SSS-Rank Corporate Predator System

The dream always started the same.

He was six years old again.

He was running.

His bare feet on the cold, white floor of the laboratory.

Red lights flashed, painting the long hallway in bloody, pulsing strokes.

A siren screamed, a single, high-pitched wail that drilled into his skull.

His father scooped him up, his strong arms a familiar, safe place in a world that was suddenly coming apart.

Dr. Alaric Vane's face was a mask of grim determination, his eyes burning with a fire Miles had never seen before.

"It's not an end," his father's voice echoed, not a memory, but a living sound in the dream's chaos.

"It is a new beginning."

He saw his mother, Mira Vane, standing over a metal table.

Her face was streaked with tears, but her hands were steady.

Unshakable.

"We made you to defy death itself," she whispered, and her love felt more real than the flashing lights, more powerful than the screaming siren.

He saw the heavy metal door of the lab buckle inward.

He saw men in dark combat gear, their faces hidden behind black helmets.

He saw a tall, cruel man in an expensive suit standing behind them.

He felt the cold prick of the needle in his arm.

He felt the silver fire of the Echo Protocol rush into his veins.

He felt his father lowering him into the cryo-pod, a cold, dark box that smelled like metal and winter.

"Live, Miles," his mother's voice pleaded, a final, desperate prayer.

"Live to be our justice."

He saw his father seal the pod, his face a mixture of fierce pride and unbearable sorrow.

The last thing he saw before the darkness took him was the tall man raising a weapon.

A flash of brilliant, terrible light.

And then, silence.

Miles woke up with a gasp, his body drenched in a cold sweat.

His heart was beating very fast.

The sheets were tangled around his legs.

The darkness of his small apartment felt heavy, suffocating.

[HOST PHYSIOLOGY EXHIBITING SIGNS OF EXTREME STRESS.]

The system's voice was a pinprick of cold, digital calm in the storm of his panic.

[HEART RATE: 142 BPM.]

[CORTISOL LEVELS ELEVATED BY 200%.]

[RECOMMENDATION: INITIATE DEEP BREATHING PROTOCOL.]

"Oh, shut up," Miles rasped to the empty room, his voice raw.

"There's a protocol for breathing now?"

"What's next, a sub-routine for blinking?"

"A firmware update for tying my shoes?"

He pushed himself off the bed, his entire body aching.

He couldn't stay here.

He pulled on a hoodie and a pair of worn jeans, not bothering with shoes.

He needed air.

He needed space.

He needed to walk until the ghosts in his head got tired and sat down.

He slipped out of his apartment and into the sleeping, silent city.

The late-night air was cool and clean, a welcome shock to his system.

He just walked without a destination.

He moved through the empty streets, his head full of thoughts.

The violence was escalating.

First, the thugs in the alley.

Then Spike.

Then Broker and his goons.

Each fight was a little harder, a little more dangerous.

He was winning.

But he was collecting wounds, both physical and otherwise.

He was becoming colder, more ruthless.

The system was designed to make him a weapon, and it was doing a damn good job.

But was there anything left of the boy his parents had tried to save?

His aimless wandering eventually led him to a familiar place.

The grounds of Northwood High.

The school was dark and silent, a giant building under the pale glow of the moon.

This was his battlefield, too.

He found himself standing near the track, near the finish line where he had publicly humiliated Julian Cross.

It felt like a lifetime ago.

He stood there for a long time, lost in the quiet and the dark.

"Couldn't sleep either?"

The voice was soft, unexpected, and it made him jump.

He spun around, his body instantly tensing for a fight.

Clara stood a few feet away with a book under her arm, her expression one of gentle curiosity, not alarm.

She was wearing a simple jacket over her pajamas, her hair slightly messy.

She looked… normal.

"How did you…?" he started to ask, his voice rough.

"I live just over there," she said, gesturing vaguely with her head toward a neat-looking apartment building on the other side of the park.

"Sometimes I come out here when the city gets too loud."

"Or when my brain won't shut up," she added with a small, wry smile.

He just stared at her, his mind racing.

He should leave.

He should find an excuse and disappear back into the night.

She was a complication.

A civilian.

A weak point.

But he was so tired of being alone.

"Are you okay?" she asked, her voice losing its light, teasing tone and becoming something softer.

She took a small step closer and her eyes scanning his face.

She saw that he was exhausted.

He gave her the standard answer.

I'm fine.

It was the easiest lie.

The one everyone expected to hear.

But the words wouldn't come.

He looked at her, at this brilliant, perceptive girl who saw him not as a ghost or a freak, but as a puzzle she genuinely wanted to solve.

And for the first time, he let the mask slip.

Just a little.

He let out a long, slow breath he felt like he'd been holding for weeks.

"Just tired," he said, his voice quiet, the words tasting strange and foreign on his tongue.

He looked away from her, out across the dark, empty field.

"Tired of people only seeing what they want to see."

The confession hung in the air between them, more honest and revealing than a thousand-page diary.

He was talking about the library, about the decathlon, about Julian.

But he was also talking about everything else.

About the system.

About the mission.

About the ghost he had become.

He expected her to press him.

To ask what he meant.

To try and solve the puzzle with a dozen more questions.

But she didn't.

She was silent for a long moment.

Then, she just nodded, a small, simple gesture of profound understanding.

"I understand," she said softly.

And that was it.

They stood there in the quiet darkness, not talking.

The silence wasn't that awkward.

It was comfortable.

He could feel the tension in his shoulders easing, the storm in his mind starting to calm.

For the first time since, he didn't feel like a weapon on standby.

He just felt like Miles.

He finally looked back at her.

She was watching him, a small, gentle smile on her face.

She saw the crack in his armor, and she wasn't trying to break it open.

She was just letting him know it was okay to have one.

"Well," she said, her voice still quiet. "I should probably try and get some sleep before my riveting analysis of the Truman Doctrine puts me to sleep."

He found himself smiling.

A real, actual smile.

"Yeah," he said. "Me too."

She gave him one last nod before turning and walking back toward her apartment building.

He watched her go until she disappeared from sight.

He stood there for a few more minutes, and it felt like he did not want to let her go.

He didn't feel threatened by her presence.

He felt seen.

And that, he realized, was a much more dangerous feeling.

It was a feeling he might just be willing to fight for.