Late at night, the PulseCast development center was eerily quiet—except for one floor: Level 9, where Jason, Naomi, and a skeleton crew were working on the most confidential project yet:
Specter.
"Specter doesn't just flag manipulation," Jason explained to Naomi. "It reverse-engineers it. Every ad, every suggestion, every viral post—it deconstructs the intent behind it."
Naomi stared at the interface. A data stream pulsed on screen, highlighting emotional cues, narrative hooks, and subliminal tactics.
"This is insane," she whispered. "It's like seeing the DNA of propaganda."
Jason nodded. "It's how Valkyrie wins. They don't just tell lies. They program truth. Specter is our answer."
---
Meanwhile, Rohan had gone dark.
Jason hadn't heard from him in three days. No messages. No updates.
Cass tracked his last login to a private co-working space downtown.
Jason went himself.
Inside the rented cubicle, he found a mess of torn wires, coffee-stained paper, and a laptop with its motherboard fried from the inside.
There was one note, scrawled hastily on the whiteboard:
> "They know who I am now. Don't trust the data streams. They're not just watching—they're listening through the code."
Jason stood frozen. This was no longer theoretical. Valkyrie was hunting them.
---
Later that night, a call came through. Untraceable number.
Jason answered.
No voice. Just static… then a whisper:
> "Specter's already compromised."
Click.
---
Jason's paranoia bloomed.
He called Naomi and Cass for a midnight lockdown protocol. They migrated all active data to an air-gapped network and physically disconnected Specter's dev rig from the internet.
Cass frowned. "If they got into Specter, they could be rewriting our detections to mask their own influence."
Naomi added, "They could make you think you're seeing the truth… when you're not."
Jason leaned on the desk, his thoughts racing.
"Then we go analog. Pen, paper, human chain of trust. Just like the Cold War."
---
By morning, the press had gotten wind of Specter through a "leak."
Headlines exploded:
> "Jason Conner Developing Thought Surveillance System?"
> "PulseCast Playing God with Free Will?"
Jason appeared at a press conference that afternoon.
He didn't deny it.
"We are building a tool that can see through lies. And we won't apologize for that."
Reporters shouted questions.
But Jason's mind was already elsewhere.
If Specter was already breached, then Valkyrie had a man on the inside.
---
That night, Naomi handed Jason a secure drive.
"Something you need to see."
It was footage—internal camera logs.
Jason watched as a figure in a PulseCast badge entered the restricted R&D room at 3:17 a.m.
They weren't masked. They didn't even hurry.
Jason's blood went cold.
The figure turned to face the camera for one frame before the feed cut.
It was Rohan.