell is that?” a man in the front row muttered. Lena blinked. “What is this?” Then the screen changed. Video. A grainy lab cam played. Ethan sat before a whiteboard, scrawling equations. He looked younger, tired and wired. His voice echoed from the speakers: “If we build this right, it won’t just react. It’ll learn. It’ll evolve. Like it’s alive…” There were gasps and more murmuring in the air. More phones came up. Reporters stood up in their seats. The video cut again—to a timestamped date: April 9th, 2022—Ethan writing the original NexusCore code. Line by line. Methodically. His voice explaining the neural pathway. Then— A lawyer’s office. Lena . Leaning over a document. Forging Ethan ’s signature. The crowd exploded. Reporters scrambled. People pointed fingers in disbelieve. A woman yelled, “Run that again!” “No! Cut the feed!” Mr. Brooks shouted, turning toward the tech crew. But they were frozen and powerless. No matter how much they tried, they couldn’t. [System Lock: Full AV control engaged.] More footage played. A hidden mic recording from a meeting room. A junior engineer whispered: “Yeah, we all knew Ethan was the real brain. After he disappeared, HR told us to never mention his name again.” Nathan exploded from the wings, fury in his eyes. “Who did this?! Who hacked the system?!” Then— A quiet voice answered from the shadows. “I did.” Gasps rippled again. Ethan stepped forward. No mop this time. Just a janitor’s cart, parked dead center in front of the stage. But this time, he wasn’t the janitor. Cameras snapped toward him. Reporters screamed his name. Takashi’s face went pale. Lena ’s mouth parted in disbelief. Security surged forward. Ethan raised both hands. He had this calm and Controlled aura. “You built an empire on a lie,” he said, voice carrying clear and steady. “And now… the world sees the truth.” “GET HIM OUT OF HERE!” Mr. Brooks bellowed. Two guards grabbed Ethan ’s arms. He didn’t fight. As they dragged him down the aisle, the crowd rose to its feet—not in protest, but in shock. Cameras kept filming. A chant started near the back, slowly building as it spread: “Justice for Ethan ! Justice for Ethan !” Ethan passed by Lena . She stood tall, arms folded, trying to look unaffected—but her jaw was tight. As he was pulled past, she sneered, “Hope you enjoyed your fifteen minutes, asshole .” Ethan met her eyes. His voice was low—but it cut through everything. “No,” he said. “This was just the opening act.” *** The van door slammed shut. Ethan ’s wrists were cuffed. His lip was bloodied. His shoulder ached from being shoved. But his eyes? They burned with Takashiy. He sat in silence. Then— [Well played.] [Would you like to begin blacklisting the Brooks family from every lab and network across Asia?] Ethan leaned back. A slow, dangerous smile touched his face. “Start with the ones they bribed.” [Acknowledged.] [Blacklisting Protocol: Engaged.] Outside, sirens wailed. Inside, a revolution had begun.
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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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