SSS-Rank Corporate Predator System

The hidden lab, once a sanctuary, now felt like a war room.

A tense energy filled the air, thick with the smell of stale coffee, and the sharp scent of impending violence.

Their new army was a strange, mismatched collection of broken toys and hopeful rebels.

The tournament fighters they had rescued from The Nursery were gathered around the central holographic table, their faces a mixture of gratitude, fear, and a burning, newly-kindled desire for payback.

They were a walking, talking museum of Cross Corp's cruelty.

There was a girl whose system allowed her to generate sonic blasts, her vocal cords now permanently scarred from their experiments.

There was a boy who could manipulate light, now half-blind in one eye.

They were all survivors.

They were all angry.

And they were all looking to him for a plan.

"This is great," Miles's internal monologue whispered, a low, panicked hum beneath the surface of his calm, composed exterior.

"I'm now in charge of a super-powered support group."

"I've gone from being a high school student to a general in the span of about a week."

"I'm not qualified for this."

"My primary leadership experience involves successfully convincing a vending machine to give me a bag of chips."

"And even that ended in property damage."

Standing at the head of the group, a silent, imposing figure of disapproval, was the Masked Fighter.

He had removed his blank, white mask, revealing a face that was sharp, disciplined, and etched with the kind of hard-won calm that only comes from surviving a dozen different hells.

His name was Kael.

And he was not impressed.

"So, this is the plan?" Kael asked, his voice a low, skeptical rumble that cut through the nervous chatter of the other fighters.

He gestured to the holographic map of Cross Corp tower that Miles had brought up.

"You, a boy, and two of your school friends are going to lead a stealth infiltration into the most secure corporate building on the planet?"

"That's not a plan," he stated, his arms crossed over his broad chest. "That's a prayer."

Miles just looked at him, his face a perfect, unreadable mask.

He had known this was coming.

Kael was Gideon's man.

He was a soldier.

He thought in terms of battle lines and frontal assaults.

"Gideon's life is on the line," Kael continued, his gaze sweeping over the other fighters, a commander addressing his troops.

"We cannot afford to be subtle."

"We cannot afford to be clever."

"We need to hit them with everything we have."

He brought up his own tactical plan on the display, a brutal, straightforward, and deeply stupid-looking diagram of a full-scale attack.

"We create a diversion at the front entrance," Kael explained, his voice gaining a hard, military cadence. "A loud, explosive distraction to draw their main security forces."

"While they're engaged, a secondary team will breach the upper levels via the roof, fighting their way down to the sub-level labs where they're holding Gideon."

"It's a classic pincer movement," he finished, a note of finality in his voice. "It's clean. It's direct. It's the only way."

Miles just stared at the plan, a cold knot of dread tightening in his stomach.

He didn't need his system to tell him it was a terrible idea.

But his system told him anyway.

[ANALYSIS: KAEL'S PROPOSED PLAN. 'OPERATION THUNDERCLAP'.]

The system had even given it a name. He was pretty sure it was being sarcastic.

[PROBABILITY OF SUCCESSFUL DIVERSION: 67%.]

[PROBABILITY OF SECONDARY TEAM REACHING TARGET: 14%.]

[PROBABILITY OF SUCCESSFUL EXTRACTION: 1.1%.]

[ESTIMATED ALLIED CASUALTIES: 85-90%.]

[CONCLUSION: IT IS A SUICIDE MISSION.]

"Yeah," Miles thought, his own internal voice a dry, weary echo of the system's logic.

"That's a big 'no' on Operation Thunderclap."

"It sounds less like a military strategy and more like something my gym teacher would come up with after a long lunch."

The other fighters, however, were starting to murmur in agreement.

They were fighters, not spies.

They understood a direct assault.

It was simple.

It was brave.

It felt like they were doing something.

"He's right," one of the fighters said, a burly kid from The Wrecking Crew. "We hit them hard. We hit them fast. We make them pay."

The mood in the room was shifting.

The fragile alliance was starting to fracture.

Clara stepped forward, placing herself between Miles and Kael, a calm, logical bridge between the two opposing forces.

"A direct assault is exactly what Silas Cross would expect," she said, her voice cutting through the rising tension. "He's a strategist, Kael. He has already calculated for this exact scenario."

"The tower is not a fortress. It's a mousetrap. And your plan is to lead us all right to the cheese."

Kael's eyes narrowed, his skepticism hardening into open hostility.

"And what is your plan, girl?" he asked, his voice laced with a condescending bite. "To talk him to death?"

"To send your grieving, unstable boyfriend in alone and hope for the best?"

The insult was a physical blow.

Miles felt a familiar, hot surge of rage, but he anchored it. He breathed. He held it in check.

He was the leader. He had to be calm.

But the argument was escalating.

The room was dividing into factions.

The soldiers who wanted a war.

And the spies who wanted a heist.

He was losing them.

He was trying to lead an army that didn't believe in its general.

He looked at Kael's cold, stubborn face.

He looked at the eager, angry faces of the other fighters.

He was not going to win this with words.

He was a creature of action.

Of demonstration.

He let the argument rage on, a chaotic storm of voices and opinions.

He just stood there, a silent, unmoving eye in the center of the hurricane.

He closed his real eyes.

And opened his second pair.

He reached out with his mind, with the new, terrifying power that allowed him to be in two places at once.

No one in the room saw it.

No one felt the subtle shift in the air.

In the darkest, most shadowed corner of the lab, a faint shimmer of light appeared.

The shadows coalesced.

Twisted.

Solidified.

A perfect, silent copy of himself, a ghost made of pure, focused intent, materialized in the darkness, its eyes glowing with a faint, cold light.

The clone looked at the arguing council, at the fractured, chaotic mess that was their rebellion.

It looked at its original, at the boy who was failing his first real test of command.

Then, it turned.

It did not walk.

It did not run.

It simply dissolved into a wisp of black smoke and flowed out of the hidden lab, a secret agent on a secret mission.

Miles opened his eyes.

The argument was still going.

Kael was still talking.

They were still losing.

He let them argue.

He had made his choice.

He was done trying to convince them.

It was time to show them.

The ghost had just left the building.

And the simulation was about to begin.