Chapter 11
Four years later.
I come home with too many grocery bags cutting into my fingers, two rectangular cardboard boxes under my arms, and the faint sense that I probably bought more than I needed again.
The lock sticks like it always does. I have to shoulder the door a little harder than necessary, and when it finally gives, I stumble inside my apartment. The familiar smell hits me—coffee, electronics, and something vaguely like dust and cat.
“Felix,” I call, complete with the pspsps.
A black blur streaks out from the bedroom, skidding on the hardwood like he’s trying to break the sound barrier. He yowls at me with the indignation of a creature who believes he’s been abandoned for years instead of an hour and a half.
“Yes, yes, I know,” I say, dropping the boxes carefully by the desk and walking into the kitchen to place the grocery bags on the counter. “You’re starving. I’m a monster. Call the authorities.”
He winds around my ankles, tail high, purring loudly enough I can feel the vibrations.
My apartment is…fine. It’s not spotless. There are two empty coffee mugs on the desk, my black leather jacket slung over the back of the couch, and a stack of unopened mail that I keep meaning to deal with. But it’s not chaos. It’s controlled clutter. I like knowing where everything is.
It’s also nice having control over something in my life. I spent so long feeling out of control of everything. It’s stupid, maybe. It’s just an apartment. But it’s mine, and nothing happens here unless I let it.
I pull a can of cat food from one of the bags and pop the lid. Felix chirps like I’ve just performed a miracle.
“Dinner and a show. You’re welcome.”
I set the can on the floor, and he dives in like he’s never eaten before in his life.
While he’s occupied, I start putting everything away. Produce in the fridge. Pasta in the cabinet. Coffee where it belongs—front and center, because priorities.
Once that’s all done, I lean against the counter and open the bag of Goldfish I just bought.
As I pop a few into my mouth, I glance over at the boxes by my desk.
Inside are micro lenses, pinhole camera housings, custom wiring, signal boosters, and a handful of tools I paid for in cash.
Nothing flashy or traceable. Just parts, components. Potential.
Expensive too. Not the kind of expensive you can justify with a normal job. But normal jobs don’t build things like this.
My newest client wants surveillance inside his own home. Discreet and undetectable. I need to build cameras small enough to disappear into vents, smoke detectors, and decorative molding.
Tiny, black eyes tucked into the corners of a life.
For a second, just a second, I think about being watched. About a lens in a metal door. About knowing someone was on the other side of it, watching me, listening.
I shut those thoughts down.
Different situation. Different context. Different me.
Felix jumps onto the desk, and I refocus.
Wiping my hands on my jeans, I head to the desk, bringing my snack with me.
Three monitors glow in the dim light of the living room.
The blinds are half closed, late afternoon sun striping the floor.
I drop into my chair and wake the system with a tap of my favorite custom keyboard—aluminum casing, bright RGBs, and matte black metal keycaps.
Code fills the screens, lines and lines of it. Elegant in places, ugly in others. Half-finished. Brilliant and frustrating and alive.
I’ve been working on this program for years.
It’s not just one thing, not just a virus.
It’s a framework, an emergent system. A self-evolving architecture designed to infiltrate, destabilize, and dismantle layered networks that hide behind anonymity and encryption.
Every time I think I’ve solved one problem, it births three more like a Hydra.
Every time I close one vulnerability, the system adapts.
It’s chaos in digital form.
I lean back, cracking my neck, and stare at the central node of the current build.
Today’s task is refining how it moves, how it spreads from one hidden server to the next without tripping alarms and being detected.
It can’t just burn everything down at once.
It has to dismantle it piece by piece. Precision matters.
Because I’m not just trying to break something. I’m trying to erase it.
Every server, every backup. Every ghost of the infrastructure that the person built—the one responsible, the one who hired him.
I don’t think his name. I never do, not if I can help it.
I know it’s not clean logic. Maybe I should be blaming the one who pulled the trigger. But whoever this is, the one I’ve been hunting, is the one who set it all in motion. The one who paid for it, the one who led him to his death.
If I can finish this, if I can wipe him out completely, maybe that’s when it’ll stop hurting.
Or, at least…hurt less.
Felix walks across my keyboard like he pays rent here.
“Hey.” I nudge him gently aside. “You’re sabotaging justice.”
He blinks at me, unimpressed. I drop a Goldfish on the desk for him anyway.
This job I just got? It’s going to help. Not because I need the money. I don’t. Not really. If I wanted, I could use cards tied to accounts that will never run dry. Bellrose money. But that money comes with eyes and audits and questions.
My father left us some, of course, but most of it went to my mom. She donated a large sum to charity, then used quite a bit for her move to North Carolina. Even if I wanted to ask her for more of it, I’m not sure it would be enough.
This job pays well. It opens doors, the kind of doors that come with money and hardware and access I don’t have yet, the ability to do it all without asking anyone for permission. It comes with control. And the kind of things I need if this program is ever going to be more than a theory.
You don’t build something like this on allowance money and good intentions.
I glance at the boxes again.
Surveillance first, destruction later.
I pull my phone from my pocket and type out a message now that I have an idea of when I’ll have things ready.
Me: Next Thursday afternoon.
I set my phone down and rub my eyes, the screen still burning behind my eyelids. My glasses slide down my nose again, and I push them back up with my middle finger out of habit.
I used to miss contacts, but I don’t anymore. Anonymity requires sacrifice. Like depth perception and peripheral vision.
Four years ago, I made the switch from contacts to glasses the same week I dyed my hair green.
The press had been relentless back then.
They camped outside the Institute, followed me to grocery stores, shouted my name like we were old friends.
The disguise mostly worked. People don’t really look at a guy with neon hair and thick-rimmed glasses and think he’s anyone important.
Clark Kent if Clark Kent had insomnia and abandonment issues.
My phone vibrates with a text.
Client: Thanks.
I kick off my shoes and turn back to the monitors. Felix curls beside the keyboard, warm and alive and purring. Code scrolls across the screens. The apartment hums softly with electricity and ordinary life.
Everything is normal.
At least, it looks that way.
The building has one of those lobbies that smells like expensive air.
Not refined florals or citrus or champagne.
Just money. Polished stone floors and floor-to-ceiling glass.
A security desk that looks like it belongs in a tech startup instead of a residence.
The guy behind it barely glances at me as I give my client’s name, which is either a sign of trust or arrogance. Probably both.
The elevator ride is silent, smooth. Fast enough that my ears pop. I adjust my glasses on instinct, watching my reflection in the mirrored walls. Green hair, black hoodie, tool bag. The world’s least threatening home technician.
The doors open directly into the high-rise condo.
It’s obscene. The entire wall across from me is glass, the city laid out like a model below. The space is open with high ceilings, dark gray limestone floors, dark oak walls, and dark furniture. Artwork hangs on the walls, and an old grandfather clock looms in the corner of the living room.
It’s the kind of place that doesn’t worry about money, that makes things happen instead of waiting for them.
Harrison Copeland stands near the wet bar by the kitchen, black hair neat and styled, the sleeves of his pristine white dress shirt rolled to his elbows, one hand braced on the Italian marble counter.
He looks exactly the way powerful men always look in articles about innovation.
Tall, controlled. The kind of face that photographs well from every angle.
His eyes land on me.
Gray.
Similar, but not the same. His had been…brighter. Silver and sharp, like a blade catching light.
Harrison’s eyes are darker—storm instead of steel—but close enough that something in my chest tightens before I can stop it. I shove the reaction down so hard it practically leaves a dent.
“Hey, Doc,” I say, stepping further inside like I belong here and not like I’ve just mentally compared his eyes to a dead man’s.
He gives a small nod. “Cason.”
“Please. Call me Case.”
It comes out more like begging than the hey, my friends call me Case kind of way that I intended.
I used to hate being called by my full first name because it reminded me of all the times I pissed my dad off. Now, it reminds me of someone else.
“Nice place. Very subtle. Really gives off that humble, approachable neuroscientist vibe. Might want to consider a throw blanket, though. Something that says I occasionally feel joy.”
We’ve spoken on the phone exactly once, and even though it was brief, it was enough that I’m sure he already has an idea of what he’s gotten himself into.
One of his brows lifts a fraction. “You know who I am?”