SSS-Rank Corporate Predator System

The morning light in Silas Cross's office was sharp and unforgiving.

The room was less of an office and more of a temple dedicated to power, a sterile, silent space high above the city.

Silas sat behind his desk, a king on a minimalist throne.

He wasn't looking at the spectacular view.

He was looking at a data tablet, his face a mask of cold, analytical detachment.

He took a slow, deliberate sip of a coffee that cost more than a decent car payment.

A quiet sound announced the arrival of his senior aide.

The man entered the room with the silent, unobtrusive grace of a well-paid ghost.

He stood before the desk, his hands clasped behind his back, waiting to be acknowledged.

"Report," Silas said without looking up.

His voice was flat, the sound of a machine stating a fact.

"Sir," the aide began, his tone a perfect match for his boss's. "I have the preliminary forensic report on the Warehouse 7 incident."

Silas finally looked up, his eyes as gray and cold as a storm-tossed sea.

"I thought we had concluded that matter," Silas stated. "A gang hit. Incompetence breeding incompetence. A self-correcting problem."

"That was the initial assessment, sir," the aide replied, his face impassive. "Based on the physical evidence and the narrative we supplied to the authorities."

He paused, choosing his next words carefully.

"Our internal forensic team, however, has a dissenting opinion."

Silas raised a single, perfectly sculpted eyebrow.

"Dissent is only valuable if it is correct," he said. "Enlighten me."

The aide tapped his own tablet, and a series of images and data streams appeared on the large screen behind Silas's desk.

"The police report concluded the victims were killed in a knife fight," the aide explained. "But our analysts found microscopic energy signatures on the wounds."

"The patterns are consistent with a soul-bound weapon, a blade-type. The cuts were surgically precise before being deliberately mutilated post-mortem to obscure their origin."

Silas leaned forward, a flicker of genuine interest in his cold eyes.

"And the digital evidence?" he asked.

"That is the primary point of contention, sir," the aide continued.

He brought up another screen, this one filled with lines of complex code.

"The security servers weren't just wiped. That would be amateurish."

"The data was overwritten with a ghost loop, a seamless recording from the previous night."

"The timestamps were forged at a kernel level, deep inside the operating system's core."

"The fabricated text messages and financial records we found were designed to lead us, and the police, to believe it was a double-cross involving the Diamondbacks."

The aide took a steadying breath.

"Sir, the analyst's conclusion is that this was not the work of a rival street gang."

"This was a surgical extraction."

"It was executed by a single, highly skilled system user with advanced infiltration, combat, and data-warfare capabilities."

A deep, profound silence filled the vast office.

Silas stared at the screen, his mind processing the new information with the speed of a supercomputer.

This changed everything.

This wasn't a random act of violence.

This was a message.

Someone had deliberately and methodically dismantled one of his assets, stolen his money, and then covered their tracks so perfectly that they had made his own people look like fools.

A new player was on the board.

A variable he did not control.

Silas Cross hated variables.

"Who," he said, the word a chip of ice.

It was not a question.

It was a command.

The aide shifted uncomfortably.

"We have no leads, sir. The attacker left no digital or physical trace. They are, for all intents and purposes, a ghost."

Silas's fingers drummed a slow, silent rhythm on the polished surface of his desk.

His mind was connecting disparate points of data, searching for a pattern.

A ghost.

A skilled system user.

An attack on his infrastructure.

Then, another piece of information slid into place.

He remembered a conversation from a few weeks ago, a minor annoyance reported by his son.

"Julian," Silas said suddenly, his voice sharp. "Bring me the file on that ridiculous high school competition he lost."

The aide blinked, momentarily confused by the sudden shift in topic, but he recovered instantly.

"The Northwood Athletic Decathlon, sir?"

"That is what I said," Silas confirmed, his patience wearing thin.

A moment later, the file was on his screen.

He scrolled past the details of his son's humiliating defeat, his face a mask of bored indifference.

He wasn't interested in Julian's failures.

He was interested in the winner.

He found the name.

Miles Vane.

Next to it was a link to a short, grainy video clip from the 100-meter dash.

He played it.

He saw the boy, the unremarkable, anonymous student.

He saw him run.

And then he saw it.

For a single, impossible frame, the boy's body seemed to shimmer, to skip through space, leaving a ghostly afterimage behind.

Silas played it again.

And again.

The aide watched him, a dawning understanding on his face.

"Sir," the aide said, his voice barely a whisper. "You don't think…?"

Silas silenced him with a glance.

The connection was tenuous.

It was circumstantial.

It was almost certainly a coincidence.

But Silas Cross had not built his empire on coincidence.

He built it on the cold, hard logic of probabilities.

A highly skilled ghost appears in the city at the same time a no-name high school student suddenly displays a rare, high-tier movement skill.

The probability of those two events being unrelated was low.

Unacceptably low.

The name, Miles Vane, still meant nothing to him.

It was the name of a gnat. An insect.

But even the smallest insect could carry a disease.

"It seems my son's school has become a breeding ground for new-money system users," Silas mused, his voice dangerously soft. "A cesspool of unrefined talent."

He leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the video of the shimmering boy.

He had his lead.

He turned his cold gaze to his head of security, who had been standing silently in the corner of the room the entire time.

"I have a new task for your team," Silas said.

"I want a full, deep-background investigation into Northwood High."

"I want to know about any student who has shown a sudden, unexplainable increase in performance. Physical. Academic. I do not care."

"Look for the anomalies. The outliers."

His eyes flickered back to the screen.

"Start with the boy. Vane."

"Be discreet," Silas commanded, his voice dropping to a low, predatory growl.

"I want data, not bodies."

"Not yet."

The security chief gave a single, curt nod and left the room without a word.

The afternoon sun beat down on the Northwood High athletic field.

The air was filled with the shouts of students and the shrill blast of a coach's whistle.

Two men in simple, gray polo shirts and slacks stood on the sidelines, looking like concerned parents.

They weren't.

One of them held a tablet, his thumb scrolling through a long list of student files.

He was cross-referencing names with academic records, athletic scores, and social media activity.

"Anything?" the second man asked, his eyes scanning the students running laps on the track.

"A lot of noise," the first man replied, not looking up from his screen. "A few jocks juicing with low-grade enhancers. A couple of nerds using cognitive boosters to cheat on their exams. The usual."

He kept scrolling.

He passed Julian's file, marked with a special note: *'Asset's son. Do not engage.'*

He passed Clara's file, noting her perfect grades but unremarkable physical stats.

Then he stopped.

The screen was filled with a new file.

A picture of a quiet, withdrawn-looking boy stared back at him.

Miles Vane.

The agent's finger traced a line across the screen, comparing two columns of data.

On the left were last year's Physical Education scores.

Bottom ten percent in every category.

On the right were the official results from the recent decathlon.

First place.

A record-breaking 100-meter dash.

The agent zoomed in on the photo of the boy.

He tapped the name on the screen, a red highlight appearing around it.

He looked up at his partner, his face grim.

"I think," he said slowly, "we've found our anomaly."