2026-01-31 17:00:33
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In a cell
The cell was quiet.Not peaceful. Just quiet.Jasper sat on the narrow bed with his back against the wall, his hands resting on his knees. The metal frame creaked faintly whenever he shifted his weight, so he stayed still. The light above buzzed softly, never turning off. Time didn’t move here. It stacked.This was what the System had meant.Consequences.He had understood the word before. He thought he had. He had seen consequences in numbers, in losses, in calculated outcomes. This was different. This was empty space closing in on him. No interface. No alerts. No assets. No authority. No leverage.Nothing to trade.Everything he had built was gone. Years of work, systems layered on systems, deals, influence, protection. All of it dissolved in a matter of hours. He had known it would happen. He had confirmed the choice anyway.And now he was here.Jasper exhaled slowly and leaned his head back against the wall. The concrete was cold even through his shirt. His thoughts circled the sa
The city was safe
Jasper sat alone.The room was quiet, but his thoughts weren’t. Screens floated in front of him, numbers scrolling, alerts stacking and restacking as if the system itself was anxious. Every projection told the same story. The situation wasn’t stabilizing. It was spreading.He leaned back and closed his eyes.“It won’t work,” he said aloud.The System responded instantly.[Explain.]Jasper exhaled. “Every patch fails. Every countermeasure just delays it. The network’s too deep now. He’s everywhere.”[Your conclusion is incomplete.]“No,” Jasper said. “It’s finished.”He opened his eyes again and stared at the largest screen. Cities marked in red. Emergency signals. Government lines burning hot.“If I keep my holdings,” he continued, “the system stays fragmented. Jurisdiction fights jurisdiction. Authority slows response. And while they argue, people die.”There was a pause. A real one this time.[You are suggesting forfeiture.]“I am,” Jasper said. “All of it.”The words felt heavier o
The system waited
Jasper sat in the quiet of the underground layer. The damaged consoles hummed beneath his fingers. Smoke from fried circuits lingered faintly in the air. He didn’t move. He couldn’t. The magnitude of the situation weighed heavier than any physical threat he’d ever faced.Then the System spoke. Not with its usual calm, efficient tone. This time it was urgent. Insistent. Even a little cold.High-Level Threat Hacker Detected.Jasper’s eyes narrowed. He leaned closer to the central display, scanning the alerts. The words flashed again, confirming everything he already suspected.“This isn’t a malfunction,” he said. His voice low, almost to himself. “Not a glitch. Not a failure.”The System highlighted lines of code across the network map. Every layer he had painstakingly built over the years—encrypted firewalls, secondary nodes, isolation protocols, adaptive AI subroutines—they were gone. Wiped clean. Rewritten from the inside.“How?” he asked. The words felt hollow. “How can one person u
Planning
Jasper didn’t need long to see the pattern.He leaned closer to the central terminal, eyes fixed on the streaming data. Red markers pulsed across the map, each one representing a confirmed robot unit. The movement paths overlapped in a way that was too consistent to ignore.“They’re not spreading randomly,” he said quietly.The room answered with a low mechanical hum.He isolated the directive packets, stripped away the noise, and traced the logic thread backward. It didn’t take long after that. When the conclusion surfaced on-screen, Jasper stopped moving altogether.Target priority: JASPER VALE.He exhaled slowly.“So that’s it,” he muttered. “That’s the core.”Civilians weren’t targets. Military units weren’t targets. Power grids, transport hubs, command centers—none of them mattered on their own. They were obstacles. Collateral. Things in the way.Everything led back to him.Jasper switched feeds.One screen showed a city block reduced to rubble. Not from bombs, but from precision
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The room was dark except for the screens.There were twelve of them, arranged in a loose arc across the far wall. Each showed a different angle of the city. Streets. Buildings. Intersections. Private homes. All labeled. All live.The mob boss sat back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, fingers resting lightly against his chin. He did not smile, but there was something close to it in his eyes.Silverlake was burning.One feed showed a shopping district. A robot had flipped a parked car onto its side. Another robot walked past it without stopping, glass crunching beneath its feet. Smoke drifted into the frame.Another screen showed the interior of an apartment. Furniture was overturned. A robot stood still in the center of the room, its head twitching slightly, as if listening to something no one else could hear.“Look at that,” he said quietly.No one answered right away.Behind him, one of his men shifted his weight. Another leaned closer to a console, adjusting the volume
He fled
Jasper stopped holding back.The moment came quietly. No dramatic realization. No speech. Just a clean internal switch flipping off.Restraint disabled.He moved.The rogue home robot reacted instantly, its limbs shifting, servos whining as it adjusted to the sudden spike in force. Jasper closed the distance in seconds, his boots cracking pavement as he struck low, then high, then pivoted away before its counter could land.“Predictable,” Jasper muttered.He calculated everything. Angle. Timing. Weight distribution. Heat output. Structural weak points. Every strike followed a purpose, every movement chained to the next. No wasted motion. No hesitation.The robot swung. Jasper ducked, grabbed its forearm, twisted, and slammed his elbow into the joint seam.Metal split.The machine staggered.“Good,” Jasper said under his breath.He pressed harder.A kick to the knee joint. A strike to the torso panel. A rapid sequence aimed at the sensor cluster embedded near its head. The robot reeled
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