The Invisible Architect

Chapter 4- The first million

"Do you have any idea what you’re looking at, Echo?" I asked, my vibrating through the metal floorboards of the hideout. It was a resonance that felt more like a sub-woofer than human vocal cords.

Echo squinted at the flickering CRT monitor in the corner of her junk-filled hideout. She rubbed a smudge of grease off her goggles, her hands still shaking from the shock of seeing six figures hit her personal account.

"I see numbers, Julian—or whatever your name is now. I see a lot of zeros. But in the Sump, zeros don't buy fuel and they don't buy silence. They just make you a target for the Syndicate."

"These zeros do," I said. My vision was a  storm of data. The watch on my wrist was warm, pulsing like a second heart against my radial artery.

Every time I breathed, I felt the "Vault" system mapping the local network, finding every crack in the city's digital foundation. I wasn't just looking at a screen; I was looking at the circulatory system of the city's corruption.

"This is a dead-drop wallet. Senator Halloway’s 'retirement fund.' He took a bribe from Marcus Sterling five years ago to greenlight a toxic waste dump in the East End. He thought he lost the key when the middleman 'disappeared.' He thought the money was buried in the blockchain forever."

"And you just... found it?" Echo asked, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. "Just like that? People have been killed for trying to sniff out Halloway's offshore stuff."

"I didn't find it. My system reconstructed the private key from the residual data packets left in the city's routing nodes. Every transaction leaves a shadow, Echo. Most people are just too blind to see them. I just stepped into the light."

I tapped the rusted keyboard, but I wasn't typing. My nervous system was sending the commands directly through the port. The screen flashed a brilliant, mocking green.

[TRANSFER STATUS: COMPLETE]

[ENCRYPTION: LEVEL 9 - UNTRACEABLE]

[NEW BALANCE: $1,422,090.12]

"One point four million," Echo breathed, her knees literally hitting the floor. She stared at the screen as if it were a religious icon. "I could buy a whole block in the Sump for that. I could buy a new body, a new name... I could go to the surface and never look back."

"Don't get comfortable," I warned, my HUD flashing a yellow perimeter alert. "The second that money moved, a silent alarm went off in a server room in the Aegis District. Halloway’s security isn't some bored guy in a booth with a flashlight. It’s a Tier-1 contractor firm. They have my current MAC address. They’re pinging the local towers right now. They know exactly which sector we're in."

"Then block them!" Echo scrambled up, grabbing her tool bag and shoving a soldering iron into her jacket. "You're a tech-god now, right? Do the thing! Ghost us!"

"I’m ghosting the digital trail, but I can't ghost the physical one. They’ve already deployed a drone sweep from the precinct roof. I can hear the high-frequency hum of the rotors."

I stood up, my new muscles coiling with a strange, liquid density. I felt stronger than I ever had as Julian Vane. The 'Oblivion' toxin hadn't just failed to kill me; the system had used the protein-stripping agent as a catalyst to rebuild my muscles with high-tensile synthetic fibers.

"How long?" Echo asked, her eyes darting toward the heavy steel door.

"Forty seconds. Maybe thirty."

"Thirty seconds! Julian, we’re in a basement made of scrap metal! There's only one way out, and it leads straight to the main sprawl!"

"Then we make a second one," I said. I looked at the reinforced steel door that led to the alley. My HUD highlighted the hinges.

[ANALYSIS: REINFORCED TITANIUM ALLOY]

[WEAK POINT DETECTED: UPPER HINGE RIVETS]

[STRESS FACTOR: 88%]

"What are you doing? You can't open that! It’s bolted from the outside with an industrial mag-lock!" Echo yelled, backing away.

I didn't answer. I stepped forward, shifted my weight, and launched a side-kick into the center of the door. The sound wasn't a bang; it was a car crash.

The steel buckled, the bolts shearing off and whistling through the air like bullets. The entire three-hundred-pound door flew ten feet into the alleyway, skidding across the wet pavement with a shower of sparks.

Echo stared at the gaping hole, then at my leg. "What... what did they do to you in that harbor?"

"They gave me a reason to stop playing nice," I said. "Move!"

We scrambled into the rain-slicked alley just as the hum of a high-altitude drone roared above us. Suddenly, the screech of tires echoed from both ends of the alley. Two black SUVs skidded into position, their headlights blinding us.

Four men in tactical gear jumped out, suppressed rifles raised. They didn't have police markings. They were Aegis—private mercenaries.

"Hands up! Now!" the lead operative barked. "Drop the hardware or we turn this alley into a mass grave!"

"Julian," Echo whimpered, clutching my sleeve. "They have guns. Real guns. We're rich for five minutes and now we're dead!"

"I see them," I said. My vision tagged each man in red.

[TARGET 1: ARMED - MP5]

[TARGET 2: ARMED - MK18]

[TARGET 3: TACTICAL VEST - CERAMIC PLATES]

[TARGET 4: COMMANDING OFFICER - HIGH THREAT]

"You're the one who touched the Halloway wallet," the leader said, stepping into the light. He looked at my glowing watch with a hungry expression. "That’s some fancy tech. The Senator wants the watch, and he wants your fingers. In that order. If you're lucky, we'll kill you before we start cutting."

I smiled. It was a cold, jagged expression that felt wrong on my face. "Tell the Senator that his 'retirement' just started early. And he’s not going to like the pension plan."

"Kill him," the leader commanded.

Before his finger could even take up the slack on the trigger, I moved. I wasn't running; I was a blur of pure, surreal energy. The System overclocked my nervous system, making the world appear to move through molasses.

I reached the first man before his brain could process my silhouette. I grabbed the barrel of his rifle and twisted. The steel snapped like a dry twig. I followed through with a palm strike to his chest, the force sending him flying backward ten feet into the grill of the SUV.

The others opened fire.

The world slowed further. I could see the trajectory of the bullets, highlighted in red arcs by my HUD. I stepped left, pivoted right, and felt the wind of the lead passing inches from my skin. It was like a dance I had known my entire life.

"He's a freak!" one shouted, fumbling for a grenade. "Flashbang! Use the flash—"

I didn't let him finish. I grabbed a loose brick from the crumbling wall and hurled it with the speed of a professional pitcher. It caught him square in the throat. He went down, clutching his neck, his eyes rolling back.

In ten seconds, three men were incapacitated. I walked toward the leader, who was fumbling with a jammed handgun, his face a mask of pure terror.

"Wait! Wait!" he screamed, dropping the gun and holding up his hands. "We were just hired! We're contractors! We didn't know you were... whatever you are!"

"You knew enough to bring a body bag," I said.

I grabbed him by the tactical vest and lifted his two-hundred-pound body off the ground with one hand. I looked him in the eye, letting him see the blue circuitry glowing in my iris. "Go back to Halloway. Tell him 'The Architect' is keeping the million. And tell him if he sends more men, I won't just take his money—I'll take his legacy."

I dropped him like a piece of trash and turned to Echo. She was looking at me as if I were a monster from the deep.

"We have to go," I said, my voice returning to its normal, haunting resonance. "We have a funeral to attend. My own."