Chapter 11: The Weapon's Choice
The dripping water in the maintenance bay was a metronome counting down the seconds of his old life. Nyx's message hung in his mind, a serpent coiled around his throat, squeezing tighter with each passing moment. *Your sister's hospice ward just received a priority transfer order.* They had Ava. Not the faceless, monolithic "corporation." *They.* Nyx. She had reached into the one sacred, untouched place in his existence and laid her cold, claiming finger upon it.
The official Stream Goal pulsed beside her message, two paths leading to the same hell. Partner Status with Omni-Stream, a gilded cage with Ava's safety as the prize, purchased with Valerius's blood. Or the leash offered by Nyx, a different kind of servitude that promised power but started with her owning his sister's very location. Both required a death. The death of the man he once was, or the physical death of Marcus Valerius.
For a fleeting moment, the ghost of the janitor screamed at him to run. To use his backdoor, his remaining Chaos Crowns, and his new, terrifying cybernetics to tear a hole in the world and vanish. But the cold, unfeeling logic of the Tier-4 integration swiftly and silently strangled that hope. They would find Ava. Whether it was Omni-Stream's brute-force enforcers or Nyx's subtle, insidious networks, they would find her. He was in the cage. The only choice was which master held the key.
Nyx had acted. She had demonstrated initiative, power, and a terrifying level of insight, moving his sister like a chess piece before he'd even made his move. Omni-Stream was a faceless, predictable machine. Nyx was a master strategist, a fellow predator. In the war he now found himself in, you sided with the sharper fangs.
He opened the channel to her encrypted code, his voice a flat, synthesized monotone, stripped of all human tremor. "I am nobody's weapon. But I am open to a strategic alliance. State your terms."
The reply was instantaneous, as if she had been waiting inside his own skull. "Practical. Good. The terms are simple. You will fail your Stream Goal. Spectacularly. You will not kill Valerius. You will instead humiliate Omni-Stream by publicly revealing their termination order for a loyal soldier. You will become a living symbol of their corruption and cruelty. You will light the fuse."
Will processed the demand. It was a declaration of war far more brazen and politically charged than his own small, personal rebellion. It wasn't just defiance; it was a call to arms. "And in return for my becoming the most wanted man in the arcology?"
"You get the real-time coordinates for your sister's new, 'secure' location. And you get my personal, vested interest in keeping both of you breathing. I am offering you a throne, Will. One we will seize from their crumbling empire, together."
It was everything he supposedly wanted. Power. A chance to strike back. Safety for Ava. And it was so obviously a trap he could almost feel the steel jaws waiting to snap shut. But with Ava's location known only to her, it was the only trap he could afford to walk into.
"Accepted," he said, the word tasting like ashes and iron.
"Then the curtain rises. Your stream is live in five seconds."
The golden heart erupted in his vision, a supernova of attention. The viewer count shattered all previous records, a screaming digital tsunami of over two million souls. They were primed for blood, for a brutal, stylish execution. He could feel their collective bloodlust, a psychic wave of anticipation that vibrated through his new cybernetic nerves.
He moved. He didn't slink through shadows or use stealth. He walked openly into the grim, grey company housing block, a specter of vengeance clad in blood-stained clothes. He didn't bother with the lock; a single, enhanced kick shattered the door of Apartment 48B, sending splinters flying inward.
Marcus Valerius sat at the flimsy table, just as in the file. He looked up, his eyes not with fear, but with a hollow, bottomless resignation. He saw the monomolecular blade in Will's hand. His shoulders slumped, but he did not flinch.
"Just make it quick," Valerius whispered, his voice cracking. "For my daughter's sake. Let her remember the hero."
Will ignored him. He turned his gaze to the live stream camera, his face a mask of cold, manufactured fury. "You wanted a lesson?" he spat, his voice projecting to every corner of the globe. "You wanted to see the price of failure? Here it is!"
With a thought, he projected the stolen corporate file directly into the public data-stream. The photo of a gaunt, broken Valerius. The cold, bureaucratic language of the termination order. The stark, final words: `STATUS: AWAITING EXECUTION.`
A collective, digital gasp from two million viewers echoed through the comment feed, a moment of stunned silence before the inevitable storm.
"This!" Will roared, stabbing a finger toward the projected image. "This is Omni-Stream's gratitude! This is their justice! They use you up, they break you, and then they send a puppet like me to take out the trash and call it entertainment!"
The Stream-Weaver's voice was a frantic, piercing scream in his mind, a sound of pure systemic panic. "ABORT! YOU ARE IN DIRECT VIOLATION OF YOUR CONTRACT! CEASE TRANSMISSION IMMEDIATELY!"
He felt it then—a system-wide lockout. A cascade of failures. His credit balance, once a towering fortress of numbers, zeroed out. His access permissions dissolved. The offer of Omni-Stream Partner Status he'd been tempted with now flickered and transformed into a global bounty, a price on his head so large it made him dizzy. Red warning sigils flashed across his vision, branding him HOSTILE, TERMINATE ON SIGHT.
He had done it. He was no longer a streamer. He was a revolutionary. A terrorist.
He turned back to Valerius, whose face was a canvas of shock, confusion, and a fragile, dawning hope. "They're coming for both of us now," Will said, his voice dropping to a urgent, private tone. "The real enforcers, not the ones for the cameras. If you want to live, if you ever want to see your daughter again, you come with me. Now."
But as he reached for the ex-enforcer's arm to pull him to his feet, a new alert seared into his vision. It wasn't from the public stream or the Weaver. It was a raw, priority data-packet from the secret backdoor he'd planted in the Nexus core.
It was a live security feed. A stark, sterile room in a high-security medical facility. A bed.
Ava lay in it, small and pale amidst the wires and tubes. And standing beside the bed, her posture one of casual ownership, was Nyx. She wasn't looking at Ava. She was looking directly into the hidden camera, her winter-grey eyes seeing right through the lens into his soul.
She offered a small, cold, knowing smile. Then, slowly, deliberately, she raised a single, gloved finger and pressed it to her lips.
*Silence.*
The message was a blade of ice to his heart.
*I have her. The first move was yours. But the game... the game is still mine.*