Alex Chen hadn't slept.
Not truly.
His body had collapsed into bed, sure—but his mind had been racing like a GPU on overclock. Images, numbers, upgrades, and that flickering message haunted every second of restless dozing.
"You were chosen, Alex Chen. Welcome to the next evolution."
He sat upright as dawn broke through his broken blinds. The System HUD hovered calmly in the corner of his vision, almost like it had been waiting.
Quest Progress: 0%
[Explore Origin] – Find the source of the system integration.
Reward: Skill – DeepScan
Time Limit: 24 hours
"Of course there's a timer," he muttered, dragging himself to the kitchen.
The coffee machine gave a mechanical sputter of death. He gave up and chewed on another protein bar instead, eyes already scanning the System panel. His new Upgrade Point glowed temptingly.
He hovered over Mental Capacity, but something stopped him.
He checked his Status tab again:
[Alex Chen – Status Screen]
Level: 1
Mental Capacity: 12
Reaction Time: 9
Memory Index: 10
Physical Strength: 8
Focus Duration: 7
Available Upgrade Points: 1
"Okay, think," he muttered, pacing the kitchen. "The System knows me. Or someone does. It's embedded in my perception—so either this is hyper-advanced neural tech… or I'm going insane in the most productive way possible."
He opened his laptop and launched a sandboxed dev environment.
There had to be something. A footprint. A pattern. Ghost code.
He began typing furiously, pushing aside the instinctive fear clawing at his chest.
If someone had installed something this invasive, it would have to leave a trail—even if only in neuro-signal modulation. Maybe not through traditional channels. But Alex had something better now.
Enhanced focus. Enhanced memory.
He'd remembered lines of deprecated code from college that he hadn't thought about in years.
He wasn't the same anymore.
Three hours later, Alex stared at the monitor in disbelief.
There it was.
Buried beneath layers of garbage data in the SynTech neural cloud network, he'd uncovered a pattern of deepwave signal injections—non-random, repeating every 17 minutes, with minor variance in waveform.
Exactly the kind of pattern you'd expect from a stealth system implant.
The same one that pinged when the System first activated.
"SynTech," he whispered. "You bastards."
It wasn't a coincidence. He hadn't stumbled into anything.
He'd been working for the people building this thing all along.
The System pinged again.
Progress: 23%
[Explore Origin] – Trace the signal source
Alex dove back into the code, fingers flying.
He traced the signal through a proxy server in Iceland, then another node in Taiwan. He knew the obfuscation game well—it wasn't meant to hide from hackers, it was meant to hide from detection protocols.
Security through excessive complexity.
But he wasn't normal anymore.
He saw patterns where he shouldn't.
After an hour of intense tracing, he hit a hard wall.
Private Node Detected
Access: Denied
Firewall Class: Quantum
A soft chime echoed in his head.
[New Objective Unlocked]
Hack into Quantum Firewall.
Reward: Passive Skill – Code Slicer Lv.1
Warning: High Risk – Intrusion May Trigger Alert.
Alex exhaled slowly. "Well, subtlety was never my thing."
He launched a personal custom-built attack suite. It wasn't built for quantum-level encryption—but maybe, with the System…
"System," he thought, experimenting. "Can you assist with decryption?"
To his surprise, the HUD responded:
System Skill Unlocked: Decrypt (Basic)
Temporary Boost Activated – Memory Index +2 | Mental Capacity +1 (Duration: 10 minutes)
The code lit up in front of him like stars rearranging into constellations.
He attacked the firewall with surgical precision, exploiting timing leaks, false redundancies, and recursive traps. Lines of counter-code screamed across the terminal, but Alex held on.
And finally—
Access Granted.
His heart nearly stopped.
A directory opened.
And at the top: Dr. Rachel Kim – Core Research Logs.
He barely had time to open the first file before the terminal screamed a warning.
[ALERT: Intrusion Detected – Trace Initiated]
Source Node Lock in 60 seconds.
"Shit—shit—shit—"
Alex ripped the connection manually, purging RAM and flushing caches. The system nearly locked up under the load. His laptop hissed from heat, fans wheezing like they were dying.
Then it was over.
No trace. At least… he hoped.
The HUD pinged again.
Objective Complete: Explore Origin – 94%
Partial Data Retrieved – Rachel Kim Logs (Fragment 01)
Skill Unlocked: DeepScan Lv.1
+1 Upgrade Point Gained
Alex collapsed into his chair, heart pounding.
Fragment 01 – Project Transcendence
"Test Subject 001 failed again. The System sync was unstable. Brainwave rejection occurs at 0.3% divergence. We need someone whose mental elasticity adapts on the fly.
I told them forced installations wouldn't work. It needs to feel… organic. Chosen, not injected.
Whoever finds the System has to earn it.
End log."
Alex stared at the screen, jaw clenched.
He hadn't been hacked. He hadn't been targeted at random.
He'd been selected by some kind of neural evolution experiment. And the scientist behind it—Rachel Kim—worked for SynTech.
Or had.
The logs were dated two years ago.
He tapped his status screen again.
[Alex Chen – Status Update]
Level: 2
Mental Capacity: 13
Reaction Time: 9
Memory Index: 12
Physical Strength: 8
Focus Duration: 7
Available Upgrade Points: 2
This time, he didn't hesitate. One point went into Mental Capacity, the other into Reaction Time.
The world slowed again—not physically, but perceptually. Like time moved at 1x while his brain processed at 2x. Everything felt... responsive.
Hyperreal.
But a new notification slid into his vision.
[New Threat Detected]
Suspicious Behavior Logged – External Watchdog Activated.
Entity Tag: Viktor
Status: Aware.
The word froze him.
"Viktor…"
The name had been whispered before. Around SynTech. Never formally, never in meetings. But always with a quiet reverence… or fear.
And now whoever—or whatever—Viktor was, they knew he existed.
The game had changed.
That night, Alex didn't return home.
He wandered through the maze of Neo-San Francisco's underground zones—abandoned data centers, derelict subway tunnels, half-built vertical farms converted into housing blocks.
Eventually, he ended up in the outskirts—an old coworking space long since shut down.
The door didn't lock, but he wedged a chair beneath the handle and plugged in a portable rig.
If he was going to survive whatever came next, he needed allies. Information. Tools.
And most of all…
He needed to find Dr. Rachel Kim.
She created the System.
She knew why he was chosen.
And she might be the only person who could explain how to survive Viktor.
The System whispered again.
New Quest Available: Locate Rachel Kim
Status: Missing. Last Known Location – Sector 23, Arcadia BioCorp
Reward: Unknown
Alex smiled grimly.
"Guess we're taking this to the next level."
The upgrade had begun.