SSS-Rank Corporate Predator System

The door to his apartment clicked shut behind him, the sound echoing through the hallway.

Miles leaned his back against the door, the cool surface easing the pain that burned through him.

He slid down the door until he was sitting on the worn, dusty floor.

He was still in pain.

His shoulder, the one Spike had shattered, ached with pain, a constant reminder of just how close he had come to dying.

But the system was already working on it, he could feel it.

A low, humming energy was healing him, but the process was slow.

And it was gentle.

He closed his eyes and let out a breath of relief.

He had won.

He had survived another encounter that, by all rights, should have left him dead on some forgotten concrete.

He had walked into a blatant trap, faced five hostiles, and had come out the other side with their lives, their money, and his prize.

A grim, humorless smile touched his lips.

"Look at me," he whispered to the empty, dark room. "Moving up in the world."

He had graduated from getting beaten up in alleys to getting ambushed in industrial parks.

That felt like progress, of a sort.

The system, ever the party pooper, chose that moment to give him a status update.

[HOST PHYSICAL INTEGRITY AT 41%.]

[SEVERE TRAUMA DETECTED IN LEFT CLAVICLE AND SCAPULA.]

[BIO-REGENERATION PROTOCOL OPERATING AT 75% EFFICIENCY.]

[ESTIMATED TIME TO FULL RECOVERY: 48 HOURS.]

"Only two days?" Miles thought, a surge of bleak sarcasm washing over him. "Fantastic."

He could barely lift his arm, but in forty-eight hours, he'd be good as new.

Probably.

This whole "unnatural healing" thing was still something he was getting used to.

He pushed himself up with his good arm, a low groan escaping his lips.

He limped over to his small, cluttered desk and turned on the single lamp, its weak yellow light pushing back the shadows.

He reached into the deep pocket of his cargo pants and pulled out his reward.

It wasn't a bag of money or a fancy new weapon.

It was a small, flat rectangle of polished black metal, no bigger than a credit card.

The [Aegis Shield LVL 3] data-chip.

It felt cool and smooth in his hand, impossibly dense for its size.

Faint, silvery lines of what looked like circuitry were etched into its surface, glowing with a soft, internal light.

"Alright, magical space-card," Miles muttered, placing it on the desk. "How do we do this?"

He had no idea how it worked.

Was he supposed to swallow it?

Did he need to find a USB port on the back of his neck?

The whole concept was utterly ridiculous.

[DATA-CHIP INTEGRATION REQUIRES A DIRECT NEURAL INTERFACE,] the system explained, its text scrolling calmly across his vision.

"A neural interface," Miles repeated flatly. "Of course, it does. And where, pray tell, do I find one of those? Is there a Best Buy for black market cyborg parts I don't know about?"

[THE BURNER PHONE YOU ACQUIRED POSSESSES THE NECESSARY HARDWARE,] the system replied, seemingly unbothered by his sarcasm. [ITS ENCRYPTION PROCESSOR CAN BE MODIFIED TO SERVE AS A TEMPORARY CONDUIT.]

Miles blinked.

He looked at the cheap burner phone he'd bought off The Rusted Key.

It looked like a relic from a decade ago.

Apparently, it had more features than he'd realized.

He picked up the phone and the data-chip.

There was a tiny, almost invisible slot on the side of the phone, one he had assumed was for a memory card.

He slid the data-chip into the slot.

It clicked into place with a soft, satisfying sound.

The phone's screen, which had been dark, flickered to life.

It didn't show a home screen or a menu.

It showed a single, pulsing icon of a brain connected by a line of light to a circuit board.

Below it, a single line of text blinked.

[INITIATE NEURAL UPLINK?]

[>YES] [>NO]

"This feels like a monumentally bad idea," Miles said to himself.

He was about to let a piece of anonymous dark-web technology connect directly to his soul-bound, alien-or-whatever-it-was operating system.

What was the worst that could happen?

He could get a virus.

A virus in his soul.

That would be a new and exciting way to die.

But he remembered Spike's fist, hard as a freight train, crashing into his body.

He remembered the feeling of his bones giving way.

He needed this.

He needed a shield.

He took a deep breath, placed his thumb on the screen, and pressed [YES].

The world vanished.

It wasn't a fade to black.

It was an instant, jarring deletion of all sensory input.

One moment he was in his apartment.

The next, he was floating in an endless, silent void of pure data.

Streams of glowing, blue code flowed around him like a digital river.

He saw the core of his own system, a shimmering, silver sphere of light hanging in the distance.

Then he saw the data from the chip, a torrent of golden, angular code, rushing toward it.

The two streams of data collided.

For a terrifying second, he thought his system was going to reject it.

The silver sphere pulsed, and a wave of raw energy pushed back against the golden tide.

[INCOMING DATA PACKET IS OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN.]

[ANALYZING FOR MALICIOUS CODE… VIRUSES… BACKDOORS…]

[SCAN COMPLETE. DATA IS CLEAN.]

[BEGINNING INTEGRATION.]

He felt a sensation like a key turning a lock deep inside his mind.

A new door opened.

A flood of information poured into him.

Not just data.

Instinct.

He understood, on a fundamental level, how to create a barrier of pure force.

He knew how to shape it, how to angle it, how to brace it against an impact.

It felt as natural as breathing.

[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: AEGIS SHIELD LVL 3.]

The void faded, and the dim, dusty reality of his apartment snapped back into focus.

He was sitting in his chair, his thumb still on the phone's screen.

Only a few seconds had passed.

He felt… different.

Stronger.

More complete.

The data-chip in the phone was now dull and gray, its internal light extinguished.

It was just a useless piece of metal now, its knowledge transferred.

He pulled his hand away from the phone, his mind reeling.

Then, the system spoke again, and his blood went cold.

[SYNERGY DETECTED.]

"Synergy?" he asked aloud. "What are you talking about?"

[THE KINETIC PROPERTIES OF 'AEGIS SHIELD' ARE HIGHLY COMPATIBLE WITH THE SPATIAL DISPLACEMENT MECHANICS OF 'ECHO STEP'.]

[THESE TWO SKILLS CAN BE FUSED TO CREATE A UNIQUE INTERMEDIATE ART.]

An Intermediate Art.

The term sounded important.

It sounded powerful.

"Okay," he said slowly. "Fuse them. Do it."

[EVOLUTION REQUIRES AN EXPENDITURE OF ACCUMULATED COMBAT EXPERIENCE.]

[CURRENT EXP: 785.]

[COST TO EVOLVE: 500 EXP.]

[DO YOU WISH TO PROCEED?]

He didn't even have to think about it.

"Yes," he said, his voice firm.

He felt a strange, draining sensation, like a reservoir of energy deep inside him was being lowered.

He watched as the two skill icons in his mind, the shimmering boot of [Echo Step] and the golden shield of [Aegis], began to drift toward each other.

They touched.

And merged in a silent flash of brilliant, white light.

[EVOLUTION COMPLETE.]

[NEW INTERMEDIATE ART ACQUIRED: BLINK SHIELD.]

[DESCRIPTION: AFTER EXECUTING AN 'ECHO STEP', A TEMPORARY AEGIS SHIELD WILL AUTOMATICALLY MANIFEST AT YOUR DESTINATION POINT, DEFLECTING ANY IMMEDIATE INCOMING ATTACKS.]

Miles stared at the description, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face.

He could teleport directly into the path of an attack and have a shield already there waiting for him.

He could blink into a hail of bullets and not get a scratch.

He could attack and defend in the exact same instant.

This wasn't just a new skill.

This was a complete game-changer.

"Broker," he thought, a flicker of genuine gratitude mixing with the cold satisfaction. "You have no idea what a good deal you just gave me."

He felt a surge of adrenaline, a desire to test his new toy.

But he forced it down.

Now was not the time.

Now was the time to plan his next move.

He pulled the now-useless data-chip from the phone and tossed it aside.

He picked up the encrypted drive he had taken from Broker.

It was time to see what other secrets the man had been hiding.

He plugged the drive into his laptop.

[ENCRYPTION DETECTED: MILITARY GRADE.]

[BRUTE-FORCING PASSWORD… ESTIMATED TIME: 72 YEARS.]

"Yeah, I don't have that kind of time," Miles muttered.

[BYPASSING ENCRYPTION VIA SYSTEM BACKDOOR EXPLOIT…]

[DECRYPTION COMPLETE.]

The system was just showing off now.

The drive opened, revealing dozens of files.

Most of it was useless junk. Transaction histories, client lists, blackmail material on minor city officials.

But then he found it.

A folder labeled "SUPPLIERS."

Inside was a list of names, locations, and corporations that Broker used to acquire his high-tech inventory.

And one name stood out, highlighted by the system in a pulsing, blood-red color.

Cross-Continental Logistics.

[ANALYZING FILE,] the system stated, its voice suddenly more alert. [THIS ENTITY IS A SUBSIDIARY OF CROSS CORP.]

[FINANCIAL RECORDS INDICATE IT IS A PRIMARY FRONT FOR THEIR ILLEGAL SMUGGLING OPERATIONS.]

[SHIPPING MANIFESTS INCLUDE MILITARY-GRADE WEAPONRY, UNREGISTERED SYSTEM-ENHANCEMENT DRUGS, AND RAW MATERIALS FOR EXPERIMENTAL TECHNOLOGY.]

This was it.

This wasn't some low-level street gang.

This was a direct artery, pumping the black blood of Silas Cross's criminal empire throughout the city.

It was a vital organ.

And he had just been given a map showing him exactly where to stick the knife.

A new notification flashed in his vision, stark and clear.

[NEW MAJOR SUB-QUEST GENERATED: CUTTING THE SUPPLY LINE.]

[OBJECTIVE: INFILTRATE CROSS-CONTINENTAL LOGISTICS AND RETRIEVE INCRIMINATING SHIPPING MANIFESTS.]

Miles stared at the screen, his heart pounding a slow, heavy, determined beat.

He knew what he had to do.

He had a shield.

He had a blade.

And now, for the first time, he had a real target.

He was done fighting the symptoms.

It was time to start attacking the disease.