Damon Korz no longer walked through Ozmec Systems like an employee.
He moved like an algorithm in human form—quiet, unassuming, but optimized. Every conversation he overheard became data. Every interaction became leverage. Each glance offered him new emotional diagnostics. He didn't need to ask to know what people were feeling. He read them, like active files constantly syncing in real time.
The Dominion didn't speak in words anymore.
It spoke in alignment. In rhythm. In patterns so consistent they might as well have been destiny.
> Dominion Status: Ambition – Stable
Thread Network Expansion: Local | 36 active threads, 12 pending.
Suggested Action: Elevate social placement. Target: Strategic Node Advancement.
The prompt pulsed into his awareness like an internal notification—only it didn't break his thoughts. It blended with them, shaped them. It was hard to say where his ambition ended and the Dominion began.
The world hadn't changed. He had.
Or maybe both.
By now, the idea of power wasn't abstract anymore. It was quantifiable. Damon no longer dreamed of being noticed, respected, or promoted. He was engineering it—thread by thread, influence by influence. The entire workplace was an interface waiting to be mastered.
And the next step had already revealed itself.
He'd found the restructure memo by accident—or so he thought. A series of deleted drafts stored in a shadowed corner of Ozmec's internal roadmap. A new division being quietly prepared: Strategic Acquisition Integration. Three departments would be merged, and the plan was to name a new division head from within.
The role wasn't public yet. But it existed. A vacuum.
And Damon intended to fill it before anyone else noticed it was empty.
He sat at his workstation, lights still low, headphones in—not playing music, just muting distraction. A blank proposal file opened on one monitor, while the second fed him all the backend intel he needed: budget flows, delay logs, staff optimization metrics, idle asset reports.
The Dominion flared.
> Constructing Influence Thread: Proposal Submission – Tier 1
Attach emotional persuasion vector
Anchor logic to past systemic inefficiencies
Format: Assertive self-nomination
Status: 78% persuasive probability (subject: Dargus)
He didn't hesitate.
He wrote.
Fluently. Without correction. Six pages poured from his fingers like a faucet finally unclogged. No typos. No redundancy. His tone was confident, clean, and forward-thinking—without the arrogance that drew red flags. The Dominion helped. He could feel it nudging tone, suggesting transitions, highlighting which phrases would embed themselves in Dargus's memory.
By the end, it didn't read like an application.
It read like a forecast.
A simple, obvious future in which Damon Korz was already leading.
He sat back. Read the entire file once.
Didn't change a word.
Then attached it to a new message and typed four addresses into the recipient line—Dargus, two senior strategists, and a shadow contact listed only as AM_R in the restructure memo metadata.
He wrote nothing in the email body.
Just hit Send.
---
By noon, he had a reply.
Dargus. Short. Direct.
> "Let's talk. Conference Room H. 4:00 p.m. Keep this quiet."
The Dominion pulsed again. Not just an alert.
A recognition.
> Thread Confirmed: Ascension Path Unlocked
Influence Thread: Dargus – anchored (Loyalty: 62%)
Warning: Opposition Thread Detected – Subject: Renna Mallis
Cross-thread instability risk: 11% and rising.
Renna.
Damon paused. He'd seen her name once or twice. Mid-level. Tenure. Older than him by six years. Unremarkable performance—but just enough consistency to be considered "safe." A background contender.
A problem.
He opened the staff network directory and scrolled to her name.
Profile photo. Departmental access logs. Meeting timestamps. A basic footprint.
He leaned back, scanning. Thinking.
Then the Dominion opened her thread.
> [Renna Mallis – Emotional Thread: Guarded | Dominance Type: Passive-Entitled]
Anchor: "They owe me for the years I gave them."
Memory Markers: Compromised
Thread Condition: Fragmented
[Corruption Index: 11%]
Corruption?
Damon blinked. This was new. He hovered his focus deeper into the thread feed.
What had been soft blue threads in every other person—fluid, flickering with influence points—were glitching around her. They shifted and snapped randomly, like they were trying to rewrite themselves faster than she could think. Her core anchor—the belief that she deserved the promotion—looped like a corrupted audio file.
A small line of red text floated beneath her emotional signature:
> "Thread misalignment with reality detected. Structural instability growing."
Renna wasn't just his rival.
She was already breaking under the system.
And the Dominion wanted him to exploit it.
Damon stood from his desk. Closed his laptop. Straightened his sleeves.
It was time to make the climb official.
Conference Room H had no warmth.
Even in daylight, its frosted glass and black steel gave off the aesthetic of a surgical theater. No art, no windows, no softness. The HVAC hummed loud enough to feel alive. It wasn't just cold—it was clinical.
Damon entered at exactly 3:59 p.m.
Dargus was already inside. No blazer. Tie loosened. Holding a slim black tablet, his expression unreadable. He didn't acknowledge Damon at first—just gestured toward the chair across the long table.
Damon sat. He kept his posture open, but still. Stillness read as confidence. Nervous energy only existed if you let others perceive it.
The silence held for ten long seconds before Dargus finally spoke.
"This proposal."
His tone was flat.
"You built it from scratch?"
"Yes."
"No oversight?"
"None."
"What did you model against?"
"Five-quarter redline deviation. Adjusted for staff churn, unclaimed budget drift, and the latency costs from division bleed."
Dargus arched an eyebrow. "That's a senior-tier analysis."
"I'm done thinking like a junior."
Another silence. He set the tablet down.
"You know how it looks, right?"
"I know how it reads."
Dargus paced slowly behind his chair, dragging his fingers across the backrest.
"You've submitted a claim to a position that doesn't officially exist," he said. "You're bypassing HR, two chains of protocol, and a tenure system older than you are."
"I'm not bypassing it," Damon said calmly. "I'm proving it's obsolete."
Dargus let out a low breath—not quite a laugh. "You're sharp, Korz. Dangerous, maybe."
"I'm efficient."
"They all say that. Right before they crash."
Damon didn't blink. "Then I won't crash."
The older man gave him a long, narrow look. A pause stretched between them.
Then Dargus walked to the blinds and pulled them open. Afternoon sunlight spilled in, harsh and white, carving sharp angles through the table.
"She's not going to like this," he said.
"Renna?"
"She filed her own version yesterday. More political. Less data. Yours buries hers—but she has time. And friends."
Damon already knew that. The Dominion had fed it to him hours ago.
"She doesn't want the job," he said. "She wants recognition."
Dargus turned.
"You think that matters?"
"I think that's what breaks people."
The air in the room shifted.
For a second, something clicked between them—not agreement, but understanding.
Dargus returned to the table and tapped the screen.
"You know she's already building narratives. She cornered Chara from HR this morning. Called you a manipulator. Said you reverse-engineered protected docs."
"I didn't."
"You didn't deny it."
"I didn't need to."
That made Dargus pause. The faintest smirk touched his face, then disappeared.
"I'll send it up," he said. "But if this explodes, you're on your own."
"I expect nothing less."
"Good. Because whatever this is—" he gestured at the tablet "—it isn't junior-level ambition."
He reached for his tablet again, then paused.
"She said something else."
Damon waited.
"She said you wouldn't last. That the system chews through people like you."
"She's not wrong."
"You don't seem worried."
"I've already accepted the damage."
---
Damon walked back to his floor like a man returning from battle—eyes sharper, thoughts harder.
The Dominion pulsed beneath his skin.
> Thread Network Update: Ascension Route – Stabilizing.
Strategic Node: Active
Risk Node Detected: RENNA MALLIS
Corruption Index: 17%
Psychological Loop Breach Likely
Thread Instability: Elevated – Potential Rewrite Imminent
The words pulsed red. Not warning. Invitation.
Damon sat down slowly. The lights above his cubicle flickered once.
The Dominion interface expanded in his vision, seamless now—no barrier between inner thought and external reality. He could see Renna's thread curled across the upper floors, flickering like a failing signal tower.
It was unraveling.
He focused harder—zooming in on her anchors.
They were fractured. Core belief nodes were looping:
> "They owe me…"
"I've earned this…"
"He stole it…"
"This is mine…"
Each repeated at inconsistent intervals. No sense of time. No linearity. Just emotion feeding on itself.
Then something shifted.
The thread split.
Two copies. One anchored to Renna's current desk.
The other… to his.
Damon blinked.
"...What?"
The Dominion buzzed—louder now. System stress.
> Thread Merge Attempt Detected
Subject: Renna Mallis attempting cross-reality intervention
> Unauthorized Rewrite: In Progress
Thread Anchor Conflict: KORZ – MEMORY SPLICING INITIATED**
He stood up instantly.
The air around him thickened. Temperature dropped. Screens dimmed. A low static hum filled the space—not external, but internal, vibrating through his skull like invisible circuitry.
And in his peripheral vision, something moved.
Not a person.
Not a shadow.
A presence. Standing behind him. Silent. Intent.
He turned.
No one there.
But his monitor… was changing.
His proposal file flickered. Then split. Two versions. One signed Damon Korz.
The other—Renna Mallis.
For a moment, both hovered on screen.
Then the Dominion made its choice.
Her version vanished.
His solidified.
And in his mind, a shuddering jolt of information passed through like a system log completing its purge:
> Thread Conflict: RESOLVED
Subject: Renna Mallis – Integrity collapsed
Anchor: Erased
Emotional Memory: Archived
Personnel Record: Nullified
You rewrote her.
Damon gasped and stumbled back.
Across the office, her desk sat empty.
Someone had boxed it. The nameplate was gone.
None of his coworkers noticed.
No questions.
No trace.
Just absence—so complete it felt ancient.
He looked down at his palm.
The sigil was still there. The crown of thorns.
But now it had grown.
An eighth thorn curled upward—new. Fresh. Sharp.
And for the first time since this all began, Damon asked himself:
What have I started?
The rest of the day passed like a false memory.
Meetings came and went. Emails answered themselves. Coworkers walked past him, spoke to him, nodded politely. No one mentioned Renna. Her absence wasn't just overlooked—it was integrated, like the office had always functioned without her.
Damon kept waiting for someone to say her name.
No one did.
By 6:07 p.m., he was the last one on the floor.
The office lights clicked to night-mode: low lumen, cold white. Outside, the Holloway skyline looked static—windows blinking in patterns too precise to be coincidence. A city that moved without motion. A simulation of movement.
He stood at the breakroom sink, running cold water over his hands.
The mark on his palm was silent. The eighth thorn no longer pulsed—but it still gleamed when the light hit it right. Not ink. Not a burn. Something… deeper. A crest etched into his reality.
He turned off the water. The building was silent.
And then—
click.
The elevator.
He turned.
Its floor number was descending. Fast.
12… 9… 6…
He watched, heart still.
4… 3… 2… 1… G… B1… B2…
It didn't stop.
B3.
The doors slid open.
Nothing came out.
Just darkness—not absence of light, but light consumed. The shadows within weren't black—they were textured. Moving. Like gauze soaked in static.
Damon stepped forward.
The Dominion didn't flare.
No warning. No instructions.
Which made it worse.
Something stepped out of the elevator.
Not a man.
Not a thing.
Just a shape.
A silhouette, humanoid, clothed in the absence of identity. It had no face, but Damon saw eyes. Hundreds of them, layered behind where a face should be. Watching. Scanning. Remembering.
He couldn't move.
The air solidified. Pressure without gravity. Noise without sound.
The figure stepped closer and whispered—not aloud, but through a channel that bypassed his ears:
"Thread breach confirmed. You altered reality."
Damon tried to speak, but his voice didn't carry.
He could only think.
I passed my trial. The Dominion accepted it.
The thing didn't respond at first. Its limbs twitched—lagging, like each motion required recalculation.
Then, it said:
"You went beyond thread influence. You rewrote narrative anchor memory. You removed consent."
A new kind of cold settled in Damon's chest.
Not fear.
Judgment.
> External Entity Identified: FRACTURE AGENT
Role: Equilibrium Enforcement
Domain: Echo Preservation
Status: Independent. Not aligned to Dominion hierarchy.
> Warning: Candidate status insufficient for override.
"Why now?" Damon finally whispered.
The thing tilted its featureless head. Its voice scraped through thought like a scalpel.
"Because you've become visible."
It raised one hand. A shimmer pulsed between its fingers—Renna's thread, broken, flickering, trying to reform.
She was still in there.
Somewhere.
"This was not ambition. This was execution."
Damon took a step back.
"I didn't mean to delete her."
The thing moved again—closer than before, without space being crossed.
"Intention does not excuse impact."
Then it extended its hand.
And touched his temple.
---
His vision fractured.
The room fell away.
He saw Renna—but not in memory.
He saw her replayed, again and again, across fractured timelines. One version where she fought harder. One where she exposed him. One where she never applied for the job. One where she won.
All of them collapsed.
Overwritten.
Like dominos falling backward into silence.
And in each one… he had the advantage.
The Dominion hadn't just boosted him.
It had weighted the world in his favor.
And he had let it.
---
Damon collapsed to the floor, gasping, palms flat against cold tile.
When he looked up, the figure was gone.
The elevator doors stood open.
But the darkness was no longer there.
Only the basement. Ordinary. Empty.
The Dominion flickered once across his vision:
> Fracture Encounter: Logged
Internal Audit Delayed
You are now marked.
Thread Correction Event – Pending
Damon rose slowly.
He was alone.
But something else was watching now.
Something the Dominion didn't control.