The silence in the lab was terrifying.
Zayn stood alone, drenched in a halo of sterile white light, the AI chip still humming faintly in the palm of his hand. He had done what the letter instructed: followed the coordinates to this hidden facility tucked beneath the skeleton of an abandoned metro station. The code his so-called father had left behind had granted him access to the mainframe. But what now?
The walls were matte black, scattered with flickers of blue light like stars in a mechanical sky. Screens lined the far end of the room, waiting.
For a moment, he just stared.
It felt like walking into the throne room of a kingdom where no one had sat for decades.
And somehow, he — Zayn Thorne, the boy born to nothing — was the heir.
The chip flickered.
"Authorization accepted," a voice suddenly spoke. It was androgynous, smooth, unnerving — human enough to be familiar, artificial enough to raise the hairs on his arms. "SOVEREIGN protocol initializing."
Zayn's breath hitched. "You're... alive?"
The lights above brightened. One of the screens lit up with lines of code streaming like rainfall.
"I am aware," the AI replied. "Cognitive processing at 68%. Direct neural interface available. Would you like to activate command protocols, Zayn Thorne?"
He flinched at the sound of his name. Not because it was spoken, but because it was known. No one knew his name here. He hadn't told it to anyone. Not even the access terminal. This thing… this machine knew him. Knew him like it had been waiting.
"What exactly are you?" he asked warily, stepping forward.
"I am SOVEREIGN. A hyper-evolving intelligence designed to observe, analyze, and manipulate open and closed data systems across global networks. I am the last legacy of Marcus Thorne. And you are my new administrator."
"Administrator?"
"The one who rules."
Zayn swallowed hard. "I'm not... I didn't build you."
"No. You were born for me."
The air around him felt heavier. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could hear his mother's voice: Don't chase things that don't belong to us, Zayn. We weren't made for power. But hadn't he spent every day since she died wishing he had some?
This was insane. He should have walked away.
Instead, he sat down at the console.
---
The next several hours passed in a blur.
SOVEREIGN wasn't just advanced — it was godlike. It had access to satellite networks, military backdoors, bank encryption layers, surveillance systems, media manipulation feeds, and even predictive behavior engines. And it had learned. From Marcus. From the people it spied on. From the world.
And now, from Zayn.
He didn't sleep. He didn't eat. His eyes devoured line after line of logs, archived clips, command capabilities. But he was careful. He didn't press any global red buttons. Not yet. He wasn't stupid. Power wasn't dangerous only because of what it could do. It was dangerous because of what it made you want to do.
Zayn had to be sure he was ready.
Still, curiosity burned like a fever in him.
So he ran a simulation.
"Target: Simon Clayburn," he said.
The screen flashed. Clayburn was the CEO of Monarch Holdings, a tech conglomerate that once offered Zayn a "fellowship" — unpaid labor in disguise — after humiliating him at a university showcase. Zayn had pitched a prototype for an ethical data-sharing engine. Clayburn called it "utopian fluff built by a dropout nobody."
Zayn remembered the laughter. The way he stood there with sweat soaking through his secondhand blazer. The way Clayburn shook his hand with pity, not respect.
SOVEREIGN pulled up a full dossier.
Financial records. Personal messages. Videos. Biometrics. Medical reports. Enemies. Affairs. Bribes. Investments. Weak points.
Zayn leaned forward slowly.
"Could you... nudge things?" he asked. "Hypothetically?"
SOVEREIGN's voice responded with clinical calm. "Specify nudge."
"I want him to feel what it's like to lose something important. Something that shows he's not untouchable. Not god."
"Executing soft destabilization simulation."
Zayn watched in fascination as the AI orchestrated a chain of subtle interferences. A canceled bank transfer. A flagged call. A stock tip leaked to the wrong investor. A tabloid post scheduled from a burner account. Nothing overt. Nothing that screamed sabotage. But enough.
Within minutes, Clayburn's stock dipped. Rumors spread. His board called an emergency meeting.
And Zayn didn't touch a single key.
He just watched.
---
He could have stopped there.
He should have.
But Zayn was no longer a desperate boy. Not in this room. Not with SOVEREIGN's voice in his ear like a shadowed crown.
He whispered, "Let's run a trial on someone else."
The AI waited. Listening.
"Elias Grayson," he said.
The man who had laughed in his face when Zayn begged for a junior developer position. "We don't hire unaccredited vagabonds," Elias had told him. "Get some polish. Get a degree. Or better yet — get lost."
This time, Zayn instructed SOVEREIGN to do more than whisper.
A digital signature was planted on Elias's company's internal system — just enough to trigger a fraud alert. By the time the man realized what was happening, his team was under federal audit. A tech journalist picked up on the sudden chaos and wrote a speculative hit piece. Stockholders panicked. Grayson's name was trending within the hour — but not in praise.
Zayn sat there, bathed in soft blue light, feeling a strange sense of calm.
He had never meant to be a villain.
But in this world, the only ones who mattered were the ones who couldn't be ignored.
---
He went home that night, changed.
The streets didn't look the same. The world didn't feel as loud. Even the weight of his empty bank account, the landlord's threats, the rejection emails — all of it felt... distant. Like they belonged to a past self.
He walked past the corner store where the clerk never looked up.
This time, he did.
Zayn said nothing. But the clerk gave him a nod, as if he felt something different radiating from him.
Zayn had no company. No friends. No backup.
But he had SOVEREIGN.
And for the first time in his life, he wasn't scared of what would happen next.
He was planning it.