Elijah sat in the back of a bulletproof SUV, staring out the tinted window as rain stitched dark lines down the glass. A tablet glowed in his hand. On it: the mission.
TARGET: Valdez Museum, Private Storage Vault
OBJECTIVE: Extract neural blueprint hidden inside a Basquiat painting.
REWARD: \$1,000,000 in crypto. Syndicate recognition status: Static.
CONDITIONS: Zero civilian casualties. Untraceable. No alarms.
It was his first mission for The Fold. A test.
The man beside him—Aleksei—was ex-KGB, now a ghost handler for the syndicate.
"You fail, we wipe you again," Aleksei said without looking up. "That brain-computer in your head? It'll turn into soup."
Elijah didn't flinch. "I won't fail."
His palms were steady. Inside, his new cognition processed the gallery's blueprint, security shift schedules, alarm frequencies, surveillance camera blind spots. He could see it all in his mind like a 3D projection.
He whispered to himself, "I'm not who I was."
—
At 2:47 AM, he dropped from the roof of the gallery, landing in silence on the skylight frame. A quick pulse through his BCI activated magnetic gloves. With a twist, he unlocked the panel and slipped in.
Inside the vault corridor, red lasers crisscrossed like a web of death. Elijah crouched.
"Switch to thermal overlay," he whispered. The world flickered orange. He saw the laser beams shift—patterns, oscillation windows. There was a thirty-millisecond window every twelve seconds.
He moved like vapor.
Ten seconds.
Three.
Now.
He slipped through, heartbeat steady.
At the end of the corridor was the painting: Cracked Crown by Basquiat, but behind its canvas was a micro-shard laced with stolen neural tech.
He touched the frame.
"Here we go."
A tiny flash. The alarm. A trap. Someone knew.
He yanked the painting from the wall, slung it in a case, and sprinted.
Sirens wailed. Security guards scrambled through the hall.
One spotted him.
"Hey! Freeze!"
Elijah didn't stop. He grabbed a smoke grenade from his belt and rolled it. The hallway clouded up. He jumped through a glass window, tumbled into the alley, and landed in a crouch, blood trickling from his forearm.
He was gone before backup arrived.
Clean ,Untraceable
—
At a dark harbor warehouse, Aleksei opened the case and removed the micro-shard.
"You're smarter than you look," he said.
Elijah stood with blood down his cheek, his breath even.
Aleksei tossed a phone to him. "They are one fucked up family. The Slades."
Elijah picked up the phone and saw it: news footage of a memorial for him. A weeping Lilian. A composed Jeremy. Crocodile tears . He had to admit they did put on a good show.
The next morning
A briefcase sat on the marble floor. Inside it: $5 million, a passport, and a single note.
Elijah picked up the passport. His new name.
The note read
"This is only the beginning."
And he smiled because he knew it was.
Elijah stood shirtless in the middle of a concrete chamber lit by a single overhead bulb. Sweat ran down his spine, pooling at the hem of his cargo pants. Every inch of his body ached — ribs bruised, knuckles raw. Around him, the air shimmered with simulated heat. The walls were padded, but the pain was real.
Aleksei's voice crackled through the intercom. "Again."
A pulse darted through the room — a wave of blinding white light. The simulation changed.
He was suddenly on a battlefield. Virtual, but violent. Gunfire, heat signatures, civilians running. A timed operation.
"Extract the target, neutralize the threat, and get out. No mistakes," Aleksei said.
Elijah moved fast — ducking through an alley, vaulting a low wall, reading data overlays in real-time. He didn't blink. Didn't hesitate. He took out three guards with surgical precision, rescued a civilian NPC, disabled a drone, and got the intel.
"Mission complete."
The scene faded. Elijah dropped to one knee, catching his breath.
"You're improving," Aleksei said, stepping into the chamber with a folded file. "But your mind's still fractured. Too many ghosts in there."
"I remember enough," Elijah muttered.
"Do you?" Aleksei raised an eyebrow and tossed him the file. "Because I ran a new scan. Wanted to test the tumor theory myself. Just curiosity."
Elijah flipped the folder open.
**BRAIN IMAGING ANALYSIS: NEGATIVE FOR TUMOR**
**UNUSUAL BIO-METABOLIC TRACES DETECTED**
He blinked. "What?"
"You don't have a tumor," Aleksei said. "Never did."
Elijah read the notes. Traces of a rare psychoactive compound. Small doses. Prolonged exposure. Memory fog. Hallucinations. Pain.
His stomach turned. "You're saying—?"
"You were being poisoned," Aleksei said. "Micro-doses, mixed into your food or drink. Sophisticated. Triggers symptoms similar to neural decay. Sloppy enough to be cruel, smart enough to look like a natural breakdown."
"Lilian," Elijah whispered.
"She had access. Motive. Means."
The migraine in his head wasn't cancer. It was sabotage.
"She told me the meds were expensive… that she was helping."
Aleksei gave a slow nod. "And the doctor? Arlo? Probably in on it. Diagnosing a fake illness makes it easier to dismiss everything you remembered."
A wave of rage washed over him. Cold and slow.
"All of it was a setup," Elijah said. "The affair, the arrest, the fake diagnosis — they wanted to break me before they erased me."
"They almost did."
Elijah's fists clenched. "But they didn't."
---
Later that night, Elijah sat in a darkened chamber beneath The Fold's training compound. The walls were lined with screens showing live news cycles, surveillance feeds, dark web threads.
He watched Lilian speak at a women's charity gala.
She smiled so perfectly.
He touched the scar just under his chin — from the night they said he collapsed at work. From the moment she let the world believe he was broken.
"You shouldn't have underestimated me," he said softly.
Behind him, an AI voice chimed.
**SYNTHETIC NEURAL SYSTEM CALIBRATION: 94%**
**MEMORY LOCKS UNRAVELING...**
Fragments flickered across the chamber wall — surveillance footage, sound bytes, Lilian's voice whispering something in his ear as he lay dazed on the bed. Jeremy holding a glass. Arlo injecting something into an IV line.
It was all there.
The system hadn't just saved him. It was restoring him.
Bit by bit, the truth was rewriting everything he thought he knew.
And this time, when he came for them, it wouldn't be for answers.
It would be for justice.