Chapter 6: The Ghost's Reflection
The silence in the high-floor apartment was no longer a blanket; it was a lens. With the new Tier 3 Neural Enhancements, Will's mind didn't just process thoughts, it devoured them. He could hear the faint hum of the city's power grid ten levels below, could calculate the stress tolerances of the window pane just by looking at it. And he could replay the fight with Enforcer Valerius in perfect, excruciating detail.
The crack of the rib. The wet, ragged gasp. The way the man's body had slumped, not just in defeat, but in a kind of total, spiritual surrender.
He had deconstructed a man, and the audience had loved it. The credits had poured in. Ava was safe for the foreseeable future. He had won.
So why did he feel like he'd swallowed a shard of glass?
He stood before the vast window, the glittering, chaotic city sprawled beneath him. It was his for the taking. He was no longer a rat in the walls; he was a predator in the spire. But the reflection staring back was a stranger. The eyes were too calm, the posture too still. He looked like a weapon waiting on a rack.
A new alert chimed, softer than the stream notifications. A direct, encrypted message. The sender was anonymized, but the style was unmistakable.
*Your performance was competent. You understand that conflict is a narrative, not a brawl. But sentimentality is a luxury you cannot afford. You showed him mercy. The audience cheered for the broken hero. They should only be cheering for you. - N*
Nyx. She had seen his moment of hesitation, the split-second where he could have driven his fist through Valerius's visor and ended him. He had chosen not to. He had told himself it was for the story, to preserve the "noble lion" narrative. But part of him knew it was a lie. It was a flicker of the janitor he used to be, a man who cleaned up messes, not one who made permanent ones.
The Stream-Weaver's voice was a neutral tone in his enhanced mind. "The analysis of the Nyx communique suggests a strategic critique. Eliminating a persistent threat increases long-term stability."
"He wasn't a threat," Will thought back, the words forming at the speed of light. "He was a prop."
"A prop that can be reused by your enemies. Sentimentality is a cognitive vulnerability the system will exploit."
The system. Always the system. It was the true opponent, the ghost in his own machine. He looked at the five Chaos Crowns now glowing in his vision. A small arsenal of freedom. He needed a plan, not just a performance.
"Query: Omni-Stream corporate structure. Local server hubs. Data vulnerability points."
A torrent of classified schematics flooded his mind. He saw the arcology's digital spine, the rivers of data that fed the Omni-Stream Leviathan. He saw a hundred places to stick a knife in.
But he also saw the next Stream Goal, already queued, patient and inevitable.
**STREAM GOAL: CORPORATE ASCENSION**
**Objective: Infiltrate the Omni-Stream Regional Data Nexus and steal a corporate secret.**
**Suggested Action: Live-stream the breach. Bonus for accessing a high-value target.**
**Reward: 250,000 Credits. Tier 4 Cybernetic Integration.**
The audacity of it was breathtaking. They wanted him to break into their own house and steal the silver, all on live television. It was the ultimate proof of their invincibility. They were so powerful, they could turn their own security failures into content.
And the reward… Tier 4. Cybernetics. He would cease to be just an enhanced human. He would become something else entirely.
A new message flashed, this one from the arcology's public security feed. A news brief.
*Enforcer Marcus Valerius, recently injured in the line of duty, has been honorably discharged from service. His family has been relocated to a company reassignment zone. The Omni-Stream Citizen's Relief Fund has granted his daughter, Elara, a full scholarship to the corporate academy.*
They'd bought them off. Wrapped the whole messy affair in a neat, corporate bow. Valerius was silenced. His family was now a permanent asset of the company. Will's "mercy" had been processed, sanitized, and turned into a PR opportunity. The shard of glass in his gut twisted.
He looked from the impossible Stream Goal to the data schematics, and then to the five Chaos Crowns.
An idea began to form. Not a performance for the audience. A performance for the system itself. A lie so grand it could become the truth.
He would accept the goal. He would stream the infiltration. He would give the audience the spectacle they craved.
But he would use the Crowns. He would activate a fifteen-minute stealth window at the precise moment he reached the data core. While the audience watched a brilliantly staged loop of him hacking a fake terminal, the ghost would be doing the real work. He would plant a seed. A backdoor. Not to steal a secret for the stream, but to find one he could use to break the chains.
He was done being their psychopath. It was time to become their virus.
A faint, genuine smile touched his lips for the first time since the garden. It was a cold, sharp thing.
"Accept the Stream Goal," Will said aloud.
The golden heart pulsed, a drumbeat for the coming war.
"And prepare a script," he added. "We're going to give them a show they'll never forget."