PROJECT HAIO

Chapter 8 - Gotcha!

WHO IS VICTOR KANE?

  An American tech investor and heavy financier of personal robotics. Declared broke after multiple failed projects. Died while testing his own proxy bodyguard robots. 

  Final recorded words: “If I die, I die.” Then pronounced dead in coma. Returned weeks later. Now reportedly stinkingly rich. Internet has been crazy ever since.

  Dean tapped the article. Photos loaded. Victor Kane: sharp jaw, cold eyes, same matte-black suit style Dean now wore. Grainy hospital footage showed him flatlining. Then, weeks later, walking out of a private clinic. No explanation. No medical records released. Social media had been on fire ever since with conspiracy threads, deepfake accusations, wild speculation about “augmentation” and “resurrection tech.”

  Marcus leaned out the driver window. “Boss… this is the same as you. Died. Came back. Different. Internet lost its mind and has been talking about him.

  Rico nodded fast. “People are calling him a cyborg. Could this be real? Two guys coming back from the dead with machines in their bodies?”

  Dean looked up. The men’s faces were lit by phone glow. Fear flickered in their eyes. Marcus's hands trembled on the wheel, Rico's breath came short, his knuckles white around his phone.

  Elise scoffed. "I don't believe in all this nonsense. All these cooked stories and clout-chasing isn't getting to me. Fight your warm..." she was about to turn when Dean held her. 

  Dean spoke quietly. “We are in a war against the future. A war that is playing out right now, in the present. There is no future waiting somewhere else. Whatever we build together, right here, right now, that is the future. We make it. Or we lose it.”

  The words hung in the warm night air.

  Elise’s voice came from the shadows behind the van. “Then fight your war. Leave me out of it.”

  Marcus started to speak. “But…”

  Elise cut him off sharply. “I am not even part of his team. I do not need all the details. It is just a crazy coincidence. That is all.”

  She turned to leave again.

  Dean reached out instinctively. “Elise, wait…”

  Her hand cracked against his wrist. Sharp sting. She slapped his hand off with surprising force.

  “Let me be,” she said, voice low and hard. “Or I will get you arrested. Right here. Right now.”

  Dean froze. Arrest. Jail. Asset freeze. The AR warning flashed in his vision again: LEGAL THREATS JEOPARDIZE MISSIONS. 

  He let his hand drop.

  Elise walked away into the night.

  Dean stood there for a long moment. Then he climbed into the back of the van. Slammed the door.

  Marcus glanced back. “Boss?”

  Dean sat on the bench seat, fists clenched. The anger boiled over.

  “How do I convince someone who does not want to be convinced?” he said, voice rough. “She slapped me away like I was nothing. After everything. After showing her the robots. After telling her the world ends unless she…”

  He stopped. Breathed. “How do I do this without forcing her?” 

  Rico turned in his seat. “You heard the news, right? Kane just bought another lab. One point two billion. They are saying he is building something massive. Off-grid.”

 "I think we all know what he's building," Dean said in a shaky voice. 

 "A lab to compete with yours, sir?"

 Dean did not answer. 

  Marcus nodded. “And the glitches are getting worse. Another bus veered into traffic in Vantablack Bay. Drones attacking people. All since Kane came back.”

  Dean’s heart kept beating fast. Shadow has done more he had done in hours and posed a threat. 

  He sat in the car, wondering if he would match up with Victor’s madness without losing himself. Kane’s face flashed in his mind. The same story, the same resurrection, but faster, bolder. Kane was buying labs, spending billions, spreading glitches like a plague. Dean’s pulse thundered. He could see it now: Kane building armies, accelerating the singularity, no remorse, no hesitation. If Dean pushed back with the same fury, the same madness, would he lose what was left of his humanity? The circuits in his arm pulsed, as if answering: Yes. But you have to.

  Then footsteps approached outside.

  Elise appeared in the doorway again.

  Dean rushed out. “You came back.”

  She stood there, arms wrapped around herself, eyes wide. “I saw the news. The glitches. The buses. The drones. They are real. I connected the dots. I am scared. I do not know how I got caught up in this. Is there a way out, Mr Harrington?”

  Dean opened his mouth to answer. But then his phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number.

  A single photo.

  Dean, Elise, Marco and Rico, the two proxies, and the van, all framed perfectly from across the parking lot. Timestamped thirty seconds ago.

  “Gotcha!” A one liner.

  “Fuck!” Dean turned the screen toward Elise.

  She stared at the photo. At herself. At the timestamp.

  Her hand trembled.

  Dean’s voice came out low.

  “He has found us.”

  He looked up as he scanned the shadows.

  “We have to go now.”