People think the hardest part about being born a Cole is the pressure.
They're wrong.
The hardest part is surviving the people who share your DNA.
The gala wasn't a party; it was a performance. And in the Cole family, I was the only one without a script. The Grand Ballroom of the Plaza was a sea of shimmering silk and stiff tuxedos. Above us, the chandeliers hummed with the kind of light that made everything look expensive and everyone look fake. I stood near a marble pillar, trying to blend into the shadows, a ghost in a three-thousand-dollar suit I didn't own.
"Don't slouch, Evan. It makes the charity look forced."
The voice was like dry parchment. I didn't have to turn around to know it was Victor Cole. My father. The man who had built an empire on "Cole Dynamics" and had spent twenty-three years making sure the world didn't know I existed.
"I'm just enjoying the view, Victor," I said, my voice flat. I never called him 'Dad.' I subconsciously rubbed a jagged, pale line of a scar that ran across my right knuckle—a badge of honor from a life in the fighting pits and foster homes where I'd learned to hit back. To Victor, it was a deformity. To me, it was the only thing in this room that wasn't a lie.
Victor stepped beside me, his presence cold enough to drop the temperature. He didn't look at me. He looked at the room, nodding to a senator near the buffet.
"You're here to be seen, not to enjoy. People are asking questions about the 'distant cousin' from the Midwest. Keep your mouth shut and your back straight. One more month, and we'll move you to the London office. Permanently."
London. A gilded cage across the ocean.
"Is that where you sent the last mistake?" I asked, my grip tightening on my empty glass.
Victor finally turned his head. His eyes were two chips of flint, reflecting nothing. For a microsecond, something shifted in his eyes, not regret. Resolution. It was the clinical look of a man who had finally made a difficult decision and was already calculating the cleanup costs.
"The last mistake didn't have your mother's stubborn streak. Don't test me, boy. You're only alive because I'm a man of my word."
He signaled a passing waiter.
"Give him a drink. He looks like he's about to faint from the pressure."
The waiter, a young man with a face as blank as a mannequin, stepped forward. He held a silver tray with two glasses of vintage champagne. I hesitated. My gut twisted—a sudden, sharp instinct I'd honed from years of surviving this family.
But then I saw Julian, my half-brother, watching from across the room. He was leaning against a gold-leafed table, a smirk playing on his lips. Beside him, Celeste was laughing, but her eyes were fixed on me, sharp and predatory.
If I refused the drink, I was weak. If I made a scene, I was a liability.
I reached out and took the flute. The glass was ice-cold.
"To family," Victor said, his voice a low, dark rumble.
I took a sip. It was crisp, sweet, and carried a flavor like battery acid and burnt copper. I forced myself to swallow, the liquid sliding down my throat like a slow-moving sludge. Victor watched me finish the glass, a ghostly nod of his head the only acknowledgement I got before he merged back into the sea of silk and suits.
I stood alone, the empty flute heavy in my hand. That was when I saw her. Nora Thorne. Standing with the rivals' delegation, she wasn't participating in the mindless chatter. She was perfectly still, her slate-gray eyes fixed on my throat. She wasn't watching a guest; she was watching a countdown.
Five minutes later, the world started to tilt.
It began as a dull throb behind my eyes. I tried to walk toward the balcony for air, but my legs felt like they were made of lead. The laughter around me grew distorted, sounding like high-pitched shrieks. The gold leaf on the walls started to bleed into the red carpet.
Something is wrong.
I tried to set the glass down, but my fingers were numb. The flute shattered against the floor. No one cared. A waiter rushed over to sweep up the glass, ignoring the man swaying in front of him.
I staggered toward the private restroom corridor. The wing was a restricted zone, quiet and cut off from the rest of the gala—a perfect vacuum where no guest would wander and no staff would interrupt. My hand squealed against the polished marble wall as I used it to stay upright. My chest wasn't just tight; it felt like someone was vacuum-sealing my lungs. A jagged, chemical heat crawled through my veins, turning my blood into battery acid.
The drink. Victor. Julian.
I lunged into a private restroom and slammed the lock just as my knees gave out. The gold-trimmed soap dispenser clattered into the sink as I collapsed against the vanity. In the mirror, a stranger stared back. My skin was the color of wet ash. My eyes were blown wide, the pupils swallowing the iris.
Poison.
The realization hit me harder than the pain. It was clean. It was quiet. By tomorrow morning, the headlines would read: Tragic Passing of Cole Relative: A Hidden Heart Defect. My phone slipped from my sweat-slicked fingers, clattering onto the tile. I tried to reach for it, but my arm wouldn't obey.
So this is it. Twenty-three years of being the ghost at the dinner table. Twenty-three years of swallowing their insults and pretending I didn't see the way they watched me—waiting for a slip-up.
A wet, hacking laugh escaped me. It tasted like copper and bile. I looked down and saw the dark red spray against the white porcelain.
"Guess… you finally found a reason," I wheezed, my voice a ghost of itself.
My heart gave one final, violent shudder. It felt like a bird slamming against the inside of a cage, then… silence.
The world didn't go black. It went frozen. Everything paused. Time didn't just slow down; it suspended, leaving me hanging in a static void.
Then, a voice. It wasn't a sound. It was a digital pulse, vibrating directly against my auditory nerve.
[Foreign neural interface detected.]
My lungs burned, stuck in mid-gasp. I couldn't even blink.
[Nano-Intelligence Protocol initiating.]
[Host condition: Terminal. Cardiac arrest imminent.]
[Emergency authorization accepted. User: EVAN_COLE_001.]
"What…" My jaw wouldn't move, but the thought screamed in my head.
Suddenly, the fire in my veins changed. It wasn't burning anymore; it was working. It felt like a billion microscopic needles were stitching me back together from the inside out. I felt them in my brain, in my marrow, in my eyes. It was a sensation of absolute, terrifying precision.
[Toxin identified: Synth-V Neurocardiac Agent.]
[Neutralizing…]
[Cellular damage detected in left ventricle. Repairing…]
[Warning: Insufficient energy for full restoration. Core at 12% capacity.]
Time slammed back into gear.
I hit the floor on my hands and knees, air rushing into my lungs so hard I choked on my own bile. I was trembling so violently I could hear my teeth rattling in my skull. My vision was suddenly too loud, too bright—I could see the microscopic dust motes dancing in the air, each one sharp as a razor.
I forced myself up, reaching for the marble, but my hand missed, slamming into the wall four inches to the left. My brain was lagging behind my eyes.
"What..." I wheezed.
[–INTERFACE-UNSTABLE–][–SENSORY-DAMPENING-ACTIVE–][–HOST-CONSCIOUSNESS-RECOGNIZED-AS-SECONDARY–]
A terrifying, icy numbness washed over my brain. The panic was still there, but it was pushed behind a thick, frosted pane of glass. I looked at the blood in the sink. It was turning a strange, metallic silver as the things in my blood consumed it.
I had died. And yet, I was standing.
"What is this?" I whispered, my voice sounding strained.
[I am NEXUS.]
[A self-evolving nano-intelligence embedded in your bloodstream.]
[Primary objective: Ensure host survival. Secondary objective: Evolutionary Dominance.]
Dominance.
I closed my eyes and felt the system humming beneath my skin. The cold resolve of the machine felt empowering, but then, the human part of me caught up.
A wave of violent, phantom heat surged up my throat—not the poison, but raw, visceral terror. My knees buckled again, and I had to catch myself against the marble vanity, my breath hitching in a sob I didn't know was coming.
I died. The thought hit me like a physical blow. I was dead. My heart stopped. I felt the light go out.
I looked at my hands. They were trembling so violently I could hear the phantom rattle of my own bones. I wasn't a predator. I was a terrified twenty-three-year-old who had just been butchered by his own family. I wanted to scream, to run, to hide—
[Emotional instability detected,] the voice in my head pulsed, flat and clinical. [Neural dampeners engaging. Suppressing cortisol spike.]
A terrifying, icy numbness washed over my brain. It felt like a curtain falling over my fear. The shaking in my hands didn't just stop; it was stilled by a force that wasn't mine. The horror was still there, tucked away in a dark corner of my mind where I couldn't reach it, leaving only a hollow, artificial calm.
I was becoming a passenger in my own skin.
I straightened my tie with fingers that felt like stone. I looked down at the blood in the sink. It was already turning a strange, metallic silver as the nanites broke it down.
They tried to kill me because they were afraid of what I might become.
But they didn't kill me. They just triggered the one thing they should have feared most.
Victor was still out there. They were waiting for a body to be found.
I reached for the door, my heart hammering a rhythm that wasn't human.
[–EXTERNAL-THREAT-DETECTED–][–PROXIMITY:CRITICAL–]
Beyond the door, the heavy, rhythmic thud of combat boots echoed on the marble. They weren't coming to help. They were coming to erase what was left of me.