Chapter 6: Finding the ShadowsEthan had reached a very specific and deeply annoying conclusion:
Someone was absolutely watching him.
Not in a dramatic, "black helicopters" way.
In a quiet, professional, irritating way.
The kind that showed up as paperwork being checked twice. As distributors suddenly asking questions they'd never cared about before. As people who smiled too easily and listened too carefully.
He stood in the Mercer Technologies office after closing, arms crossed, staring at the reflection of the city in the window.
"…Alright," he said to the empty room. "Let's stop pretending this is a coincidence."
He didn't turn on the Sharingan.
Not yet.
First rule of staying hidden: don't use the big guns unless you need them.
He grabbed his jacket, locked up, and went home like a normal, boring CEO.
Then, two hours later, he left again like a ghost.
He changed clothes. Dark, quiet, forgettable. Hood up, hat low. White hair hidden.
"Okay," he whispered to himself in the stairwell. "Let's go find the creeps."
He didn't jump rooftops.
Not in Queens.
Not with people still out and about.
He took the subway.
Walked.
Blended in.
Because real stealth wasn't about being invisible.
It was about being unimportant.
He started with the car.
The same dark sedan he'd seen three times that week near the office.
He didn't go looking for it.
He went looking for patterns.
He walked three blocks past the office, circled around, and came back from a different angle.
And there it was.
Parked badly.
Too far from the curb.
Not convenient.
"…You're not local," Ethan murmured. "Locals care about parking."
He didn't approach it.
He walked past it.
Didn't even glance.
Then, half a block later, he turned down an alley, scaled a fire escape, and moved across the rooftops.
Now he turned on the Sharingan.
The world sharpened.
He lay flat near the edge and looked down.
Two men inside.
Not talking.
Not on phones.
Just… waiting.
"…That's not stakeout behavior," he muttered. "That's monitoring behavior."
He watched for ten minutes.
A delivery truck passed.
They looked up.
A courier van.
They looked up.
Then a Mercer Technologies shipment truck went by.
Both men sat a little straighter.
"…Got you."
He followed them.
Not the car.
The people.
When they finally drove off, he didn't chase.
He waited.
Then followed at a distance.
On foot.
Rooftops.
Side streets.
No direct lines.
No patterns.
He kept three exits in mind at all times.
"…God, I missed this," he whispered, then paused.
"…No, I absolutely did not miss this."
They led him to a nondescript office building in Midtown.
No logos.
No signs.
Just glass and concrete and anonymity.
He circled it once.
Twice.
Watched who went in and out.
Saw the same posture again.
Same way of moving.
Same way of scanning.
"…Okay," he said quietly. "You're a nest."
He waited until night.
Real night.
Not evening.
The time when janitors and security guards blurred into the background noise of the city.
Then he moved.
Scaling the building was easy.
Too easy.
"…You really should invest in better security," he whispered as he slipped onto a ledge.
He used chakra to stick to the wall, but gently. No flashes. No wasted energy.
Inside, through the glass, he saw cubicles.
Desks.
Computers.
Files.
Not a flashy villain lair.
Which made it worse.
He slipped in through a maintenance access window.
No alarms.
No drama.
He landed silently in a dark hallway and crouched.
"Okay," he whispered. "Time to see who you are."
He moved like smoke.
Down hallways.
Past doors.
He listened.
Footsteps.
Two guards at the far end.
Not talking.
Just… existing.
He waited until one shifted.
Then he moved.
One blink they were there.
The next, he was past them.
They never noticed.
"…Still got it," he whispered smugly.
He found the server room.
Of course there was a server room.
He slipped inside, closed the door, and turned on the Sharingan.
The data flows lit up in his vision like glowing rivers.
"…Oh," he said softly. "You're very busy."
He plugged in a drive.
Let his eyes read patterns.
He wasn't hacking.
He was observing.
Seeing file structures.
Access logs.
Project folders.
And then—
He froze.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
The name wasn't on the main folder.
It was buried.
Three layers deep.
A project tag.
"Anomalous Tech Monitoring – Domestic"
"…That's a red flag if I've ever seen one."
He dug deeper.
Found subfolders.
Stark-adjacent
Experimental Materials
Emerging Actors
And then—
Mercer Technologies
He stared.
"…Wow. I made the list."
He scanned the associated files.
Photos.
Shipping records.
Financial summaries.
Meeting notes.
"…You've been watching me for months."
He scrolled.
And then he frowned.
"…Wait."
He checked the parent directory again.
"…You're not just watching me."
He saw other names.
Other companies.
Small ones.
Quiet ones.
All doing slightly unusual things.
"…You're a filter," he realized. "You're the people who decide what's 'normal' and what gets… handled."
He found the logo.
Not on the wall.
Not on the site.
Hidden in a footer.
A shell for a shell.
But he recognized it anyway.
"…You're not SHIELD," he whispered.
He leaned back in the chair.
"…You're private."
And very, very well-funded.
He copied nothing.
Changed nothing.
Left nothing.
He didn't want a ripple.
He wanted knowledge.
He left the way he came in.
No traces.
No alarms.
No witnesses.
By the time the sun started hinting at morning, he was back in his apartment, shoes off, sitting on the bed.
"…Okay," he said, staring at the wall.
"So."
He counted on his fingers.
"One: you're not here to kill me."
"Two: you're here to decide if I'm a problem."
"Three: you don't know what I am."
He smiled slowly.
"…Good."
He flopped backward onto the bed.
"…Man, I just broke into a shadow corporation's office and nobody noticed."
He stared at the ceiling.
"…This is my life now."
He sat up again.
"Alright. New objective."
He pointed at the air.
"Stay boring enough that you don't escalate."
Then he pointed again.
"But strong enough that if you do escalate…"
He smiled thinly.
"…You regret it."
The next day, Mercer Technologies opened like normal.
Ethan answered emails.
Signed contracts.
Reviewed designs.
Nobody knew he'd been somewhere he absolutely should not have been.
And somewhere, in a building that thought it was very secure, no one noticed that one quiet night—
They had been visited.