Sunday mornings were supposed to be quiet.
But for Ethan, quiet was just another word for "behind schedule."
He was already at his desk by 7:15 a.m., a steaming mug of tea next to him as line after line of terminal code scrolled across his monitor. He leaned back, watching the final diagnostics ping green on the fourth alias—Mason Terrell.
It had taken a few extra days to polish. The hardest part wasn't the forged credentials, falsified online identities, or backdated DNS records—those were relatively easy.
The challenge was the legend.
Mason Terrell wasn't really a person so much as a carefully constructed breadcrumb — the kind of throwaway identity that smelled legitimate enough to be chased. To the net, he was the polite myth of "GhostPatch": a gray-hat who patched holes in illicit networks one minute and leaked the exploit the next if someone earned his scorn. A walking contradiction with a razor-sharp etiquette.
Ethan had spent a week building that myth by hand — scattering code snippets, faux bug reports, and staged patch notes across decoy channels so GhostPatch's rise looked organic: IRC obscurity → niche boards → whispered reputation. He threaded the posts with a consistent syntax and a clipped, sardonic voice. Dozens of forum traces, many of them Ethan behind burner handles, made the legend noisy and believable.
He also seeded a second handle: ShadowStitch — darker, surgical, the alias you called when you wanted a breach to look like an artisan's work instead of a blunt instrument. Mason Terrell became the convenient everyday name used whenever Ethan operated as either GhostPatch or ShadowStitch. Crucially, every digital thread tied back to Mason lines that funneled to South America — dead-end VPN hops, shell addresses, a mess of false leads deliberately left to rot. If anyone tried to follow Mason Terrell to Ethan, they'd find only a continent of red herrings and a trail that ended where Ethan wanted it to.
The real debate now was what kind of criminal identity Mason Terrell would wear when stepping out of the forums and into the real world.
Luc Moreau, his sixth alias, had a more defined intended role: arms logistics, low-level black market contacts, and eventual connections to European syndicates. Luc would become a ghost in the highest circles—a supplier, not a soldier.
But Mason… Mason had to get his hands dirty.
"Smuggling and art fencing," Ethan muttered to himself, fingers hovering over the keyboard.
It made sense. Art and antiquities were the perfect laundering fronts. Art moved through borders easily, customs looked the other way, and the prices were subjective enough to hide large amounts of capital.
If Luc was the clean-cut quartermaster, Mason would be the shady courier, moving stolen AI prototypes in crates marked Renaissance sculpture. A thief who didn't climb through windows—but bought the blueprints, bribed the guards, and forged the sensor chips.
He liked the contrast.
And it gave him a new angle with Delilah.
Ethan had been studying her for days now—through CCTV, old police files, and some cobbled-together witness accounts. She was brutal, loyal to the Rose, and violently effective. But she wasn't untouchable. She had a personality, and anyone with a personality could be manipulated.
Mason Terrell would be the bridge. A small-time art broker working his way up the food chain, offering illegal data services and the occasional high-tech tool in exchange for muscle. Not too clean, not too flashy, plus he could always throw in a new identity he could craft for Delilah. That might be just tempting enough to draw Delilah's attention when the time came.
By 11:45 a.m., the Mason Terrell alias was complete.
Digital records now showed a twenty-nine-year-old tech-savvy freelancer with shell company ties to anonymous international accounts. His social media presence was muted—just enough to seem real, but careful to never ping any major watchdog systems. The crown jewel was the burner phone registered in a fake name that could pass basic cell tower metadata audits, if anyone tried.
He even made a voice modulation device that shifted his tone by 4.3 semitones, giving Mason a gravelly, quiet sound—an almost snake-oil charm.
Satisfied, Ethan finally leaned back and rubbed his temples. A headache was crawling just behind his left eye—too much mental load from the Sage protocols again. He'd need to throttle down the processing cycles soon or risk a real neural burnout.
But there was one more stop to make today.
He shut his laptop, grabbed his coat, and left the hotel room.
The hospital wasn't far—just three subway stops and a short walk.
When he arrived, the staff barely looked up. He walked like he belonged, wore the right badge, and kept his shoulders slightly slouched—non-threatening, forgettable. The best camouflage was always the boring kind.
Rachel's room was on the third floor. She was awake when he entered, sitting in bed, reading something with glazed-over eyes.
"Hey," Ethan said quietly, closing the door behind him.
Rachel looked up, a flash of recognition crossing her face—followed by something murkier. Guilt? Shame?
"You came."
"I said I would."
He sat beside her, pulling a small notebook from his coat. He'd spent the past two nights sketching out a behavioral profile for her. Between her panic attacks, the delusions involving Nisanti's whispers, and her unpredictable mood swings, Ethan suspected a deep dissociative fracture—a trauma response amplified by psychic overload.
"I've been reading some psychology case studies," he said, keeping his tone light. "Some trauma models, dissociative identity patterns, neurochemical responses to dimensional contact."
Rachel blinked. "And that's your idea of light reading?"
Ethan smiled. "Only on Sundays."
He stayed for nearly two hours—talking, asking questions, walking her through breathing techniques, and gently nudging her mind toward focus. It wasn't perfect, but by the end, Rachel seemed more grounded than last.
Her eyes followed him when he left.
"Thanks," she said. "For not treating me like I'm broken."
"You're not," Ethan replied. "You're just healing."
By the time he was heading home, Ethan was replaying the entire day in his head—sifting through errors, opportunities, improvements. That's when his phone buzzed.
A secure channel pinged.
Harper: "Your laundry blueprints are a bit ambitious. I have questions."
Harper: "And a few requests."
Harper: "Let's meet before tomorrow's rendezvous with the spider."
Ethan didn't hesitate.
Rourke: "Name the time. I'm always available to help out a friend."
He tucked the phone back into his coat pocket and crossed the street under a crimson sky, the sun melting into Manhattan's steel horizon.
Tomorrow, Amy would return to school.
Tomorrow, he would see Felicia first, then the two would have a meeting with Peter.
And after that?