The studio was a haze of digital white noise and heavy, lingering pheromones. While the rest of Rokehurst was packing hiking boots and bug spray, I was preparing for a different kind of survival. A week without an internet uplink was a week of blindness, and for a Behemoth, blindness was a death sentence.
I sat at the workstation, the violet glow of the System pulsing in sync with my heartbeat. Sylvia was behind me, draped in one of my discarded shirts, her white hair a messy contrast to the dark room. She wasn't looking at the code. She was looking at the line of my shoulders with a hunger that the System flagged in bright, warning red.
[ TARGET: SYLVIA VALENTINE ]
[ STATE: ADDICTED / RECEPTIVE ]
[ NOTE: LUST LEVELS ARE PEAKING. SHE HAS CATEGORIZED THE HOST AS AN INDISPENSABLE BIOLOGICAL RESOURCE. ]
"You're leaving for a week," she whispered, her hands sliding over my chest, her skin still feverishly hot. "You expect me to manage your millions while you're playing camp-out in the woods? I need... a retainer, Lucas. Something to last me through the drought."
She wasn't just a ghost anymore; she was a sex black hole, an intellectual giant who had discovered a physical vice she couldn't calculate her way out of.
"Business first, Sylvia," I said, though I didn't pull away. I accessed the System's terminal. "I need a forecast. Give me the seven-day projection for the JPY/USD and the tech sector shorts."
[ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: EXPENDING 50 LP FOR 'TEMPORAL MARKET HEURISTICS' ]
[ PROJECTION GENERATED: BEARISH TREND DETECTED IN SEMICONDUCTORS. EXIT POINT AT 144.20. ]
I turned to the monitors, my fingers flying as I laid out the battle plan. "Here. These are the directional triggers. If the JPY hits this resistance level, you dump the position. If the semiconductor news drops on Tuesday, you double the short. You are my proxy, Sylvia. You're the brain of Chaycer Industries while I'm the face."
"And my payment?" she asked, her voice dropping into that melodic rasp that signaled the end of logic.
"Consider this the advance," I muttered, turning the chair around and pulling her into my lap.
The second round was more grueling than the first. It wasn't just amorous; it was a desperate, high-stakes negotiation of flesh. Sylvia moved with a ferocity that suggested she wanted to drain every ounce of my energy so I wouldn't have any left for the girls at Blackwood Creek. She was a vacuum of desire, her cries muffled against my neck as I drove home the reality that she was now bound to me—by the code she wrote and the pleasure she couldn't find anywhere else.
[ LP HARVESTED: +80 ]
[ TOTAL LP: 340 ]
As the morning sun finally broke through, a different kind of storm hit the town. I flipped on the small, grainy television in the corner.
"...Shocking developments in the Rokehurst Tech Initiative audit. Federal agents have served warrants at the Miller Construction headquarters following evidence of a multi-million dollar embezzlement scheme. Bradley Miller Sr. was taken into custody earlier this morning..."
The screen showed Brad's father, a coat over his head, being shoved into a black sedan. In the background, I saw Brad—stripped of his varsity jacket, looking small and broken as the press swarmed their lawn.
"You did that," Sylvia murmured, leaning against me as she watched the destruction we had authored. "You ended them with a few keystrokes."
"I merely accelerated the inevitable," I replied. "Now, stay in this studio. Use the encrypted uplink. If you leave, Diana Vance's hounds will find you. If you stay, you become the ghost that runs the world."
I arrived at the school buses just as the chaos was peaking. The news of the Millers' downfall had traveled through the student body like a virus. Brad was nowhere to be seen—likely pulled out of school in disgrace—but the power vacuum he left behind was palpable.
Rishie stood by the bus steps, clutching a worn duffel bag. She looked at me, her eyes lingering on a faint, purple mark on my neck that the suit collar didn't quite hide. Her expression was a complex map of irritation and a new, sharp jealousy she wasn't ready to admit.
"You look like you didn't sleep," she snapped, though her hand brushed mine as we boarded. "Ready for a week in the middle of nowhere, 'Mr. CEO'?"
"More than you know, Rishie," I said.
Behind her, Chen Yue was boarding the other bus. She caught my eye and gave a small, slow nod. She knew about the Millers. She knew about the audit. And as the buses pulled out of the parking lot, heading toward the dark, dense canopy of the Ozarks, I knew that the "one week trip" wasn't going to be about nature.
It was going to be about who was left standing when the lights went out.