SSS-Rank Corporate Predator System

The heavy, metallic clang of the hidden door echoed through the lab, a sound of finality.

It was the sound of a cage door slamming shut, sealing them in and sealing Gideon out.

Silence.

A thick, suffocating silence that was heavier than any scream.

Leo was the first to move.

He stumbled over to the main console, his hand clutching the sleek, sterile container that held the cure.

He had it.

He had the prize.

He looked at the door, his face a pale, ghostly mask of guilt.

"He's still out there," Leo whispered, his voice a raw, broken thing.

Clara stood frozen, her eyes fixed on the cold, unfeeling metal of the door.

Her father was on the other side.

Fighting.

Dying.

For them.

She didn't cry.

Her face was a perfect, stoic mask, but Miles could see the fine tremor in her hands.

He could feel the storm of grief and terror raging just beneath the surface.

He felt a surge of something hot and useless in his own chest.

Rage.

Guilt.

A profound, soul-crushing helplessness.

"Well, this is just not great," his internal monologue whispered, a voice of pure, bleak sarcasm in the quiet of his mind.

"Mission accomplished."

"We got the magical brain-fixer."

"And all it cost was our mentor, our only way out, and any lingering hope that we might actually survive this."

"I'm calling that a net loss."

"I'm no mathematician, but the numbers on that don't look good."

He looked at his team.

His broken, shattered team.

Leo was staring at the cure in his hand like it was a vial of poison.

Clara was looking at a blank wall, but her eyes were a thousand miles away, watching a battle only she could imagine.

They were falling apart.

And he was their leader.

The thought was so absurd it was almost funny.

He was a weapon, not a leader.

He was a ghost.

A revenant.

But Gideon's last words echoed in his head, a final, heavy command.

Protect my daughter.

He had to do something.

He had to pull them back from the edge.

He turned to the only thing he knew, the only thing he could control.

Data.

"System," he said, his voice a low, rough command that cut through the heavy silence. "Finish the analysis."

"The files from Julian's phone. The logistics hub."

"Everything."

"Give me a target."

The lab's main holographic display, which had been dormant, flickered to life.

Lines of code, streams of data, began to pour across the screen at a dizzying speed.

The system was working, a cold, logical engine in a room full of broken hearts.

Clara's head snapped up, her eyes drawn to the light, to the data.

Her analytical mind, her greatest defense mechanism, kicked in.

Leo looked up, too, a flicker of his old, tech-savvy curiosity momentarily pushing back the guilt.

Miles had given them a new focus.

A new problem to solve.

He had given them a reason to stop looking back at the door and start looking forward.

[ANALYSIS COMPLETE,] the system's text scrolled across the main display, no longer just in Miles's head, but projected for them all to see.

[CROSS-REFERENCING ALL ACQUIRED DATA POINTS.]

[CONNECTING FINANCIAL RECORDS, SHIPPING MANIFESTS, AND ENCRYPTED PROJECT FILES.]

A complex web of connections began to form on the screen, a digital spider's web with a single, monstrous name at its center.

Silas Cross.

"We already knew he was a monster," Leo muttered, his voice still hollow. "This is just a very fancy flowchart that proves it."

"Keep digging," Miles commanded.

The web of data began to shift, to reconfigure, digging deeper into the encrypted files from Julian's phone.

It was searching for the file that had haunted Miles's dreams.

Project R.

[ENCRYPTED FILE 'PROJECT R' BYPASSED,] the system reported.

The file opened.

It wasn't a list of names this time.

It was a mission statement.

A proposal, written in the cold, precise, and deeply amoral language of Silas Cross himself.

"Project Chimera," Clara read aloud, her voice a soft, horrified whisper.

The proposal laid it all out in stark, terrifying detail.

Silas Cross wasn't just a murderer.

He wasn't just a smuggler.

He was a butcher.

His goal was not to acquire the Echo Protocol.

It was to replicate it.

To mass-produce it.

To build an army of perfect, loyal, and completely unstoppable super-soldiers.

And the primary component, the key ingredient for his monstrous recipe, was the soul shards of other system users.

"He's not just capturing them," Miles said, his voice a low, disgusted growl. "He's harvesting them."

The report detailed the process with a chilling, scientific detachment.

Subjects were to be dissected.

Their system cores were to be extracted, broken down, and analyzed.

Their souls were to be rendered down into a raw, programmable fuel source.

And the final page of the report was a list of primary targets.

The most powerful, most unique system users Silas had identified.

The ones whose souls he coveted the most.

At the top of the list was a single, chilling name.

Gideon Thorne.

"He wasn't just a target of opportunity," Clara breathed, her hand flying to her mouth, her stoic mask finally cracking. "He was the prize."

"Silas wanted him all along."

The trap hadn't just been for Miles.

It had been for Gideon, too.

Miles felt a cold, hard knot of certainty form in his gut.

This was bigger than his own personal revenge.

This was bigger than justice for his parents.

This was about stopping a monster from unleashing an army of demons on the world.

He looked at Leo, who was staring at the screen, his face a mask of pale, sickened understanding. The cure in his hand suddenly felt very, very small.

He looked at Clara, who was now trembling, the full weight of her father's sacrifice, of Silas's monstrous ambition, crashing down on her.

He walked over and stood in front of them.

He was no longer a ghost.

He was no longer just a weapon.

He was a choice.

"We're going to get him back," Miles said, his voice a quiet, solemn promise that filled the silent lab.

Leo looked up at him, a flicker of hope in his tired eyes.

Clara looked at him, her own gaze a mixture of grief and a new, steely resolve.

"The mission isn't over," Miles continued, his voice gaining a strength, a certainty, he had never felt before.

"It's just escalated."

"This isn't about my past anymore."

"This is about our future."

He was finally, truly, the leader of Team Revenant.

And he had just declared a new war.

A war not of vengeance, but of salvation.

Just as the last word left his lips, a new, blaring alarm began to sound through the lab.

It wasn't a system warning in his head.

It was real.

A loud, frantic, and deeply unwelcome siren.

On the main screen, the complex web of data was replaced by a single, flashing image.

A live news broadcast.

From the the stolen phone of Julian cross,Silas cross connected it to a live feed.

He was just looking at Silas Cross name on the holographic board a second ago.

And then, the image changed.

Miles felt his blood turn to ice.

The war had just come to them.