Devon Shaw stood in the shadows of London's underground, eyes locked on a high-security terminal running a quiet scan of MI6 chatter. His fingers danced across the keys, unlocking backdoors and layered proxies. Every firewall was child's play now. He had infiltrated blacksites before breakfast.
And what he found chilled him.
Deckard. Marked for liquidation.
Not a mission. Not an arrest. An internal clean-up. Burn notice. MI6 wanted him gone silenced to protect secrets buried beneath the rubble of too many covert operations.
Devon leaned back in his chair. His jaw clenched. Deckard was many things violent, unhinged, ruthless but never a traitor.
And if MI6 wanted him dead… then it was because he knew something they didn't want getting out.
He sent the message.
They're coming. Burn everything. Vanish. —D
It took Deckard seventeen minutes to disappear. Devon watched through city CCTV as a black ops team breached the safehouse and found only cold tea and a ticking EMP bomb that fried every device in a ten-meter radius.
Deckard didn't even say thank you.
He didn't need to.
Blood was blood.
Devon shut the laptop and turned his attention to the real cancer behind the scenes: Eteon.
Not government. Not corporate. Something in between.
A tech cult draped in synthetic skin and digital worship. Their fingerprints were everywhere espionage, assassinations, AI networks but the world still thought they were a myth.
Devon didn't.
He'd found whispers in ghost code. Found their sigil burned into an old encrypted drive stolen from a corporate lab in Berlin.
And now… he stood before one of their hidden facilities in Montenegro.
Camouflage panels disguised the compound as a defunct mining site, but Devon had hacked their satellite feeds. He knew what was beneath the mountain.
He wore an invis-suit stitched with light-bending threads and micro-drones. One of his own designs.
He moved like a specter across the ridge and into the depths.
Inside, Eteon's secrets bloomed in white steel and humming core towers.
AI-augmented soldiers. Neural enhancement chambers. Energy weapons still years ahead of public science.
Devon's eyes widened behind his visor.
"They're rewriting the rules," he whispered.
He moved through the facility like a ghost, planting a dormant virus into their mainframe. Silent. Undetectable. Its purpose: monitor, learn, duplicate.
Knowledge was currency.
And Devon Shaw would become a trillionaire in secrets.
The system in his mind pulsed alive.
SYSTEM UPDATE DETECTED
Eteon mainframe infiltration successful.
New Skill Gained: Experimental Systems Decryption (Lv.1)
Hidden Objective Unlocked: Form an Autonomous Crew
Reward: Access to Classified Ghost Facility – [Shadow Nest]
He blinked.
The system had always upgraded based on his actions, but this this was different.
It wanted him to build something.
Not just survive. Not just hack.
It wanted him to lead.
He exited the compound with no trace left behind but his virus pulsing deep within Eteon's heart. Already, the system was feeding him fragments.
Project names.
Blueprints.
Coordinates.
The beginnings of a war.
Back in his safehouse, Devon pulled up the encrypted schematics for the so-called "Shadow Nest"a forgotten Cold War base buried beneath the Swiss Alps. Abandoned, off-record, self-sufficient. Access was locked behind system conditions.
Crew Required: 3 Minimum
Skill Diversity Requirement: Combat, Engineering, Tactical Support
He smiled.
"I guess it's time to stop being a ghost," he murmured.
The screen reflected his face as he looked at the target list.
If MI6 could turn on Deckard…
If Eteon could build demigods in labs…
Then the world was spiraling toward something.
Devon Shaw didn't care about saving it.
But he would own it.
One piece at a time.
And the first step?
Find warriors, outcasts, prodigies.
Form a crew like no one had ever seen.
Not family. Not friends.
Weapons.