Damon Korz woke up before the alarm. Again.
But this time, he knew it wasn't an accident.
The moment his eyes opened—exactly at 4:00 a.m.—his breath came easily. His thoughts were crystalline. There was no internal resistance, no voice telling him to roll over and waste a few more minutes trying to escape the day.
He sat upright. Alert. Rested. Sharpened.
The air in his apartment was still. Not just quiet—but intentional. There was no hum from the refrigerator. No flicker from the faulty lamp near the kitchenette. Not even the distant drone of Holloway's pre-dawn buses. The entire city felt like it had paused to see what he would do next.
Something had changed.
No—everything had.
He stood, stretching slowly. His spine cracked once. He didn't wince. The usual stiffness was gone. His body moved with precision, like a machine recently recalibrated. Muscles he hadn't noticed before had subtly tightened. His heartbeat moved with mechanical rhythm.
The Dominion was inside him.
He could feel it now—not just as a memory of the mirror trial, but as a constant presence. A signal under his skin. A hum beneath thought. The mark on his palm still pulsed softly. The glow had faded, but its shape was unmistakable: a crown of thorns, laced in ambition.
Damon walked to the mirror.
Not the one that pulled him into the blackstone hallway—but the cheap rectangular one on the inside of his closet door.
His reflection stared back at him.
Same face. Same tired eyes.
But those eyes… watched him.
Like something behind them was cataloging every flaw, every twitch, every misplaced moment of hesitation.
Damon turned away and got dressed. Black button-up. Black slacks. No tie.
No delay.
Every movement was smooth. Unburdened.
He ate half a protein bar without tasting it, drank lukewarm coffee out of habit, then sat at his desk. The screen came alive the second his fingers neared the keyboard.
> "Good morning, Mr. Korz."
Dominion Sync: Stable (Ambition 1%)
Influence Capacity: Minor Threads (Local Radius)
Cognitive Efficiency Enhanced: 18%
He blinked.
The words vanished.
The spreadsheet he was working on the day before loaded automatically. His cursor hovered over a data cluster with an error rate he hadn't caught before—because it hadn't existed before. But now it did.
Or maybe it had always been there. And now, he could finally see it.
He fixed the problem in under thirty seconds.
No checking formulas. No cross-referencing notes. The answer had simply emerged. Fully formed. Like an instinct.
He opened a message from the shipping team. Rerouted three manifests. Composed an email to Dargus in thirty-five words that cut through six paragraphs of red tape.
It felt like hacking the rules of conversation. Social maneuvering as code.
---
At 5:15 a.m., Damon stepped outside.
The world was still cold and gray. The sky was washed in a diluted blue, the sun still trapped behind the city's skeletal skyline. Steam rose from sewer grates. Crows perched like gargoyles on flickering light poles.
And then—he saw it again.
The numbers.
They hovered beside people like incomplete subtitles.
Not everyone had them—but many did.
> [Confidence: 34% | Vulnerability: Medium | Regret Active]
[Obedience: High | Emotional Loyalty Anchor: Family]
[Rage Latent | Shame Thread: "Father – unresolved"]
Each one was different.
Some pulsed with red indicators. Others blinked and shifted like they were actively processing something unseen.
Damon stopped moving.
It wasn't augmented reality. It wasn't digital. These weren't screens—these were threads, surfacing in his perception.
Information that had no right to exist in his conscious awareness was now simply there, stitched into the world like metadata.
His vision shimmered briefly.
> Upgrade: THREAD INSIGHT – Level 1 Activated
You now perceive basic emotional and social leverage points.
Threads form through memory, trauma, guilt, or desire.
Influence is not given. It is identified, built, and enforced.
Rule: Threads strengthen with momentum. Snap under doubt.
He staggered back a step and leaned against a stop sign.
The city didn't feel random anymore. It felt measurable.
He could feel it like an overlay—every choice, every path, every social knot waiting to be untangled. And that sensation came with a hunger. Not to manipulate people—but to understand them. To reshape the world around them.
Because if he could do that—if he could master it—he wouldn't be stuck in powerlessness ever again.
---
At Ozmec, he was through security before the guards even looked up.
The lights in the building hadn't fully warmed yet, so the halls glowed a soft amber. The whole space felt half-asleep. Limbo. But Damon was wide awake.
He passed by the breakroom and saw her.
Layna.
Long brown coat. Coffee mug in one hand. Face half-lit by the glow of her tablet.
When he looked at her, the thread sprang into view:
> [Trust: 42% | Emotional Anchor: That Night]
[Influence Thread: Weak | Dormant Potential]
[Memory Loop: "If he brings it up—say it meant nothing"]
Damon inhaled slowly.
It was still there.
That night—six months ago. The project. The silence after the almost-kiss. The way she smiled and pulled back, then left without a word. They hadn't talked about it since.
But her numbers hadn't forgotten.
And now, neither could he.
He stepped into the room.
"Hey," he said, calm.
Layna glanced up. "You're early."
"So are you."
She raised her cup. "Couldn't sleep."
He waited, then said, "I've been thinking about that night."
Pause.
A long one.
Then—"So did I."
He didn't push further. Just nodded. Acknowledged it.
The thread shimmered in real-time.
> [Trust increased +8%]
[Guilt Thread stabilized]
[Secondary Thread Forming – Type: Regret/Curiosity]
"Want to catch up later?" she asked, quietly.
Damon nodded. "Lunch?"
"Lunch."
As she walked away, he watched the thread drift between them—gossamer and light, yet real. A tether in the space between emotions and intent.
He hadn't earned it. He'd simply seen it.
And now it was his.
---
By 10:00 a.m., Damon had resolved two shipping chain errors. By 10:35, Dargus looped him into the strategic planning doc—a file normally locked to upper management. By 11:00, he knew exactly which coworker was applying elsewhere based on the flickering thread of anxiety hanging off their shoulder.
The Dominion wasn't just enhancing his instincts.
It was weaponizing his pattern recognition.
---
But at 4:33 p.m., something changed.
The elevator on the 11th floor opened on its own.
No one inside.
No button pressed.
The display read:
B3 – Unlisted
Damon stepped in.
The lights inside dimmed to blue. The air grew colder.
And when the doors opened, he was no longer in Ozmec.
The floor was dark marble. Cold. Wet with condensation. The walls were lined with stone arches. At the far end stood a man—bald, middle-aged, bone-gray suit.
No ID.
No nameplate.
Only a briefcase glowing at the seams.
"Mr. Korz," the man said, his voice like broken glass smoothed by wind. "Dominion audits are rare. But necessary."
Damon stayed still.
"You've accelerated faster than most Candidates," the man continued. "Thread manipulation. Tactical escalation. Emotional imprinting. Your score is…" He consulted a thin silver clipboard. "High. Too high. You are outpacing your internal regulation."
"I haven't broken anything," Damon said carefully.
"You will. Ambition without control devours its user."
"Then teach me how to manage it."
"No one can teach you." The man stepped forward, stopping just short of Damon's shadow. "But you can adapt. Or burn."
The lights blinked red.
Then blue.
Then out.
When they returned, the man was gone.
So was the briefcase.
And when Damon looked at his palm, the sigil had fractured—small cracks like lightning across the thorns.
> Warning: Dominion Imbalance Detected
Ambition Surplus > Alignment Threshold
Recalibration Pending.
He stood alone in the elevator.
The door closed.
As it ascended, the reflections in the mirrored walls multiplied.
Each showed him wearing a different expression.
None of them were smiling.