Two weeks.
That's all it took for Julian Kade to go from starving dropout to whispered name on underground forums and corporate threat reports. AstraDyn Holdings was now valued at over 30 million credits. His discreet biotech acquisitions were making headlines, not under his name, but through shell companies he controlled remotely using quantum signatures and a neural firewall only he and the System understood.
He had just signed a silent takeover of a neural implant firm in Neo-Tokyo when it happened.
The warning came not from a person, but from the System.
[Threat Detected. Surveillance drones active. Trajectory triangulated.]
Julian froze mid-step outside a data-vault café in Sector 12. It was early evening—dark already, thanks to the constant cloud cover—and the streets were lit by rows of cyan lamps and holographic ads. Crowds bustled past him, oblivious.
[Primary threat identified: Licensed hunter-class assassin, designation K-0X7. Augmented. Military-grade optics. Weapons: Plasma thread, micro-gravity mines, splicer rounds. Contract status: active.]
Julian's heart stuttered. "An assassin?"
[Affirmative. Evasive protocol recommended. Do not engage directly. Uploading escape route.]
A translucent line lit up in his vision, threading through the city like an AR navigation system. He didn't wait to argue. He ran.
Behind him, the crowd shifted. A man in matte black armor, faceless helmet glowing with orange lines, moved with inhuman smoothness, stepping between people without disturbing them—silent, purposeful, fast.
[Alert: Proximity breach in 18 seconds.]
Julian vaulted a vending stall and ducked into a maintenance corridor. Pipes hissed around him. The air reeked of coolant and ozone. He sprinted blindly, following the glowing line in his overlay until it dropped him into a dead end.
"System," he gasped, spinning around. "Dead end!"
[Override authorized. Environmental manipulation sequence initiating.]
A schematic appeared in his mind's eye—this section of the city's underground coolant grid. Pressure levels. Heat thresholds. Valve locations.
[Locate Pipe 7C. Manual trigger: rupture via shock.]
Julian spotted a valve labeled 7C. He yanked a broken pipe from the wall and jammed it into the valve with all his strength.
[Now: impact.]
He slammed his boot into it.
With a shriek of tearing metal, supercooled vapor erupted from the pipe in a pressurized burst—fogging the corridor in white mist. Seconds later, the assassin entered the fog… and stopped.
Julian felt the Protocol adjust his hearing. Every droplet, every footstep—amplified.
[Using thermal vision. Disable optics.]
Julian pulled a pen from his coat pocket—one of the solar-charging ones he carried for emergencies—and popped off the mini lithium battery inside.
"System, I need charge flow."
[Redirecting neural impulse to battery filament. Charge building…]
He dropped the battery near a metal grating, then ducked behind a support column.
[Now.]
A spark snapped. The battery exploded with a flash of pure white light—an improvised EMP burst.
The assassin cursed—distorted, mechanical—and his optics fizzled out for two seconds.
Julian bolted past him.
He ran deeper into the maintenance tunnel, heart pounding.
[Redirect to vertical lift shaft in 45 meters.]
The shaft was sealed—but the Protocol flashed a path. Julian noticed a pair of wall-mounted pressure canisters connected to a hydraulic venting line.
[Convert pressure into kinetic lift.]
Julian ripped the valve off one canister, rerouted the feed line into the ceiling grate using a scavenged aluminum rod and—
FOOM.
The floor beneath him hissed and bucked upward. He grabbed the vent handle, used the pressurized air as a launch assist, and shot up into the next level, catching a maintenance ladder mid-air.
He rolled onto the platform above, panting.
[Enemy presence: 90 meters below. Optics recalibrating. Time to exit: 45 seconds.]
He was in a construction site now—half-built drone tower, steel beams crisscrossed above. No exits in sight. Then he saw it: a delivery bot, loading a pallet of tools onto a hover dolly.
"System—can I hijack it?"
[If you tap into its LIDAR node and reroute its command stream, yes.]
Julian sprinted to it, pulled the casing off with a nearby crowbar, and jammed a neural link cable from his jacket into the bot's interface port.
[Infiltrating…]
The bot twitched.
[Success. You now control HoverBot-27. Deploying distraction subroutine.]
The bot screamed into action, roaring to life and jetting toward the open stairwell just as the assassin climbed into view.
K-0X7 raised a pulse pistol—
—but the bot's payload exploded in a controlled burst of bright flares, steel fragments, and a synthetic oil cloud. Julian used the chaos to leap into a side chute and slide three stories down into a garbage funnel.
He hit the bottom hard and rolled into a heap of rotting bio-waste.
[Pursuer temporarily disabled. Extraction successful.]
Julian lay there for a moment, coughing and laughing all at once. He smelled like coolant and garbage, but he was alive.
Later that night, in a safehouse in the Old City dome, Julian stood shirtless before a flickering monitor, staring at his reflection. His body had changed. Leaner, stronger. Faster reflexes. His eyes gleamed like metal. But what truly burned behind them was purpose.
"Why would they send an assassin after me this early?" he asked.
[Your actions disrupted three corporate monopolies in two weeks. You exposed trade secrets, reclaimed stolen patents, and made technologies open-source. You are affecting profit margins. Your very existence is a threat.]
Julian exhaled slowly. "Then they'll keep coming."
[Affirmative. Initiating Phase Three: Expansion. You require allies. Assets. Protection.]
He nodded, stepping back into the light.
"They want a war," Julian whispered. "Let's give them a revolution."