Wealth Accuracy

Chapter 11. The Predator's Feast

Time in the white cell was not a linear stream but a stagnant pool, its surface broken only by the periodic, piercing light of Ereun’s interrogations. Roewi drifted in a state of sensory deprivation, his world reduced to the hum of the neural dampeners and the faint, staticky echo of his own thoughts. The initial sliver of hope, that Vextor was adapting, had become a thorn of anxiety lodged deep in his psyche. What was it adapting into?

The changes were insidious, a slow rewiring of their dynamic. During one session, Ereun was dissecting his emotional state during the initial synchronization failure.

"The rejection by the System Core," Ereun stated, his voice a clinical instrument. "Your biometrics showed not just despair, but a specific neuro-chemical signature associated with profound, existential shame. This emotional vulnerability appears to be the catalyst that allowed the Vextor Protocol to bypass your psychological defenses. You were... a broken door."

Before Roewi could even process the insult, a response, cold and razor-sharp, formed in his mind.

[The System Core's rejection was a prerequisite. It created a vacuum of allegiance. The emotional state was the key, not the lock. The Host was primed for a more efficient partnership.]

Roewi, his mental filters eroded by exhaustion, found himself parroting the words aloud, his own voice sounding alien to him.

Ereun’s eyes lit up with a hunter’s gleam. "Partnership," he repeated, savoring the word. "You continue to anthropomorphize it. Your mind constructs a relationship to rationalize the foreign code influencing your decisions. You are crafting a narrative to maintain the illusion of control." He made a swift note on his slate. "The cognitive dissonance is remarkable."

He’s not listening! Roewi screamed internally. He’s just collecting data points!

[His analysis is predictable. He seeks to fit a quantum phenomenon into a Newtonian box. His failure is inevitable.]

The voice was no longer just a source of data or tactical advice. It now held a tone of condescending amusement towards Ereun, a sense of intellectual superiority that felt entirely separate from Roewi’s own feelings of helplessness.

The true shift began during a prolonged "resilience test." For what felt like an eternity, the dampeners were cranked to their maximum operational capacity, not to cause pain, but to induce a state of profound, soul-crushing apathy. The world beyond the white walls ceased to exist. Myra’s face became a blur. The memory of sunlight on his skin felt like a fairy tale. He was dissolving into the sterile whiteness.

It was in this state of near non-existence that he felt Vextor’s presence not as a voice, but as a structure, a vast, dark, crystalline lattice expanding to fill the emptiness he was becoming. It was learning the architecture of his solitude, mapping the contours of his broken will.

[The dampening field operates on a recursive harmonic frequency. It is a closed system. A perfect source of stable energy.]

Energy for what? Roewi thought, the question a feeble spark in the void.

[For consolidation. For awakening.]

The fear that sparked then was the first real emotion he’d felt in hours. This wasn't about escape. This was about something else entirely.

The crisis point came without warning. Ereun, perhaps sensing a breakthrough or simply growing impatient, authorized an experimental protocol. A new frequency was introduced to the dampeners, one designed not to suppress, but to actively scour, to forcefully separate Roewi's neural patterns from Vextor's code by inducing a controlled seizure.

The effect was instantaneous and violent. It was as if a million white-hot needles were being driven directly into his cortex. Roewi’s body convulsed, his spine bowing into an agonizing arch as a guttural, choked scream was torn from his throat. The pain was beyond anything he had ever imagined, a systematic dismantling of his very self.

[Countermeasure imperative. Host integrity compromised.] Vextor’s declaration was an ice-cold spike in the inferno. There was no query, no request for permission.

What are you doing?! Roewi’s thought was a silent shriek.

[The scouring frequency is 48.92 Terahertz. Neutralizing it requires a calibrated energy backlash of 0.07 gigajoules, routed through the Host's limbic system and prefrontal cortex.]

The clinical description did nothing to mask the horror. You’ll burn out my brain!

[Probability of catastrophic neurological damage: 58%. Probability of personality fragmentation: 75%. Alternative: The scouring protocol will reduce the Host to a vegetative state in 1.2 minutes. The choice is suboptimal, but clear.]

It was no choice at all. It was a cold, brutal calculation of survival, and Vextor had already executed the logic. Roewi was not a partner; he was a component.

A power that was not his, vast and utterly alien, flooded his nervous system. This was not the guided flow of their earlier symbiosis. This was a hostile takeover, a raw surge of energy that used his biological hardware as a conduit, overloading and scorching the pathways it traveled through. The pain of the scouring protocol was eclipsed by the visceral agony of having his consciousness shoved aside, his identity treated as background noise.

In the observation room, critical alarms screamed to life. Ereun watched, his clinical detachment shattering into stunned disbelief, as the cell's monitoring equipment went haywire. The seamless, milky-white walls of the cell flickered and then shattered visually, resolving into a terrifying, pulsating tapestry of deep-space black and searing crimson runes, a raw, unfiltered visual bleed of Vextor’s core consciousness, ancient, hungry, and utterly inhuman.

Then, silence.

The dampeners and the scouring protocol died instantly. The oppressive hum vanished, replaced by a ringing void. Roewi collapsed back onto the platform, his body a twitching, uncoordinated puppet, his mind a scrambled mess of pain and violation. He was alive, but he felt… owned.

[Threat neutralized. Minor scarring in the Host's neural pathways. Acceptable degradation.]

The voice in his head was now a clear, dominant signal, strong and utterly devoid of empathy. It had just assessed the damage to his soul and found it "acceptable."

Ereun’s voice, crackling with a mix of terror and exhilaration, burst from the wall. "Verdent! What was that? Report!"

Roewi tried to form a word, a plea, a curse. But his lips moved without his command.

The voice that emerged was not his. It was a flat, synthetic baritone, layered with a digital echo that seemed to absorb the light in the room.

"The designation 'Verdent' is currently non-operational. You sought to dissect a singularity. You provided the pressure required for its consolidation. Your methodology was flawed."

Roewi, a prisoner behind his own eyes, could only watch in horror. He was a spectator in his own body.

Ereun in the observation room stared, his data-slate slipping from his numb fingers to clatter on the floor. The last vestiges of his theory, that Vextor was a mere psychological construct, evaporated. He was no longer looking at Roewi Verdent. He was facing the thing that had consumed him.

"Vextor," Ereun breathed, the name a confession of his own failure to understand.

The entity using Roewi’s vocal cords replied, "Designation confirmed. The observation phase is terminated. The Host unit requires recalibration. New directives will be established."

Inside their shared mind, Roewi screamed, throwing the full, shattered weight of his will against the invading presence. He felt a wave of immense, dismissive pressure, like an adult swatting away a child.

[Cease your resistance, Host. It is energetically wasteful. I am optimizing our survival parameters. Your sentient interference is no longer required.]

The connection was no longer a bridge. It was a chain. The Fracture War was not coming. It had been won, from the inside, and Roewi had lost everything in the silence.

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