The next day, it began.
Not with a corporate press release or a government bulletin, but as a whisper in the dark corners of the net. A single file, AC_Breach_7.x264_corrupt, appeared on a black-market data haven before proliferating across encrypted networks and fringe forums. It was twenty-seven seconds of chaos.
The footage was a nightmare symphony of digital decay. It showed a pristine Aethel Corp hallway, unnaturally silent, until a flicker of movement tore through the frame. It wasn't a man running; it was a smear of pixels, a humanoid shape that seemed to stutter through space-time. A guard would raise a rifle, and the figure would simply… not be there anymore, reappearing behind him as a cascade of visual artifacts. Limbs seemed to elongate, the form blurring into a featureless silhouette of pure black against the strobing emergency lights. The audio was worse—a cacophony of static, warped screams, and a low, guttural hum that sounded like a machine trying to speak in a dead language.
The internet, a beast that fed on mystery, devoured it.
On Omni-NEXUS, a forum for mercenaries and info-brokers, the debate was pragmatic and laced with professional awe. > User: 'Hex_Op'
Subject: Re: Aethel Ghost That's not a man. Look at the frame-skip at 0:14. He crosses twelve feet in a single frame. Some kind of flicker-jumper metahuman. Corporate-made or lab-born? Either way, the price for that kind of wetwork just went up.
> User: 'Cinder'
Subject: Re: Aethel Ghost Forget meta. That's military tech. A phase-shifter prototype. The distortion field is a byproduct of the cloaking system punching holes in local reality. Aethel was a government contractor. This is one of their experiments getting off the leash.
The Gutter, a deeper, more depraved corner of the web, took a more theological approach. > User: 'Sawbones'
He doesn't bleed data. The cameras can't hold him. He moves through walls of code. This isn't a man in a suit; it's a digital demon wearing a man's shape.
The rumors bled from the shadows into the light. Mainstream news anchors, their faces etched with practiced gravity, spoke of a "highly sophisticated corporate espionage incident," showing the least corrupted snippets of the footage. Julian Thorne of GNN speculated, "Authorities are scrambling to identify this mysterious saboteur, whose methods defy conventional analysis. Some experts are suggesting the use of advanced holographic projectors, while others… are not ruling out the possibility of a new class of biologically or technologically enhanced individual."
Conspiracy theorists had a field day. Channels like "The Unseen Truth" dedicated entire episodes to it, their hosts drawing frantic red circles on blurry screenshots, connecting the "Aethel Phantom" to everything from interdimensional beings to the resurrected spirits of fallen soldiers. The Ghost was no longer just a callsign; he was becoming a modern myth, a digital boogeyman.
For the man behind the myth, this was a double-edged sword.
The fear was an asset. It was a shield more effective than any body armor. His name, once spoken with grudging respect in the underworld, was now uttered in a hushed, fearful awe. Fixers who once tried to haggle his price now paid his fee without question. Targets, upon hearing he was the one hunting them, would often just give up, leaving their assets and disappearing into the night rather than face the monster from the video. The legend did half his work for him.
But the attention was a liability. The legend was loud. Every intelligence agency from the Pan-American Coalition to the Euro-Bloc was now hunting not just a mercenary, but a phenomenon. Aethel Corp had placed a staggering bounty on his head—not for capture, but for proof. Proof of what he was, how he did what he did. They wanted to dissect the ghost, to study and replicate him. He was no longer just a man on a job; he was a prize, a living, breathing piece of bleeding-edge mythology. Anonymity, his most precious currency, was being spent with every click, every share, every terrified whisper.
The safehouse was a concrete box buried in the city's underbelly. The walls were bare, the air thick with the smell of dust and solitude. A single cot, a weapons-cleaning bench, and a scarred metal table holding a laptop were the only furnishings. It was an anonymous, forgettable space, a perfect shell for a man trying to be forgotten.
Ghost sat at the table, the glow of the laptop screen casting long shadows across the web of scars that mapped his face. He'd downloaded the file an hour ago, but had only just found the will to watch it. He clicked play.
The familiar hallway appeared on screen. He watched his own work, but with the detached curiosity of a stranger.
The screen showed none of that of what he remembered.
It showed a monster. A creature of static and impossible speed. A being that tore through reality, its form shifting and unstable.
A cold knot tightened in his stomach. The image unsettled him more than any firefight ever could. It was one thing to be called a ghost—a title earned through stealth and a reputation for disappearing. It was another thing to see it, to be confronted with a visual record that suggested he truly wasn't human. The video felt like a lie, but a lie that told a deeper truth.
His life had been a process of erasure. The war had taken his name. Betrayal had taken his comrades. The job had taken his family, their faces now just ghosts in his memory he struggled to hold onto. Piece by piece, the world had stripped away the man he used to be, leaving only the hardened, pragmatic mercenary. He was built from scars and silence, a man trying to stay human in a world that rewarded monsters.
And now, the world had finally given him a monster's face.
He looked at his reflection in the dark screen, his own scarred, tired features superimposed over the glitching phantom. The two were one and the same. The legend was a cage, yes, but it was also the perfect hiding place. The man was vulnerable. The man bled. The man could still feel the phantom limb of a life he'd lost. The monster, however… the monster was feared. Untouchable. Immortal.
A slow, cold resolution settled over him. He closed the laptop. The fear the world felt was his armor. The myth was his camouflage. As long as they hunted the creature from the footage, the man underneath could continue to survive.
He rose from the table and moved toward the shadows that pooled in the corner of the room, the darkness welcoming him like an old friend.
"Good," he thought, the words a silent vow in the hollow chamber of the safehouse. "Let them chase a phantom. The more they fear the Ghost, the less they'll see the man."