Sleep didn't last.
Not real sleep—just brief unconsciousness glued together with painkillers and exhaustion. By morning, my ribs ached, my joints protested, and my mind hummed with leftover adrenaline I pretended not to notice.
Mephisto perched on the back of the couch like a gargoyle, ruby eyes pulsing slow and watchful.
"Good morning," I muttered.
He clicked once—either good morning or you look terrible. Hard to tell with him.
I made something resembling breakfast, poured a criminal amount of coffee, dragged the laptop onto the table, cracked my knuckles, and opened a blank terminal.
If Viktor could erase himself…
Then I needed something that could see what the normal world couldn't.
Something built from scratch.
Something mine.
"Alright," I whispered. "Let's hunt a ghost."
The trace-net began simple—packet sniffers, chain pings, custom tunnels. Then came the illegal tools, the older scripts I'd written to test myself, and finally my Evol bleeding into the system like a second brain.
The sensation was still strange—thinking in two places at once.
Code flowed under my fingers.
Pattern recognition flared at the base of my skull.
Noise shaped into meaning.
The world sharpened.
And then—
The screen glitched.
Not a real glitch.
A ripple—like heat bending digital light.
Lines of code rearranged themselves without my input, expanding, fracturing, aligning.
A message blinked:
—HANDSHAKE DETECTED—
"…What?"
The interface warped again—fractals blooming into impossible angles behind the terminal window.
Another notification pulsed:
ACCESS NODE LINKED — ABYSSAL_CHAOS_CORE
My breath caught.
"No way."
Abyssal Chaos.
The most dangerous intel network buried under this world's digital skin.
Where information went to be erased—or reborn.
A small glowing mask icon appeared in the corner.
W O N T O N Y
connection: passive
Passive.
Observing.
Mephisto leaned in, plates ticking softly—alert.
"Well," I whispered, pulse climbing, "that'll do."
Useful.
Terrifying.
Perfect.
A metallic chirp sounded.
Not from Mephisto.
From my phone.
A message from Sylus:
Devil:12-G Verge Corridor. Retrieve a Protocore data core. Minimal resistance. Don't open it. Don't connect it. Bring it to me intact.
My eyebrows rose.
Verge Corridor wasn't in the game.
Not in any lore.
Not anywhere.
Of course Sylus sent me there.
I dressed quickly—dark clothes, gun at my hip, pendant warm against my chest. The motorcycle roared awake beneath me like it had been waiting.
—
The Verge Corridor looked half-swallowed by time—steel skeletons, flickering emergency lights, dormant Protocore pylons humming with leftover power.
The data core was easy to find.
Suspiciously easy.
Its security wasn't broken.
It was asleep.
Waiting.
My Evol pulsed. Abyssal Chaos geometry laced faint warnings across the floor—guidelines, hazard markers, digital veins.
I followed them.
Snatched the core.
Walked out without resistance.
Ten minutes, start to finish.
Too easy—but I didn't stick around to find out why.
I had a mission to finish.
—
The N109 Zone felt different now—less like a nightmare, more like a boundary I'd crossed on purpose. The air tasted metallic, humming with static. Streetlamps flickered like they feared something watching.
The mansion rose from the center—angular, quiet, windows glowing faint red like watchful eyes.
I braced myself.
Approached the gate.
It opened.
No scan. No card. No guard.
The security grid simply let me in.
A cold shiver crawled down my spine.
"Guess I'm… welcome," I muttered.
Mephisto trilled smugly.
Inside, the main hall was dim but warm—red lights threading the walls, mechanical hums vibrating the floorboards like a heartbeat.
Footsteps echoed—two sets.
The twins rounded the corner—Luke practically skipping, Kieran crisp and composed.
"Oh-ho!" Luke crowed. "Look who came home!"
"Welcome back," Kieran said, far more normal.
Luke leaned dangerously close to the case. "Is that the thing? The dangerous glowy thing we're absolutely not opening?"
"Kieran," I said, ignoring Luke, "Sylus wants this delivered intact."
"Then you did well t—" Kieran nodded once.
Luke gasped dramatically.
"MEPHISTO!"
Mephisto clicked once.
Luke planted his hands on his hips like an offended parent. "Ah, so NOW you come back? Now that SHE'S here?"
"…What?"
Luke leaned in, whispering like a gossiping toddler.
"Boss told him to take a quick look at you—just a peek—and then come back."
He pointed accusingly at Mephisto.
"And guess who didn't come back?"
Kieran sighed. "You're oversharing."
"And guess who refused twice? Then three more times? Because someone—" Luke jabbed at the crow "—decided he likes you better."
Mephisto puffed his feathers indignantly.
Something warm and sharp bloomed behind my ribs.
A small laugh escaped me.
Mephisto chirped, smug.
"Boss is in his office," Kieran said. "We'll take you."
"You coming back often?" Luke asked. "We could play cards! Or explosives!"
"No," Kieran cut in.
"Maybe," I said, walking past them.
Luke whooped.
Mephisto fluttered to my shoulder. The mansion lights shifted as we passed—subtle, responsive.
Welcoming me.
Claiming me.
We reached tall double doors etched with faint glowing lines.
"He's expecting you," Kieran said.
My pulse thudded.
Mephisto tightened his talons on my shoulder.
The doors opened.
Sylus sat behind the desk like the room existed around him by permission. Light framed him in sharp geometry.
He looked up.
Inevitable.
Mephisto left my shoulder instantly, gliding to his perch beside Sylus with practiced ease.
Home.
I stepped forward and placed the reinforced case on the desk.
"Intact," I said.
He didn't touch it until my hand had withdrawn. Then he unlatched the case—precise, methodical, unreadable.
He closed it.
Still watching me.
"Good," he said quietly.
He rose.
Not abruptly—just enough to shift the gravity of the room toward him.
"You navigated the Verge Corridor efficiently."
"You made it sound harder than it was."
"It should have been harder."
His eyes narrowed.
"You used your Evol."
Not a question.
"Is that a problem?"
"Not at all."
The cold fire under my ribs spread.
He stepped closer.
Another inch.
Another heartbeat.
"What did you build, Diana?"
The way he said my name— I hated how my pulse responded.
"I built a trace-net. Customized. To find Viktor."
His gaze sharpened.
"And?"
"It linked to something."
A beat.
"Abyssal Chaos."
The air changed.
"Wontony," he said softly.
Approval?
Concern?
Recalculation?
Impossible to tell.
"It linked passively," I added quickly. "I didn't pull anything. It just… reacted."
He stepped closer again. Not touching distance.
But close enough that the room felt smaller.
"Show me what you've built."
Not an order.
A certainty.
I stepped past him—the faint scent of leather and cedarwood trailing after him like a shadow—and moved to the terminal. Mephisto shifted on his perch, watching with the patient intensity of a scholar guarding a thesis.
"May I?" I asked, nodding toward his chair.
"Go ahead."
I woke the terminal with a touch.
My trace-net bloomed across the screen—shifting geometry threaded with Abyssal glyphs, expanded past anything I'd designed. Larger. Sharper.
More alive.
Sylus didn't pretend to understand the technical structure.
He didn't need to.
He watched me watching it—tracking the micro-adjustments in my posture, the way my eyes scanned the web, the slight change in my breathing as if the system were wired directly into my pulse.
His voice slipped in, low and precise.
"Impressive."
Dangerous, coming from him.
"It grew on its own," I said. "I didn't code that."
"It responded to you."
His voice made the words heavier than they should've been.
He studied the web for several seconds.
Then:
"I have another assignment for you."
The atmosphere shifted.
"Work trip," he continued. "Short-term. Low-risk."
"You'll accompany a delivery of prototype weapons to a buyer. Onychinus prefers to avoid… misunderstandings."
He looked at me over his shoulder—light catching his jaw, sharpening everything.
"If something goes wrong," he said, low and absolute, "you will show me how you adapt."
My throat tightened.
"We leave tonight."
"We?" I asked.
"Yes," Sylus said, as if the alternative had never existed.
"I'm testing you."